Tuesday 29 May 2012

Margate Meltdown Mouse and Ramsgate Bucket and Spade Thanet’s Gasoline Jubilee Weekend and a ramble.


Last years meltdown pictures including the antics of the Meltdown Mouse above to be found at the links below.










the meltdown videos are embedded in this blog post


don’t ask me why but  Instead of arriving Whitsun Bank Holiday Monday the ride out to Margate will take place this coming Monday 4th June 2012.

Ramsgate’s Bucket and Spade run is due to take place this Sunday 3rd June 2012 and I will add to this post as I get time today.

Pictures of previous bucket and spade runners at the links below










http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/bs2010/

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/bs2010/id3.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/bs2010/id4.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/bs2010/id5.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/bs2010/id6.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/bs2010/id7.htm




Sorry about the lack of blogging on my part recently, it seems the Thanet Conservative group have now performed a U-turn and are accusing a Labour councillor of homophobia, see http://birchington.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/social-suicide.html not exactly sure what constitutes homophobia.

In this instance I also have to be careful not to be ageist but there is something strange about local pensioners talking about keeping backs to the wall and shirt lifters that I am not entirely sure qualifies.
The screenshot of Simon’s post about this needed a bit of a rethink, if you enlarge the picture by compulsive clicking you can see at a glance he seems to be calling Laura Sandys a communist. And thanks to the reader who sent it, well I thought it was funny too. 



One thing is certain and that is as Labour have gone down the diversity blog warden route then any of their remaining members that have the nerve to use internet social media should abide by these rules.


Whether it is sensible for the Conservative group to get involved in enforcing this is another matter.

Perhaps a directive to all councillors never to commit anything to writing, especially on the internet, in case the put their feet in their mouths would be best.  


The other side of the coin is that, we the voters, would like to hear a bit from our councillors, in terms of online comment, even if it is just to say the have been for a swim.



Apart from Simon Moores, there is very little web input from councillors at the moment, and virtually none on the blogs which is where most local people would look for it.



Mike Harrison has posted to say it wasn’t me wot done it see http://newingtonblogspot.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/fraping-and-dirty-tricks.html frankly in the context and way it was done, it look quite likely it wos him wot done it.

I have been looking at the world of cached pages and other bits of IT and can’t see how his facebook could easily have been compromised in quite the way he says it has.

I guess time and some sort of investigation would tell, though whether diverting police resources to who exactly called who a shirt lifter would either be sensible use of public money or result in anything at all remains to be seen.  

I guess a big problem here is that councillors, all councillors are supposed to represent us and a situation has developed where most councillors are not using the internet to communicate with us, the people they represent.

In one sense the internet could extend to the point of making councillors unnecessary as from a technological point of view it would be possible for all of us to vote on all issues before the council.

It is a bit like the situation I face in the book world, theoretically technology makes the book printed on paper redundant, if like me you read a lot, in practice doing this using the technology rather than the paper, eventually results in a series of stinking headaches. 

19 comments:

  1. What bizarre titles Simon has given Thanet's blogs, not very accurate and not very funny, he should leave the wit to Thanet's greatest ECR.

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  2. "..frankly in the context and way it was done, it look quite likely it wos him wot done it."

    It seems extraordinary that someone would go to the trouble of hacking into your Facebook account to post something so pithy and pathetic. Nevertheless, I'm happy to accept Mr. Harrison's explanation, if he provides the proof that will readily be available if someone has hacked into his account.

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    1. Whoever it was they must be Labour as they cannot spell either! Unless, of course, it was Ian Driver himself for his spelling is not that hot. Interesting thought!

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    2. Busy day today so sorry about not responding earlier.

      It’s a funny old world where it is seen a matter of no note whatsoever for one councillor to allegedly call another councillor, fat bastard, but a matter for the police for one councillor to allegedly call another a, shirt lifting gender bender.

      3.44 I am afraid bad spelling is a bit of a cross party issue, I would be inclined to try posting or commenting via an internet enabled mobile before you cast a second stone on this issue.

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  3. Dear dear Michael, 0/10 for blogging astuteness. Simon's pet name for Thanet Watch is the Communist Manifesto. If you had clicked the link you would have seen that it was a statement from Laura regarding her non-attendance at a meeting.Promise me you'll buck up.

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    1. Tim I “rethink” and “second glance” indicate that I may have worked it out in the end, and of course Bignews Tony’s post a week ago “Minor Point” I think it was called may have been an indicator too.

      When Simon started his, Ministry of Silly Names, for the local blogs he renamed mine, Vote Labour in Ramsgate, which afforded some amusement to my friends and family, of course as a 0/10 astūtus I totally failed to understand this.

