Tuesday 24 June 2014

A ramble about phone batteries, Harbour Street in Ramsgate, The Ramsgate Society shop, clearing the Pavillion and anything else that comes to mind.

I have had some technological problems in the last few days, first it was my phone, some days perfectly ok and others the battery was discharging completely in about an hour and a half.

I think I have nailed this down to it being supplied with a travel charger that only delivered a trickle charge, it took nearly all night to charge and I didn’t give this much thought until the battery began discharging suddenly. I think what happened was that as the battery got older the phone didn’t register it charging properly because of the slow rate of charge. Essentially it thought the battery was full up when in fact it was nearly empty. A more powerful charger seems to have sorted the problem out.

Now it is the computer in my bookshop, blue screen and all that stuff.

The Ramsgate Society shop looks to be going to open in Harbour Street next week, my guess is that this will cost the society around £7,000 for a year in overheads, so they will need to sell some stuff to cover this.

Harbour Street never seemed to recover from the closure of Lewis and Hyland and Timothy Whites, I think this is mostly down to parking and changing parking rules and facilities.  

Cafés don’t seem to do well in Harbour Street I would think because of the proximity of Harbour Parade with the better view.

Parking for shopping in Ramsgate seems mostly to happen either in the supermarket car parks or Staffordshire Street car park, a lot of people avoid the multi-storey because it is unpleasant and unpredictable.    

I don’t think any of the women I know will park in it if they are alone in the car, and this means most of the surviving shops are huddled around Staffordshire Street and Waitrose.

Various levels of government will do everything the can to encourage the use of public transport, bicycles and walking but most of my customers still come to my bookshop by car.

And now I guess the local councils will do anything they can to spread the shops away from the car parks, but I can’t see anything much in the way of shopping happening beyond the top of Harbour Street.



Ramsgate Revival is Harbour Street’s latest victim, what does seem to work there are phone shops.


There was one of the very largest cherry pickers in Harbour Parade today. 
  

Work seems to have started on clearing The Royal Victoria Pavillion, presumably in preparation to it becoming the largest pub on earth, I wonder what happened to the public consultation process.


53 comments:

  1. Great to see work starting on the Pavillion. I look forward to visiting it (regularly) when it's re-opened, What a great place for a well run pub!

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  2. Yes,well done Wetherspoons.

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  3. Well done whoever runs it. Will just be great to see it open again.

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  4. Very concerning the consultation has been ignored and another huge pub is not needed. Who was in charge of this at TDC? Cllr Everitt? And the Port?

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  5. TDC and a skip outside a Listed Building should be cause for concern. What happened with Rank paying for repairs too?

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  6. On the contrary 8.53, it's great to see that inordinate delay and pointless argument is not going to happen to allow progress to be made in at least one area of Ramsgate. I also look forward to a nice ice cold beer in the sun, looking out over the beach in the coming years!

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  7. Me too, preferably while watching the planes and ferries!

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    1. I remember back in the day, being fascinated to lay on the beach, taking in the sun, really enjoying the planes flying in such close proximity, and when the larger of the ferries came in, myself (big kid even now), and a boat load (pun intended) of other kids running into the see to ride the wake back in by the harbour wall!

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  8. My email to Sir Roger Gale



    To Sir Roger Gale

    I am a Ramsgate resident directly on the flight path of Manston airport as is the town and beach of Ramsgate. I am deeply concerned about the proposed CPO planned for Manston airport. I wrote to you about 4 years ago expressing my views about the viability of the airport and the damage it was doing to Ramsgate's tourism. Your view at the time was Manston airport would become a thriving airport employing 1000s of people and support was very strong 74% in Thanet. It has now closed dew to 15 years of losses with more than 1 company owning/running it. Now at great expense maybe over £100 million a CPO is proposed. As this land will be deemed a brownfield site. This would be a travesty Knowing what that sort of money could do for the whole of Thanet. Its my view and many that live in Ramsgate that a conservative party would shy away from taking a privately run loss making business and putting it in public hands. The amount of jobs at Manston airport was 144 many part time. Although I’m sad at the loss of jobs, in comparison to the amount of money that it would cost to CPO Manston airport. The cost would out weigh the gain. So I am wondering before I ring your party and ask them what their view is on the subject I would like to hear your view is it something you feel personally to be a good thing or is this your party new stance?





    His response




    The Conservative Group on Thanet Council has issued a clear statement in support of the ruling Labour Group's decision to seek a CPO on Manston Airport. RiverOak, the company wishing to purchase and re-open the airfield , have indicated their willingness to underwrite the costs of the CPO through a properly legal back-to-back agreement.

    I note that you express concern for those who have lost their jobs as a result of the precipitate and unnecessary closure of the airfield and you will no doubt therefore take pleasure at the prospect of those jobs being reinstated.

    Yours sincerely
    Sir Roger Gale MP

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    1. How can it be right for a council to seize property from one owner, in order to hand it over to another private company? Is it even legal for the beneficiary to underwrite the CPO? One of the UK spokesmen for Sir Roger's favoured company was senior vice-president of Planestation around the time of its disastrous Manston enterprise. What on earth is going on?

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    2. It all seems very fishy, I wonder if someone will come out with the official legality of a CPO with River Oak underwriting it someone must know or be able to find out before 4 months??????

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    3. Very very fishy and most of the councillors are just nodding to the manstoners so when it all fizxled out they can say they tried. Just shows them to be idiots and we need a clearout

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    4. Astonishing though unsurprising reply from Sir Roger - just shows his utter contempt for Ramsgate.

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    5. Why is it that an MP can discriminate against 1 town and favour all the others what did Ramsgate do to Gale?

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    6. ...And, how many more times does Michael have to tell you NOT to refer to someone by just their surnames? Read the rules!

