When they did this last year I used a somewhat more restrained post heading see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2009/08/broadstairs-folk-week-thanet-district.html but frankly things are getting ridiculous here.There is no mention of this major event on the council’s homepage although the following events are all promoted there today:
St. Laurence Church Fair - 7 August 2010
Millmead Childrens Centre Surestart Summer Fete - 17 August 2010
Lions Fete at Victoria GardensNational Blood Service - Birchington Village Centre Association
Coast along for Water Aid Saturday 11 September 2010
Quiz Night
24th Annual Model Ships Rally
Walk On The Wildside
Murderers Magicians Madmen & Monarchs
Macmillan Cancer Support- 'World's Biggest Coffee Morning!'
I don’t really know how to approach the council over this one, I did manage to get them to put Margate Pride on their homepage but this was only after accusing them of homophobia see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2010/07/are-thanet-district-council-homophobic.html and http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2010/07/stately-homo-of-england.html
I don’t think this approach will work for folk week, if an ethnic group are involved here then it’s probably the English and so wouldn’t have any protection, in terms of political correctness.
I went to the visit Thanet website and clicked on what's on..... top of the list 6th - 13th August - Broadstairs Folk Week... what more can you ask for ?
ReplyDeletethanet.gov.uk isn't the tourism website and if you google thanet tourism/what's on/events it takes you to the www.visitthanet.co.uk website this is what tourists do....
21.06 What you are saying seems to be that if you know about the event you can find it. I suppose this would really be pretty much essential for anyone trying to find much on the TDC website, although perhaps not, for example the biggest thing they seem to think that they are involved with at the moment is the Turner Contemporary, TDC put the plans up on the internet, I can assure you that they are there, can you explain how anyone coming to their website how they would find them?
ReplyDeleteAnyway just for a moment assume that you don’t know that the event is on anyway and you look on the TDC website to see if there is anything on in Thanet, there is a header banner promoting Dippers and Dunkers in a couple of weeks time, and a section called “Events” folk week doesn’t appear in either place, so I think most people would assume that the next major event in Thanet is Dippers and Dunkers and the next minor events are in the events section.
Lets assume that they are tenacious and you go on to the visit Thanet website that you mention, it is a very small link at the bottom of the TDC homepage, well then the only event mentioned on the visit Thanet site homepage is the Monster Bass Festival that starts in ten days time.
You have to find yet another link to get to the page with a link to the folk festival, perhaps you don’t understand the meaning of the word promote. Sorry to go on about this but you see I am trying to run a business in Thanet and just at the moment a few extra tourists would be very helpful.
anon again!
ReplyDeleteI might be wrong here, but, I don't think I saw much TDC advertising for Margate's Carnival.
They never seem to get things 'just right' do they?
Michael, I take your point. However, I expect there is nothing sinister going on here. These silly omissions can be explained away by the general level of incompetence that infects TDC.
ReplyDeleteIncompetence at OUR expense - lots of it! It's the traders who suffer as a consequence, not the Council salaries.
ReplyDeleteHow about performance related salaries for our Council Officers? Should save us a fortune!
23.25 I think most bloggers seem to have missed Margate carnival, I didn’t get a chance to go due to family commitments, so it didn’t get the pictures that Ramsgate carnival did.
ReplyDeleteI suppose the problem here really is that doing it wrong is considerably worse than not doing it at all, because once they list lots of minor events people assume that any major events that are on, will be listed.
John I don’t think there is anything sinister either, last weekend it was the Thanet at War Weekend in Ramsgate, although the council were paying two people to sit in their tourism tent throughout the event, they didn’t manage to get it on the homepage of their website, despite there being a lot of minor events that were not on last weekend being promoted there.
8.08 an interesting thought although it would be difficult to measure performance in this instance, either they get up the events in date order soonest first, or they put no events on the councils homepage, for good performance, i.e. do it right or don’t do it al all, so that people would look elsewhere rather than get misleading information.
I followed through some of the links on their homepage to events and some lack the basic information of time and location, this is an example:
“Quiz Night
04 September 2010
Saturday 4th September 2010.
East Kent Unit for Breast Screening”
That really is the only information that the link takes you to. This is on a page on the council’s own website and is not untypical of some of the bizarre pages there.
The TDC web site needs two simple changes so that both residents and visitors do not miss events because they are not listed.
ReplyDeleteThe section headed 'Events' on the home page can be re-badged as 'Residents Events' and the 'more' sub heading which takes you to VisitThanet can be changed to "Tourism Events and information".
You may be able to improve on this suggestion but its a cheap solution.
19.03 I am afraid that this wouldn’t really work either as what makes it to the front of the visit Thanet site is also very unpredictable, both in terms of the significance of the event or the date of the event.
ReplyDeleteI think we need something similar to what other councils achieve, the first one I tried was Brighton, as it is in the middle of the only other seaside area that I have lived near to for any length of time. There are no events promoted on the council’s homepage but a link leading to their events page, click on the link for it http://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/index.cfm?request=b1114322 as you see every day of this week has the events listed on it.
There is also a visit Brighton website see http://www.visitbrighton.com/ I found it fairly difficult to use and although it seems a bit better than our visit Thanet one, I notice Brighton council don’t link to it on their homepage, so there may be a lesson to be learnt here too.
My point is as a 'Tourist' I would Google - "Thanet tourism" or "Thanet what's on" or "Thanet events"
ReplyDeleteThe results all take you to www.visitthanet.co.uk which covers all of the events.