Sunday 25 January 2009

Sunday Rant

Wood thoughts

1 Any of the wood washed up on our shores is a potential hazard to small craft in particular, one balk of timber allowed to wash back into the sea could cause and accident resulting in loss of life.

2 People should check with the Receiver of Wreck’s website for the rules governing this http://www.mcga.gov.uk/c4mca/mcga07-home/emergencyresponse/mcga-receiverofwreck.htm any wood recovered should be reported to the Receiver of Wreck.

3 Historically it has not been the case that owners of wood washed ashore have bothered to recover it from the people that collected it, so if you follow the law to the letter you are safe from prosecution and likely to be able to keep the wood.

Mayor of Thanet Thoughts

1 There seems to be some confusion about an elected mayor of Thanet.

2 An elected mayor is not like the existing ceremonial mayors, this is a completely different ball game.

3 First a mayoral referendum has to sought by petitioning the electorate, if 5% of the electorate in Thanet sign a petition for a referendum the council has to hold a mayoral referendum.

4 In a mayoral referendum the electorate is asked to decide if they wish to elect the leader of TDC or if they want the councillors to elect their own leader. Effectively it asks voters if they if they want to vote in the next stage of the process.

5 An elected mayor, who becomes leader, of the council has the power to choose councillors portfolios and to choose chief executive from the council officers. He can then either chooses to use the cabinet system or not.

Malcolm Kirkcaldy

1 The idea of petitioning for an elected mayor was mooted back in May of last year, since that time various people have said they would organise it but so far nothing has happened.

2 Malcolm has come forward due to the absence of anyone else doing so, although many people seem be for the idea no one else seems to have the time and drive to make it happen.

3 I have contacted Malcolm who says that it isn’t his intention to become mayor, he says that it is his intention to get the ball rolling both in terms of getting different people in different parts of Thanet to organise petitions and to try and get different people to stand as candidates for mayor. He says that in a last resort he will stand for office.

4 There was some suggestion by anonymous comment that Malcolm is insane, from my own experience I would say unconventional, enthusiastic and prepared to go to almost any lengths, without personal gain, to resolve Thanet issues more fits the bill. It is possible that he could be the right man for Thanet during these difficult times, in the past his family have served the local community, which is always a good sign.

5 I have asked around a bit to see what other people think of him, I certainly don’t want to make out that he is anything like Saint Malcolm, but I have heard mention of him raising money for charities and helping local people when conventional means have failed them.

6 I think the picture helps to sum up the situation, its entitled Malcolm doing what he is best at, uncovering the naked truth. He has stripped off to raise money for Macmillan cancer relief.

Manston Airport Expansion

1 As we know the biggest problem with Manston airport is that if we get a fuel spillage on the green part of the airfield, the contaminated soil has to be dug out before it soaks down and damages the aquifer. The Airport has a digger standing by for this purpose, without prompt action it’s no agriculture in Thanet and no Thanet Earth.

2 A new consideration has arisen which is, in the case of an air accident, which is though to be caused by criminal or terrorist activity, or where people are killed it seems very unlikely that the police or air accident authority would allow them to dig up the evidence on the site. With out an answer to this one I can’t see how there can be any airport expansion.

General Water Supply Considerations

The Environment Agency is stepping up measures to protect our drinking water supplies, especially in the southeast where demand is set to exceed supply. One aspect of this will we tighter controls to restrict development on the aquifers because developing on top of them is preventing the water in them from being replenished.

Marina Esplanade Incline Arches

1 I have had assurances from the council that 40 tonnes is an appropriate weight limit for this structure click on the link http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/tdc/id50.htm to see if you agree with them. What do you think would happen if three or four loaded HGVs following one another down the hill were all to apply their emergency air brakes at the same time?

2 It is important to remember that engineering bricks were not used in this structure, part of it is made from red house bricks and you can see in the pictures that some of them have softened and are crumbling.

3 I made some measurements and have done some calculations on the main arches, those with two barrels and I would assume a flexible lime based mortar. Things seem to go awry with a load of about 150kN/m or about 15 tonnes maximum on each of the rear wheels of an HGV which. Of course I am only a shop assistant however I am sure some of the brighter bloggers will have a go I have probably got it all wrong.

8 comments:

  1. The Mayor idea is a folly.

    IF the problems besetting Thanet were solely the result of the old guard councillors then the idea would be well conceived.

    You are far better to bide your time.

