News

In Christmas week I would normally devote my column to a seasonal yuletide theme.

This year I could have told you all about the special church service I attended in Buckland to pay tribute to the people who work in our emergency services or I could have described the wonderful Christmas Tree Festival in Deal which raises funds for McMillan Cancer Support or I could have waxed lyrical about the splendid annual Christmas Carol Concert in Aylesham – which I haven’t missed attending in the last 15 years.

This year’s concert was a little different from past years because although most of the Snowdown Male Voice Choir managed to battle through the arctic conditions to get to the Welfare Club, the brass band had to pull out because the conductor was snowbound in Dartford and the lead trumpeter was stuck on a train somewhere. I don’t know whether he was on a Eurostar stranded inside the Channel Tunnel but either way the show had to go on minus the band.

But our inconvenience was nothing compared with the problems that have been faced by the people in trapped in the tunnel, the lorry drivers delayed in Operation Stack and my long suffering constituents trying to go about their daily business.

I’ve lived in Dover for over 30 years now and during that time I’ve experienced lots of traffic snarl ups, hundreds of operation stacks and quite a few near grid locks of the town centre – but I’ve never seen anything quite as bad as last weekend’s traffic congestion and I hope I don’t see it again.

I received quite a few phone calls and emails from people who had been stuck in traffic queues and been forced to abandon their trips. Some had failed to attend important appointments, birthday parties were spoiled, ballet lessons were missed and lots of shopping outings had to be postponed.

We are told the problems were caused by a series of exceptional circumstances. The sub arctic temperatures in Northern France and the temperature differential inside the tunnel gave rise to a succession of Eurostar failures which blocked the tunnels, interfered with the operation of the shuttle trains and resulted in freight lorries and other vehicles backing up on the M20.

To make things worse, the cold snap was accompanied by gale force winds in the Channel causing disruption and delays on our ferry services and to cap it all there was industrial action going on in Calais.

The cost of these delays to commerce and to the haulage industry in particular is enormous and there are also heavy financial demands on Kent Police who have to manage Operation Stack and do their best to keep local traffic moving.

We all like to complain about Operation Stack but unless and until Kent County Council come forward with their much heralded plans for a lorry park on the M20, Stack is the only safe way of managing traffic when there are more vehicles heading for our coast than the port and the tunnel can handle.