thanetonline

What do you do when Thanet District Council wastes our money on internet resources that don’t work properly?

2012-01-30T12:21:00.002Z

I have had a reply to my complaint to the council about their various events websites, they don’t seem to want to sort the issue out, so I am now going down the road that wastes everyone’s time including their own and will probably eventually lead to The Local Government Ombudsman.

The correspondence is below and if anyone has any better ideas, please put them in the blog comments.

Here is my initial complaint

This complaint relates to the council’s events sites and results from my trying to get information about the New Year fireworks events in Thanet.

From Christmas 2011 until New Years day I tried to find information about New Years events using the councils three information websites and I have tried subsequently to use these websites to find information about what’s on in the three main Thanet towns in January.

None of the three council events websites mentioned either the fireworks event in Ramsgate that did take place or the cancellation of the one in Broadstairs and event coverage on all three sites for January is very poor.

Warming Words has no events listed for January see http://www.warmingwords.org.uk/january.aspx

Thanet District Council Community Information Portal has one event listed for January, see http://communityportal.thanet.gov.uk/home/

Visit Thanet while slightly better than the others shows only on event for Ramsgate for the whole of January comparing this with the amount of events listed in the local papers local papers, it seems that something has gone radically wrong with the way the council tourist information is ensuring that local events appear on the internet.

Below is one days listings of events from one local paper.

Saturday January 7

Bradstow Mill, Broadstairs, JEDWOOD

Port and Anchor, Ramsgate, EYELASH GUILT

Britannia, Margate, BARKIN’ MAD

Wrotham Arms, Broadstairs, STEVE MORRISON

Birchington United Services Club, Station Road, Birchington, OUTCOME

Margate Museum, Old Town Hall, Market Place, Margate, A GEORGIAN CHRISTMAS, 11am-5pm

Ramsgate Sports Centre, ROLLER DISCO, family session from 6-7.30pm, 8 years and upwards from 8-9.30pm

Club Caprice, Cliff Terrace, Cliftonville, DJ MASTER G, 8pm until late, chart, R & B etc

Harbour Street Bar, Ramsgate, KARAOKE

Revolution Skate Park, Dane Valley Road, St Peters, BEGINNERS CLIMBING CLUB, 5-6.30pm, 01843 866707/866706

Staffordshire Street Car Park, Ramsgate, MARKET

The Albert, Ramsgate, DISCO WITH DJ BLACK ICE, 8pm until late

The Pride of Ramsgate, Turner Street, GAY NIGHT CLUB, 10pm-3am

TDCCOM1860 ref supplied 10.01.2012

Best regards Michael

Their response

In a message dated 25/01/2012 08:22:36 GMT Standard Time, *******@Thanet.gov.uk writes:

Dear Mr Child

Customer Feedback Reference:33343/1962152
Regarding Firework displays over the Christmas and New Year period.

Thank you for your recent communication which was received on 11/01/2012.

The council’s main website, www.thanet.gov.uk offers community groups and event organisers the facility to publish information about events, and these websites rely on this information being generated and published.

The warming words website is a literacy project and only features literacy based events. However, events have not been updated for January as there have been no events organised.

Unfortunately, the Council and Visit Thanet were not informed about the fireworks event in Ramsgate which took place and this is why this event wasn’t published on our websites.

The fireworks event in Broadstairs was not published because the decision to cancel the event was taken over the Christmas period and the council’s offices were closed.

We hope that this resolves the matter to your satisfaction.

If you are not happy with our response, you may write to us with your reasons within the next ten working days, requesting a further review.

In order for us to respond as efficiently as possible, please ensure that you quote the above reference number and address your communication to Amanda Buckingham - Customer Feedback Co-ordinator, Business Services.

Yours sincerely

**** ***
Corporate Information and Improvement Manager

My reply to their response.

******, */****, I am requesting further review on this one.

At the moment we have three events information websites, all of which are using our limited council resources and none of them appear to be performing properly.

What I am trying to get you to do is to sort this issue out not excuse it, hopefully with one functional events website which shows the events that the various Thanet tourist information offices know about and the events that are sent to the council for inclusion, automatically or manually.

For the council’s main website homepage to be promoting only one church quiz in February one in March, a church tour in February and a gang show in March, as it is at the moment, is preposterous.

I should point out here that a major exhibition of international significance, Turner and the Elements, opened in Margate this weekend.

To say that there are no literary events in January to put on the Warming Words website is equally preposterous, an example would be the Lemn Sissay Poetry Projection, this involves poetry about fifty feet high being projected onto the building immediately opposite the tourist information office.

