Those of us living in North Kent have experienced this before. As you said once the planning application has been deferred 20 times for a whole host of ecological reasons, they are likely to give up. At that point it will go to France and be welcomed with open arms!
Guessing it rains quite a lot in Paris. Theme parks are great apart from the prices and the other people.
They will have the goods destined for a population of 300 million people, diverted to UK and the rest of Europe. So we are likely to get flooded with their cheap products at even cheaper prices. I'm sure Brazil will be happy with the increase in demand for soya beans. It seems everyone will benefit except Americans. Message to UK farmers, grow more soya beans, it's a market worth billions, yes I know our climate is not ideal. Imports In 2024, China imported $52.9B of Soybeans, being the 8th most imported product (out of 1,199) in China. In 2024. The main origins of China's Soybeans imports were: Brazil ($36.6B), United States ($12.1B), Argentina ($2.08B), Uruguay ($1.03B), and Canada ($642M). The fastest growing origins for Soybeans imports in China between 2023 and 2024 were: Uruguay ($1.01B), Argentina ($835M), and Benin ($57.7M). More detail here: https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/soybeans/reporter/chn
Plus our current theme parks always seem to do well, Alton Towers and Chessington assuming they both still exist. The only park failure I can ever think of was the one that is now Legoland...forgotten the name of it.
People from Windsor have all done real safaris anyway. Zoos are good. We’re quite good at zoos here. Doubt the animals are that keen but **** ‘em.
Although zoo's tend to get lots of grief these days, even the Aspinalls are rewilding animals - certainly the larger animals, gorillas and elephants. https://www.aspinallfoundation.org/the-aspinall-foundation/working-around-the-world/congo-and-gabon/
I read another interesting article this morning regarding the tariffs. According to it, this financial play is from the project 2025 playbook where Trump threatens tariffs, upsets the markets, which in turn lowers interest rates and allows for renegotiating US borrowing at these lower rates, renegotiates trade deals accumulating in eventually passing those savings on to wealthy people and corporations as tax breaks. It appears the issue with this plan is Trump’s stupidity around understanding how tariffs work and his narcissism where he wants everyone to cosy up to him (have you noticed whenever he talks about foreign dignitaries, he always repeats the supposed conversation with them always calling him sir!). According to the article source, it’s creating tension between Trump and his senior treasury advisors as it now appears to be going horribly wrong!
Paris generally experiences less rain than Wales, with Paris having an average annual precipitation of around 641 mm (25.2 inches) compared to Wales's average of 1,385 mm (55 inches). Probably basing my opinion on how much it rains here.
Everyone should come to the Garden of England, only it's not a garden anymore, it's just one massive ****ing housing estate.
Gabon doesn’t need elephants. Why are we giving them elephants when we hardly have any here of our own? Typical Labour.
The elephants were meant to be sent here on the opposite coast Golini-Mwaluganje Community Wildlife Conservancy. https://www.elesanctuary.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mwaluganje_Elephant_Sanctuary Been no update to it happening for whatever reasons... Since 2024, the Mwaluganje management has been trying to make visiting the Chitsanze Waterfall near the Golini gate attractive, and to slowly revitalise Mwaluganje as a whole from there. An announcement has been made by the Aspinall Foundation in 2021 that 13 African elephants are to be relocated here from Howletts Wild Animal Park in Kent, UK - but so far it has remained that way. Since early 2025, Kenya Wildlife Service is translocating herbivores (mainly zebras) from other parks to the adjacent Shimba Hills National Reserve; as there is no fence between the two sanctuaries, this will benefit Mwaluganje in the long run, too.
There already is one, if it's still there ... took the kids when they were young ... Oakwood ... may have shut... Another one that has definitely shut was The American Adventure in Derbyshire - shame as it was quite different with its Western theme ...
We shouldn’t be sending elephants to countries capable of making their own. I will not budge on this.
They still have American Adventure but it’s an escape room based on a high school with a teenager roaming the halls with a hunting rifle.
