Quote:
Originally Posted by WillyHeckaslike
Nissan did bring much needed employment to the region but I was never a fan of it going on the chosen site. The site being an airfield which was to me by far the better location, being on the A19 corridor, to develop a regional airport. What the region ended up with is two airports sited remotely in the back of beyond and struggling to compete with each other. One more so than the other although the other benefited enormously from a metro link which was built to serve it. With a regional airport in my preferred location a metro link could have been built to serve the wider community as well as that airport, not least the people of Washington and those from the wider region who travel to work on one of Washington's several industrial estates.  |
When I worked at Washington (Pattinson South), I hated my commute.
Either the A1 Western bypass to the A195, or the A19 through the tunnel and off at Wessington way.
I'm not convinced that RAF Usworth would have made a better airport than RAF Woolsington where Newcastle International is built on.
It is less than two minutes from the A1, and has the benefit of the Metro line being on it's doorstep.
The Metro line having been part of the old Ponteland branch line, opened as a passenger service in 1900, and which became a mineral railway in 1929, serving ICI at Callerton, and Rowntree Mackintosh at Fawdon.
It was a shoe in because the infrastructure was already in place, and repurposed in 1981 for the Metro.
If we bear in mind that Newcastle Airport is owned in majority by seven of the local unitary council areas, namely The City of Newcastle, City of Sunderland, Durham County Council, Gateshead MBC, North Tyneside MBC, Northumberland County Council, and South Tyneside MBC, there were probably a lot of decisions made as to where the best location was for the main regional airport.
I agree that Durham Tees Valley is not ideally located for anything really though, this is reflected in it's continued commercial failure
The amount of sweeteners offered by the government to Nissan to set up shop in Washington were incredible, and of course make no mistake it was Nissan's intent to utilise this and the cheapness of the real estate prices, along with the proximity to the Port of Tyne, to allow them to form their backdoor into the European market.
It is also misleading to say that the plant employs much of the skilled staff from former heavy industries from the area, and if the plant closes in the same way Honda are closing their plant in Swindon, it will become another harsh lesson as to the reasons divesting large amounts of regional investment to foreign entities can be extremely hazardous.
The question I would ask myself how I would feel if Nissan close the doors at Washington, I might empathise with the staff losing their jobs, and those involved locally in the supply chain, but I wouldn't view the loss in any way as catastrophic as the closure of Longbridge.
Nissan and Honda both brought high quality modern manufacturing methods to an industry where the indigenous manufacturers had been dogged by ultra left wing......nay Communist style union conveners, and poor management style for decades, and gave consumers what they wanted, reliability and comfort.
It matters not their products were as dull as dishwater, and still are to this day, most private car buyers, irrespective of method PCP, finance, outright sale don't care about where something is made, just whether it will do the job they ask of it.
Brian