The failure to promote or to make any notification of the cancellation of the fireworks events also seems to be inexcusable, these are both significant annual events with council notification being mandatory. Unless of course you are saying that the Ramsgate event was held on council property without the council being notified.

In these times of public cuts I find it wholly unacceptable that the council should waste their limited funds on three separate events sites, none of which function properly in representing the events, that the tourist information officers are aware of, on the internet.

Best regards Michael

Turner and the Elements at the Turner Contemporary a ramble

2012-01-29T19:14:00.010Z

Today was my first visit to this exhibition and I suppose the notion of hanging the Turners grouped by the elements was one that I had some reservations about, having seen the exhibition my tentative opinion is that it works reasonably well.

The gallery was fairly busy, though not so busy that it prevented one from viewing the pictures, a very enjoyable aspect of this exhibition is that you can get right up close to the pictures, essential for the watercolours.

The elements that the pictures are grouped in are, earth, water, air, fire and fusion, in this instance fusion is meant to be a combination of all four.

There are various ways of doing this exhibition related to budget, we did this with some of my children, two ten year olds and my oldest (early twenties) daughter and her partner. So we mitigated the cost of eating and parking, drove to Westgate seafront and ate lunch at The West Bay Café.

This is very good value and being on the promenade makes it an easy one with children if you take skates, scooters or some other digestive aid.

Here are the pictures of Westgate today http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop112/id13.htm

A light lunch including drinks for all of us at The West Bay Café was under £20.

Parking on the road next to it is free and there are usually plenty of spaces.

On to parking on the Dreamland site, this cost £1.50 for four hours, there are usually plenty of spaces here, parking closer to the Turner Contemporary can often be expensive or limited to two hours, unless you want to pay for all day.

Then on to take advantage of Margate’s rather sad High Street, this time to buy some really cool shoes for one of my children in the closing sown sale of a shoe shop.

Here is the link to the next batch of pictures http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop112/id14.htm

Occupy Thanet are occupying a bit of pavement outside the Turner Contemporary, some comment about this here http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/2012/01/occupy-thanet-to-hold-event-in-margate.html I found it interesting to talk to the protesters and in some way it adds to the interest of visiting the exhibition. Camping there in January has much to do with the elements and if I didn’t have other commitments I would like to have joined them for a day or so to better understand their concerns.

It isn’t allowed to photograph the exhibition so I didn’t here are the next lot of pictures http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop112/id15.htm

As I have said before the only window in the gallery facing the right way is in the restaurant and I went there to watch the sunset over a cup of tea, after some amount of psyching myself up I had a go at a watercolour. The sunset was moving quickly and this was paint straight onto wet paper, it didn’t come out very well but after seeing the turners I had to get hold of a brush.

The sunset pretty much stops play there as people line the window with their phones to photograph it.

Having failed with the watercolour I then proceeded to take some pictures in the dark, here they are http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop112/id16.htm

I will ramble on here this evening adding text and images as I feel inclined.

Thanet District Council Webcast 19th January Council Meeting about the budget, Margate Football Club and so on.

2012-01-27T16:49:00.006Z

The thing with local government here in Thanet is that one is inclined to get something that is both not very good and expensive, the webcasts of the council meetings fall into this bracket.

For the rest of us who live in the normal world outside local government, putting a video on the internet costs us nothing and the end result is something that is much more usable than what the council have done.

You have to appreciate that apart from the times when their equipment fails the council makes video recordings of their meetings anyway, they even produce dvds of these meetings.

What they have put on the internet is only slightly larger in size than a postage stamp and after a very short time of trying to peer at it with my reading glasses I looked for alternatives.

They have disabled the facility to enlarge the video and don’t provide the embed code for it either, so to view their very small version go to http://www.thanet.gov.uk/council_meeting_webcast-1.aspx

Alternatively download the video file from their website http://www.thanet.gov.uk/files/CMmeetingJan12.flv right clicking on the link and selecting save target as should do the trick. You can then open it with one of the free video players, the best one of these is http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ mind you untick the boxes for the stuff you don’t want on the way, or you will make something your homepage and put some strange programs that you probably don’t want on your computer.

Doing it this way you can at least identify the people in the webcast although the quality is still fairly poor.

The message that publishing the webcast in this way sends out to me is that either the officers are ashamed of the councillors or they are ashamed of the democratic process.

As you can see from the video below, published by TDC to their youtube account, the council do have a youtube account and what they publish to it has good quality definition and all of the usual versatility associated with youtube.