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    7. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    8. Won every election since 1983 and is the laughing stock. Ok..............

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    9. Not next time as UKIP will dilute the Conservative vote you may well see a labour MP

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    10. Michael, can you delete post 12:08 please? Thank you.

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  9. Labour haven't said they're seeking a cpo only considering it as an option.

    How would Riveroak underwrite a cpo without knowing the cost? Then there is running the airport etc.

    Gale just seems a twit.

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    1. Sir Roger Gale to you.

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    2. Why? We aren't in his constituency (neither is the airport), and we don't love and worship him the way that you do. I'd like to tell you what we think of him but Michael would remove the posting.

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    3. It's Michael's rule, not mine.

      As for the "sketch", fortunately they all went on to better and greater things.

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    4. Did one of them join Showaddywaddy ?

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    5. No, but the short one was the drummer for Mud.

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    6. Very good - I take my hat off to you for a good response - the point remains however .

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    7. What point? The fact that I show respect to my superiors?

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    8. :-) I rest my case

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    9. superiors Peter. MPs and Councillors are not superior in anyway their bodily functions are the same as you and me.

      just because a minority of the electorate decide to cast a vote doesn't even mean they speak for the majority of the electorate, most only rely on 20% of the people able to vote the rest are either opposition or indifferent to their right to vote for one reason or another

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    10. I'm quite aware of that Barry (& I'm probably a better cyclist and photographer than him too), but if someone has earnt the title of "Sir" or "OBE" or Dr", then I don't have a problem using it when addressing them. Do you?

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    11. not talking about addressing them I'm talking about the use of "superior"?

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    12. There are only 2 things that give you a title 1 money 2 being a MP

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    13. I'm sure that Ann Gloag deserves her title. I personally have nothing against the woman apart from disagreeing over her Manston decision (indeed, I find her rather attractive).

      As for your second comment, I doubt that Retired Army Lieutenant Roger Latchford OBE has much money (not that it's any of our business), and he's never been an MP.

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    14. WOW (indeed, I find her rather attractive). shiver
      You need to get some she's 71

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    15. So? Women can't be sexy at that age? Or is only men like Sean Connery and Tom Jones that should still be deemed as sexy?

      Don't know how old you are (I'm guessing about 12!), but as I'm well into middle-age myself I have no problem with a woman of that age when she's looked after herself.

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    16. What ever floats your boat Peter
      Middle age is not 71 that's old.

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  10. Was that huge cloud of smoke yesterday from Manston?

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    1. No. It was a fire in Margate, where someone sadly died.

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  11. As Manston is no longer an airport the full planning permissions and environmental policied would need to be raised with public consultation

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    1. I know there is no mention of Ramsgate's tourism industry or the effect of being on a flightpath.

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    2. It would be worth comparing the cpo costs etc with that money investef in tourism. Cargo flights add few jobs and destroy others

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  12. Manston is a nice junkyard though! Worth every penny of tax spent on it!

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  13. What's happening with the missing port info and costs?

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    1. Quite amazing really. We have a seaport from which protesters have successfully removed the legal trade of exporting live animals by sea, and therefore the only regular user following the demise of Transeuropa ferries in 2013. The port is still open but no business is being attracted to it. We have an International sized airport which was in use on a daily basis until closure earlier this year. That's two major port facilities not earning any money for Thanet. These are facilities that most places can only dream of. What the hell is wrong with this place. Is Thanet feeling the effects of the recession long after the rest of the country has started to recover, or are there too many fingers in too many pies for anything to work?

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    2. The airport will become a housing estate and the port will either become a part of the marina or will be sold
      I asked the security guard down there and he didn't hold much hope for any new business.

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    3. EMBOB Om Peter, as far as I can see going over the accounts of those involved, both the port and airport have consistently lost money over the last twenty years. I think the key here is that you can’t really have a hub with three quarters of the catchment being water.

      I don’t mean here that you can’t have an airport or a port, just that they can’t be a hub airport or a hub port.

      My take over the airport is that Sir Roger Gale is going down the road to the impossible, the economic and environmental reasons why a freight hub wouldn’t work there are numerous, it is KCC and not TDC that have both the electorate in the catchment area an the legal team to explore cpo and other council involvement and on top of this RiverOak have no verifiable connection of running airports but a long history of building housing.

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    4. You would think that TDC, KCC, MPs, Cllr's know that River Oak want to build on the site. Why is TDC running a online petition where anybody in the world can sign more than once. They have over 3000 signatures. How will TDC tell if they are not on Thanets electoral roll ?

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  14. It's been another good day for the campaign. Keep up the good work everyone, we WILL win this!

    http://www.thanetgazette.co.uk/Manston-airport-CPO-petition-handed-council/story-21295487-detail/story.html

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    1. Peter it make no sense this petition the criteria for the petition was that getting 1,000 signatures would get TDC to discuss the issue at a council meeting; something they were going to anyway.

      Getting more than 1,000 signatures achives no more thatn getting 1,000.

      All it did was to divert attention away from petitioning KCC, which frankly are the only organisation in a position to make a cpo.

      As far as I can see Sir Roger has stitched up SMA by directing attention towards TDC putting in a cpo instead of KCC

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    2. It's quite simple really: The more people that sign it, then the more publicity it gets, and the more those in power will feel they need to support it or get booted out. Still, good luck to you and Barry will your own campaigns. If you get 10% this much support then I'll be impressed.

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  15. I can see it costing nearer £600 million + costs. According to Gale, River Oak will fund all of this + the cost of getting the airport up and running without any carrier using Manston. Then there is the cost of a EP then applying for full planning to become an airport this River Oak really want to run an airport lol

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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.