Local Economy
Historically, employment was commonly connected to the railway and the canal. In the modern day, West Drayton tends to be more of a commuter town, owing to its proximity to the M25, M4, M40 and M3 motorways, Heathrow Airport and Stockley Business Park.
A new shopping complex is soon to be built in the town centre. An Ofcom-licensed community radio station, 91.8 Hayes FM, serves the area, as does the commercial station Time 106.6. The European broadcaster Viasat also has its studios and playout centre here.
Guoman Hotel Management (UK) Limited has its head office in the Thistle London Heathrow in West Drayton.
The Stockley Close Industrial Estate includes a British Midland International office. In July 1999 Sir Michael Bishop formally opened the British Midland Training Centre at Stockley Close. Other tenants in the estate include Almirall, BP, British Airways, HP Enterprise Services (originally Electronic Data Systems, or EDS), and Marks & Spencer. Waterside, the head office of British Airways, is in Harmondsworth, near West Drayton.
Read more about this topic: West Drayton
Famous quotes containing the words local and/or economy:
“There is the falsely mystical view of art that assumes a kind of supernatural inspiration, a possession by universal forces unrelated to questions of power and privilege or the artist’s relation to bread and blood. In this view, the channel of art can only become clogged and misdirected by the artist’s concern with merely temporary and local disturbances. The song is higher than the struggle.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)