I do wonder if the intention here – no press release, only a small link with no picture on the council’s homepage, the small size and poor quality – is intended to minimise the number of people viewing it, so the council can say that the interest is so small that it doesn’t justify webcasting these meetings.

I will write some more about this when I have seen more of the webcast.

David Cameron, The World Economic Forum and Boris Johnson. A quick sketch

2012-01-27T11:23:00.004Z

A watercolour sketch of Boris Johnson today, not very good I know, but when I draw sketches of people that most readers will recognise then I tend to publish them.

This I suppose is something to with youth and politics, I had just read Will Scobie’s post about youth and politics yesterday evening, see http://williamscobie.blogspot.com/2012/01/my-speech-on-cuts-to-youth-services.html and was very much thinking that my younger children aren’t at all politically engaged, which I suppose I am, up to a point.

I then went on to watch what David Cameron had said at The World Economic Forum, after hearing the same edited bits of the speech several times and wondering if I was ever going to hear what he had to say, rather than the bits the press had decided I ought to hear, I managed to find the whole thing at http://www.weforum.org/videos/special-address-david-cameron-annual-meeting-2012

I have to admit to not finding political speeches the most enthralling thing in the world, but if one doesn’t listen to the important ones it is a bit difficult to tell what is going on. So while I watch these things I tend to sketch the speaker with the children in the background who on the whole take very little notice.

Towards the end of the speech Boris Johnson came on and so I started sketching him instead and was surprised that my younger children both ten recognised him and became extremely critical of my pencil sketch.

They didn’t like this first one at all, it seems Boris looks a lot nicer so I was required and requested to do a better sketch.

So here is the pencil sketch of Boris Johnson that I coloured in above sorry it’s still a bit wet the fixative for the watercolour. Even then I was made to rub out his mouth and do it again so he looked happier.

The point though is I think that our politicians, for the most part now, seem to have been groomed and spun to the point where they are of no interest to the youf of today.

Incidentally I have been fiddling with my blog settings which seem to periodically change automatically, the most significant thing I have done concerns the pictures in the posts. I have managed to change them back to how they worked before, particularly important with some of the local history ones, where I know people want the high definition image. So while it lasts if you click on an image it will expand and if the original was large, then if you click on the expanded image it will expand again, possibly something best not done with my sketches. Once you have done all of this palaver if right click on the largest of the images you can save it on your computer.

I will ramble on here, I have the rather boring task of taking the council to task once again and I am putting it off, however I am sure the eventual resultant post will be of more interest to readers.

Pugin and Pugin in Ramsgate, gods own architects.

2012-01-25T15:43:00.001Z

If you haven’t seen the BBC program about Augustus Welby Pugin then click on the link to watch it http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01b1z45/Pugin_Gods_Own_Architect/ the last bit of the program is the bit about Ramsgate.

As it is an awful lot of people have watched the program and many of them seem to have got their Pugins a bit muddled, so if you don’t want to make a bit of a clown of yourself when discussing Ramsgate’s historic buildings, this is one to read.

There were two Pugins, who designed buildings in Ramsgate, father and son in fact, so it is easy to get confused.

Pugin number 1, the father is; Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin born 1 March 1812 died 14 September 1852, he designed “The Grange” and “St Augustine's Church”

Pugin number 2, the son is; Edward Welby Pugin born 11 March 1834 died 5 June 1875 he designed “The Granville” and “Hudsons Flour Mill”

I will do some more of this if I get time

Hudsons Mill 1900

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs interview

2012-01-24T22:44:00.003Z

The portrait of Bill Gates, sketch is probably a better word, is one of several I drew of both men while watching this rather dated video of when they were interviewed together in 2007.

Of course Steve Jobs is dead now and somehow I had missed this interview which I found interesting as I suppose these two men are behind most of the technology that we all use now.

Sorry if you weren’t expecting this rather geeky post and I doubt many will bother to watch the interview, which goes on for ages, yet I suppose it is very much key to the way the world has changed so much in the last fifteen years.

Sorry I didn’t quite catch Bill Gates as well as I wanted to, he isn’t an easy person to draw, a lot more shading would have produced a better likeness but it is the lines that separate him from the rest of humanity that interest me. Perhaps I will have another go another time.

Here is the pencil sketch of Bill Gates before I coloured it in, pencil sketches don’t photograph that well hence the colour.

And here the video if I can get it to embed

Well the sketches were drawn while watching the video, I won’t bore you with the others and am very wary of copying photos from the internet for copyright reasons, not quite sure what to say about the video as I have just finished watching it.