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    2. Sorry you won't wriggle out so fast. You didn't say "second glance" and your present interpretation of rethink does not square with the comment bubble on the screenshot.

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    3. Tim the comment bubble on the screenshot had already been added when one of my readers sent it to me, it made me laugh so I added it to the post, I was writing at the time.

      I have to admit that after Simon’s post I was tempted to re label Thanet Life as, Westgate Diversity Champion, on my sidebar but I fought the temptation manfully.

      I am sorry if it didn’t make you laugh and sorry if you find me stupid, but life is like that.

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    4. You'll struggle to find anywhere where I claim that you are stupid

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  4. Michael. A little balance please. When the late Brian Goodwin was accused of homophobic postings the entire Opposition, Labour and what has become TIG, rose up in protest. Mike, if I remember correctly, was most vociferous. I don't remember much criticism in this forum. Now the boot's on the other foot and if your ramblings above are to be believed, you don't believe the hacking story. Therefore, since you endorsed the assault on Cllr Goodwin by your silence, maybe your silence would be appropriate here as well.
    On the subject of Cllr Goodwin I can't help feeling some repugnance at the sight of Scobie Minor trailing his girlfriend around Westgate, campaigning for an election that hasn't yet been called. We used to talk of standards; clearly the modernising that this boy wants includes a lack of respect.

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    1. Tim to be perfectly frank with you I find sex, homo and hetero amusing, chuckled when I read both comments and think to waste police resources on this sort of thing is ludicrous.

      One of my friends the author Robin Farquharson was burnt to death in an arson attack most probably because he was a homosexual and back in some remote time, partly because of this, I was actively supportive of the GLF.

      While I think homophobia reprehensible, frankly old men who may well have repressed their sexuality when they were younger, talking of shirt lifters and backs to the wall, well yes it is funny, however a question for you, if it makes you laugh at all, who are you laughing at?

      Not sure about marks of respect for the dead in local politics and the surrounding etiquette, I think you would have to enlighten me on the protocols.

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    2. Tim, I think we both waste our time trying to get Michael to admit to his political bias. He always avoids the issue, but, to be fair, I guess it is his blog and, if he wants to champion the left, so be it. At least now most of us no longer labour under some misguided notion that he is the apolitical voice of reason. He is, however, a master at wriggling. Perhaps the biggest giveaway lately was Christine of Red House fame sending him a kiss (x) in her luvvie comment. Mind you, even I find Michael's art more acceptable than the unmade bed type.

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    3. Tom
      Agree with you ref the Emin "art"

      Delete
  5. Can't understand why Thanet has so many twisted and corrupt councillors, do we actually breed them as a special species?
    Don't hear of other areas having the problems we have here. By the way did Mayor/Councillor Watt Ruffel ever pay back wages he took, when he left his position 4 months early? Wasn't it around £4000 pounds, last I heard he agreed to pay back on a monthly basis, nothing has been in the paper to prove this was ever paid, perhaps someone can enlighten the public!!!!

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    1. I've been wondering about that for quite a while, but got banned from Simon Moores blog for raising it!

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    2. No, TDC is not alone. Have a look at:

      http://www.rottenborough.org.uk/

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  6. I seem to recollect that during the last General Election the Labour candidate in one constituency died. The other parties immediately suspended the campaign and did no more electioneering until after the funeral. In fact, all campaigning stopped until the election for that constituency was called again. Now that, I think, is the way things should be done. In your increasingly perverse little world I suppose it would be OK for Scobie Minor and his girlfriend to hand out election leaflets to the mourners at the crematorium.
    You have a very ambivalent attitude to the local political scene. You castigate Tories for not spending time in Ramsgate, forgetting that they have their own wards to look after. If your ward had a Tory councillor you would undoubtedly moan if he spent all his time in Westgate. I suspect that once the Tories have chosen candidates for your ward that you will see more of them. You might be lucky and they choose someone new to the area, then you can bore the a**e off him or her with tales of council malfeassance at the Maritime Museum and Pleasurama. You moan at Simon for some mildly amusing blog titles in his sidebar yet tell me that I have no sense of humour. That can patently not be true since I still trawl through your expositions on painting by numbers and your superior IT skills - every posting is a comedy nugget as we watch you try and avoid the obvious truth that this Island is now being run by people who, however you look at it and whatever measure of popularity you use, have no mandate to govern.

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  7. Looks like we would now need rather a lot of by-elections if councillors had to stand down if they became independent or crossed over whether voluntary or forced.

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    1. Why not since they no longer stand by the manifesto they were elected on. Sort of gaining office by false pretences which elsewhere would be a crime or at least a sacking offence.

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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.