Monday 20 May 2013

Whining busses, sailing dinghies in Broadstairs some photos and me whining

 Apologies for the lack of attention to the blog yesterday, I have to admit to leaving the facility to comment anonymously turned off and apart from the occasional fumble with the phone to make sure there were no really offensive comments, enjoying my Sunday off.

I did go over to Broadstairs in the morning and watched the dinghy sailing for a bit, the dinghies were all Lasers yesterday morning, possibly some sort of class regatta or possibly coincidence.

 Not many photos as I only had my mobile phone with me and you really need a camera with a telephoto lens on it for that sort of thing.

I didn’t stay in Broadstairs for the dancing queens record attempt, what was great fun in 2011, click on the link for the photos and videos http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/dancing-queen-world-record-broadstairs.html was spoilt for me last year by far too much organisation, meaning I couldn’t get much decent in the can as you can see last year’s post http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/broadstairs-queens-and-dragons-few.html

 Probably something to do with health and safety, I guess people dancing needs to occur in a roped off area if for no other reason than to protect them from themselves.


Is it just me or do the new loop busses make a horrible whining noise? If they do is the noise apparent when travelling on them?        



As I said when The Transeuropa Ferry went bust the interesting thing will be how much they owe TDC well now it appears this figure is £3.3m and as I said then. What the council need to do is look at managing the port and harbour in a completely different way.

My own feelings are that leisure is the way forward for the port part of the Ramsgate harbour setup, ideas that Port Ramsgate or for that matter Manston Airport have futures as transport hubs need to be balanced against their potential for other uses.

In this area leisure attractions that can offer people a family day out, like Dover Castle or Quex seem to be becoming increasingly busy. I have been saying for some tine that the historic aviation side of Manston needs better exploiting and that the water sports and water related leisure potential of port Ramsgate need to be explored.        



Here in Thanet, we just don’t have the proximity to the M25 to compete with the main London airports or the proximity to the coast of France to compete with Dover, what we do have is sandy beaches, the best climate in the UK, some amazing architecture and some historical links that have considerable potential for exploitation in the leisure field.            


13 comments:

  1. The whining noise is probably coming from the locals travelling on them.

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  2. Or the cyclists they knock off their bikes!

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  3. Dont know about the buses whining the are far to frequently and it amuses me to see them bunched up at times. Sound like Broadstairs was buzzing and the buses whining maybe they need to form a band.

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  4. I must admit I almost never get buses as it's difficult to escape from babies crying and adults smelling without being rude. Instead I walk, cycle or get trains to travel around Thanet (today I got a train from Margate to Birchington then walked back).

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    1. You should start to use them Peter as your taxes have paid for half the costs. 27 of these green energy buses cost Stagecoach £3 millions and the government Green Bus Fund would have put in another £3 millions. But somebody is using the loop buses, from the loop start in 2004 the number of annual passengers has doubled to 4.5 millions. It must be all those free bus pass passengers.

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    2. Today, I got a train to work. I'll probably get one home when I'm finished.

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    3. I don't mind paying to help others, after all they're helping to pay for all these lovely cycle paths that are springing up all over East Kent! : )

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  5. It is curious the way that some complain about the free bus passes being subsidised out of taxes. They overlook the fact that the recipients of these bus passes have often been paying taxes for 50 years and more, and some still are. Which is much longer than any of the resentful moaners. Who should bear in mind that we all grow old, with luck.

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    1. I certainly don't resent it, particularly as I'm not too far off from getting my own free bus pass! ; )

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  6. "What the council need to do is look at managing the port and harbour in a completely different way"

    Yep, sell both to companies or people that can run them competantly. The port's future is now highly dubious, given that even Dover is struggling. Manston however could have a bright future, if unshackled from TDC interfearing, the nimbys were put in their place and TDC supported it 100%. It COULD be made attractive enough IF allowed to develop and IF the restrcitions that hog tie it were relaxed.

    It's always those who chose to move next to an existing airport that whine the loudest about an existing airport!

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    1. Think you have got in a bit of a tangle here John.
      The council don’t own the airport freehold the company that do is a New Zeeland company called Infratil, they own two UK airports, both of which have made considerable losses for the company over the last few years. Last year they wrote the value of their UK airport business down by about 33 million and they have been trying to sell Manston airport for about the same price per acre as agricultural land.
      They have also withdrawn from their agreement with the environment agency to fund the work necessary to obtain an EP environmental permit.
      The business of airport regulation is multi agency, with airports trying to obtain the minimum of regulation particularly where like Manston they are on the market. Where the council has some say in Manston’s regulation is over night flights.
      Roughly speaking the ball park for night flights is between at one end the amount allowed for a major hub airport like Gatwick and Heathrow and no night flights at all.
      In business we would consider that the council had bargaining power here, and I guess the way we would expect the council to bargain would be for local jobs, telling the airport “the more jobs you can create the more night flights we will let you have” realistically this could really only have been translated into an allowance of night flights that was proportionate the number of daytime flights.
      Night flights in themselves don’t produce extra jobs, each flight produces a couple of hours overtime for half a dozen existing staff.
      Our own dear councillors seem to have translated this strong bargaining position thus, Conservatives and now the chief honcho of Kent UKIP saying “we would give you the same amount of night flights as a major hub airport without there being relationship to economic growth” while Labour just said no night flights.
      Of course when KLM started their flights based around the avoidance of UK taxation, but giving some economic benefit to Thanet, there is an early morning flight, that could be construed as a night flight, but we are ignoring this in Ramsgate, and praying that the economic benefit stays for a little while.

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  7. Excellent comment on the noise from the new loop buses John, I think not. Looks like you have got your blogs twisted.

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  8. Hi Michael.
    Wonderful pictures. As for the dinghies all being Lasers, it was the Crewsaver Millenium Series at Broadstairs Sailing Club that weekend so it is possible that the dinghies you saw could have been in relation to that.

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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.