I think it something to do with personal computer technology having reached some sort of watershed where I can’t imagine really needing much more than a few tweaks to what I have now and what was talked about in the interview.

I can’t see really what I am going to need beyond the laptop I have now and the internet phone I have now, in terms of groundbreaking innervations. Well it’s something like that, the beginning of the end of an era, not sure.

I think this has something to do with technological futures, I think sometime in the 1890s or 19 0s it became clear that the telephone would change the world 1920s or 30s maybe later it became clear that radio and then television would, working in electronics and on computer projects in the 1960s and 70s it was clear to me and the people I was working with that computers would change the world sometime in the 1980s or 90s I think most people realised that the internet would, sometime in the 20 0s it became clear that the mobile internet would, but I don’t really know what’s next, I think perhaps for the first time in my adult life, I cant really pin down the next personal technological breakthrough.

Thanet District Council night flights report now published

2012-01-24T11:54:00.008Z

Here is the link to the full report http://www.thanet.gov.uk/pdf/Manston%20International%20%20Airport%20Validation%20Report%20230112.pdf

I am having a very busy day today which means that the odd chances I get to read this thing, mostly standing in queues, is on my mobile, so here is a link to a text only version of the document for anyone else in the same predicament http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/112/id5.htm

If you have read this report like I have, I guess that the overall conclusion is that the airport have presented a case for night flights that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Up to now we have had the anti night flights lobby saying that the airport was asking for something unreasonable, the airport saying that they weren’t, well now we an expert opinion saying that the airport are asking for something unreasonable.

Not only does what they are proposing exceed the normal and reasonable levels for noise, but their employment projections don’t add up.

The employment projections are important because there is an employment downside, something that I think is clearest in the Olympic night flights that I covered the other day, see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2012/01/olympic-night-flights-at-manston.html

In simple terms Ramsgate is under the main flight path and combining this information with the information that there are to four landings or takeoffs allowed from Manston every hour between 11pm and 5am during the Olympics, regardless of any other information, given the option of a similar town, would you book into a hotel here during the Olympics?

Obviously this has employment implications not only for the hotels here but the businesses that get extra custom from people visiting Ramsgate.

I suppose often in Thanet the difficulty is a decoding process, rather than looking at some firms proposals and deciding if we want them to happen here, we do seem to attract potty schemes that get support and investment from our local government. Six figure sums they have invested in EKO that hasn’t produced the employment it was meant to, or Pleasurama another large council spend, where the developer is building without following the basic safety recommendations of the environment agency.

So one has to try and decode what the airport actually intend here, by this I mean why they asked for something unreasonable in the first place.

One possibility is that the council has developed a bit of history for being lax and so the airport thought they could get away with something that wouldn’t be tolerated elsewhere.

Another possibility is this is all part of some bargaining process that will eventually lead to the airport restrictions being the same as other similar UK airports.

Another possibility is that the airport owners are trying to achieve as lax a regulation as they can with the objective of making the airport attractive to a potential buyer.

Don’t get me wrong here, I am not against the airport, when a plane comes over I am more inclined to take a picture of it that moan about the noise.

That said I don’t get a sense that they have done anything much to engage the local community, even those who would just like to know when they are expecting an interesting plane so one can take a picture of it flying overhead.

My own thoughts here are that we don’t really stand much chance of getting much in the way of employment intensive industry here in Thanet, but we do have some potential for tourism.

I think up to a point The Turner Contemporary has proved this, there appears to be much more demand for a leisure destination here in the southeast than there was even twenty years ago.

I would guess that if the airport wants to succeed it’s the expansion of the historic aircraft side that makes sense and if the operators are going to continue subsidising it at a six figure level, then they are in the position to achieve this to an eventual state where they would probably see a profit.

As I said I was in a bit of a rush today and seem to have overdone the pictures fo the amount of text, please excuse this error.

Thanet District Council press releases, are they censoring the ones they send to bloggers?

2012-01-24T11:18:00.000Z

I have just sent the email below to the people at Thanet District Council, in this case the; Corporate Information & Communications Manager, Chief Executive and Leader of the Council:

“Hi Justine, Sue, Clive

This once again relates to council press releases in general with one serving as an example of the problem.

So this time it’s the “night-time flying: Independent assessment”

It would appear from the various local papers websites that they have been sent this document and I haven’t.

My understanding was that I would be sent images and attachments relating to council press releases and this doesn’t seem to be happening.

Of course this may be some misunderstanding on my part, I which case please just drop the issue as I have no wish to waste officers time.

