I've now had the opportunity to spend a week more than I expected in my home town of Ashford, Kent. 
It was living in Ashford, ten miles from the channel coast, Kentish home of the only Eurostar station facilitating travel to Paris and (more importantly to me) Brussels in less than 3 hours that first really got me into all things European.

This is changing. The new highspeed line for Eurostar is now in operation. Trains can now whizz to Paris and Brussels from the new London terminal of St Pancras is just over two hours. Fantastic.  But a new Kent Eurostar station has opened at Ebbsfleet in north Kent. 
Ebbsfleet station exists as far as I can see to bring customers from the continent to Bluewater shopping mall. Nothing wrong with that in commercial terms of course - the UK is actually an excellent place to shop. And after living in Brussels for so long I know how much I longed for non-boutique shopping in a decent sized mall - we used to escape to the outlet centres in Maas-Mechelen or Marne-la-Vallee but to buy something this season... yes, I can see why they've put a station there. And I'm sure numbers of passengers will increase at some point, particularly if they advertise the station as "Ebbsfleet for Bluewater shopping" or something like that.

But at the same time, Eurostar has cut direct services from Ashford to Brussels. Following public protest some linking services to Lille do run (you can change to a Thalys there to get to Brussels) but the timings are dire.  Direct trains to Paris continue to run, but there are problems there too.
According to the Kentish Express, the local paper, travel firms are not allowing customers to book their seats from Ashford, only from London or Ebbsfleet. This is apparently because there is no demand. But how can there be a demand with these companies for tickets from Ashford if customers are not allowed to book tickets from Ashford?

So what about travellers from the south east?  Ebbsfleet is not currently well served by a domestic rail service (presumably this will change as it becomes a new town and when domestic trains start using a highspeed line in 2009).  But it seems ludicrous that passengers from south Kent and East Sussex would need to drive or take a long slow public transport journey to north Kent just to go back through to get to Paris or Brussels. No wonder many of the residents there who have previously used Eurostar now say they'll go back to flying (bad for the carbon footprint) or will take their own cars across by ferry or Eurotunnel and drive themselves around. 

Having Kent's Eurostar station boosted Ashford's economy - French firms relocated here, this part of Kent felt more tied into the continent. Ashford library has a little "Europe" display up - it matters there. I'm just worried that the commercial decisions that are quite legitimately taken by the private comapny that runs the trains will have bigger consequences for the local economy.

And with up to 300,000 new homes being built here in the near future to help ease the UK housing crisis, I'm wondering where all the new jobs for the people that will live in them will come from if there's no incentive for foreign firms to invest as there's no longer as easy transport links?