    The Thanet blogger community has lacked gravitas from its outset because the leading bloggers cherish their anonymity. As such they are self evidently morally inferior and all attempts by them to claim moral ascendancy are rightly laughed at. Whilst claiming they represent freedom of speech they have never paid regard to the principle that a person has a right to know their accuser.

    Ironically now identifiable and forthright Malcolm takes a position he has been undermined in advance by anonymous contributors to blogs. The whole thing is a chrade before the first step is taken.

    Malcolm should know better than to seek leadership of a defeated Army unless there is hope of rallying the troops. Look around you. Your troops are Thanet people. Indolent whinging ever looking for someone to blame. Who wants to be their Mayor Aunt Sally ?

    Gerry O Donnell ?

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  2. The system we have is the best. The leader needs to be selected by councillors because most members of the public would not be able to make the right choice for Thanet. The general public should leave such a decision to councillors who know best when it comes to these matters.

    You should give up trying to change the system, you won't be able to and people don't want change for change sake!

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  3. The very thought of an elected Mayor has got some going, Michael!

    The anonymous contributor of 18.00 fails to understand that the very accusation he throws at anonymous bloggers might just apply to his offering!

    Perhaps a 7000 signed petition might just focus thinking, 18.00, and please have more respect for the Thanet electorate who you appear to disparage in such casual manner; are you a Councillor perchance?

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  4. Bertie you're a dreamer; you would not be able to get 1000 people to sign let alone 7000.... Face the facts of life, the system is the system and you can't change it!

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  5. Michael/Malcolm?
    Where do you think the Mayoral model has worked better?
    Doncaster?
    Hartlepool?
    Stoke?
    Lewisham?
    Newham?
    Hackney?
    Middlesbrough?
    I think if you are to propose this you need to show where the system you advocate has showed an improvement because of the Mayoral system.

    To my knowledge of them there are some good, some bad and some indifferent, just like our current councillors.
    Mark

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  6. I will do my best to answer the comments, we are fairly busy in the bookshop this morning so a patchy job between customers I’m afraid.

    18.00 I don’t put all of Thanet’s problems down to the old guard but the system where the leader is effectively chosen by either a Conservative or Labour cabinet, pretty much all of whom are in safe seats, isn’t really democracy.

    Bide time for what? A Labour administration that gave us the Pleasurama development among other things, look at the pictures of the arches link in this post, we need someone who is where the buck stops.

    Very few members of the blogging community are anonymous and a great many blog posts wind up as newspaper articles or even headlines.

    It would be interesting to know which anonymous blogger you think Malcolm is.

    At the moment plenty of able people put themselves forward as councillors, get elected the cabinet reject their skills and so they lose interest and go away. I would expect there to be plenty candidates for mayor some of them able.

    20.23 Isn’t it a bit of a contradiction in terms to say that the electorate are able to chose the right councillors but not the leader, or perhaps you are saying that they have chosen the wrong councillors who will then make the right decision.

    This isn’t change for the sake of change but is a movement born from desperation.

    Bertie I think a lot of the anonymous commenters fail to understand that there are several levels of anonymity, there are people like yourself and ECR who have an internet identity and therefore continuity as to who they are.

    There are of course people like Bignews Tony and me whose identity are publicly known.

    There are people who although not signed on to blogger at least give us some sort of name real or fictional so we have some sort of continuity, we can reply to them and they can reply to us.

    And then there are those who just tick anonymous, perhaps they will petition against a mayoral election, presumably they will all have the same name “anonymous”.

    21.43 I suggest you ask a fey people what they think of the present system, anonymously of course.

    Mark at last someone isn’t necessarily for the mayoral petition who I can identify, even with a coherent argument.

    The Wiki article on elected mayors is quite good, it has links to articles for and against at the bottom of the page, which you may find helpful click her to read it.

    Finally my stance would be always if it aint broke don’t fix it, I have started four shops from scratch in three different local authorities all of which I have lived in as well, after 21 years of living and trading in Thanet I can only concluded that its broke and the time to try a different approach to fixing it has come

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  7. The Thanet blogger community has lacked gravitas from its outset because the leading bloggers cherish their anonymity. As such they are self evidently morally inferior and all attempts by them to claim moral ascendancy are rightly laughed at.

    Knickers!

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  8. 21.43, you might find that the dreaming is centred at Cecil St. If you get out and about and ask people about TDC and its Leadership, you might think that 7000 signatures is erring on the side of caution!

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Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.