If the document was sent to the conventional press and not to me, then please take this as an official complaint that it wasn’t sent to me and please also take this as a foi request asking which information, press releases and associated attachments, have been sent to the conventional press and not to me, since you agreed to reinstate me on the press release mailing list.”

If I get a chance I will elaborate on this post, as it is I am very busy this morning so may not get time.

Olympic Night Flights at Manston

2012-01-22T22:30:00.012Z

Apparently up to 44 aircraft between 10pm and 7am see http://www.kentonline.co.uk/kentonline/news/2012/january/21/olympics_flights.aspx#.TxrvZ8b7HNk.twitter

For some comparison Heathrow gets about 16 flights per night period, which is between 11.30pm - 6.00am

All the way down the line with the night flights issue it is the ratio between day flights and night flights that concers me. Heathrow for instance would have about 1,300 flights a day and all the associated jobs for their 16 night flights, we seem to get 168 day flights for our 44 night flights.

Make no mistake here this isn’t and anti airport or an anti night flights post, this is about ratio between economic benefit from nuisance and appears to set an unfortunate benchmark for the future.

Update the allowance is two arrivals and departures – that is four flights per hour - every hour between 11pm and 5am, six flights per hour between 5am and 8am and eight flights between 10pm and 11pm.

Margate some pictures, The Turner Contemporary and when art isn’t art, I make a complete ass of myself on Youtube some pictures a ramble.

2012-01-22T17:58:00.008Z

Sunday my day off and we went to Margate, mainly to see the new Hamish Fulton exhibition, this mostly consists of large posters with text on them and I have to admit to being disappointed.

You are not allowed to photograph this exhibition, so I didn’t.

The Turner exhibition at The Turner Contemporary opens next weekend and that is one I am looking forward to.

Here are the photos I did take

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop112/id10.htm

and

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop112/id11.htm

my excuse is that I had my younger children with me.

The sketch above was done in the gallery’s restaurant while waiting for children to eat up, go to the lavatory and so on, I am slowly developing the nerve to sketch in public places. If you were a victim please accept my apologies.

I can’t seem to photograph pencil sketches so have given it a quick wash.

One thing that always amazes me is that the only window in the building facing the sunset is in the restaurant, I hope Turner was a gastronome as well as an artist because this is where the light is.

With Hamish Fulton’s art as I have said before words fail me, so here is the sketch of his Margate walk.

If anyone can find a review of this exhibition I would be interested to read it, The Turner Contemporary is supposed to be an important gallery and the exhibition has been on for a week now, but apart from media that have just put out the galley’s press release I can’t find anything

Anyway the exhibition is in one room, photos here on gallery’s website http://www.turnercontemporary.org/exhibitions/hamish-fulton what you see is what you get.

Another new business in Margate Old Town, Rough Trade, official opening next weekend, well worth a look.

I will ramble on here

Saturday, walk in Ramsgate, pictures, even pictures of pictures and a bit of a ramble on about this and that.

2012-01-21T16:04:00.002Z

One way or another I haven’t managed to get out much this week and so I went out this morning leaving the bookshop in the capable hands of the chap who works for me on Saturday.

As is my usual habit the whole contents of the camera card are here

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/112/id3.htm

and here

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/112/id4.htm

the wind that was forecast didn’t seem to blow much so it was very pleasant indeed. A few thoughts on the first batch of photos.

Once again the Pleasurama development is something that causes me to speculate about what it is that is going on, on site. Obviously there is no point in me asking the people involved for temporary for temporary leisure use this summer as we now have all the concrete posts on the site.

Interestingly they are now working far enough down the site towards the lift to be where the cliff façade is much more dubious.

Here the design drawings and in this case I am certain that the council have supplied me with the right ones, show that there should be foundations that would have required digging out above the load spreaders.

Well they new have an updated HSE notification extending to about March 2014 although is still suggests there should be 200 people working on the site instead of the maximum of four we have become accustomed to.

I took some more Great Wall of Ramsgate pictures, can anyone spot the one that has been painted out?

On to the next lot.

A lot of activity in the outer harbour, presumably to do with the wind farms, some rather dubious looking cracks appearing in the top of the east pier, lets hope the sea doesn’t modify it again. The has obviously been some sort of fire at the back of the pavilion. The British Heart Foundation charity shop in Harbour Street has had the door glass and a window broken.

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop112/id9.htm

I may ramble on…..

Friday in the bookshop picking over the pieces.

2012-01-20T15:18:00.005Z

Internet coverage of last nights council meeting was the most prolific I ever remember.

http://birchington.blogspot.com/2012/01/kicking-around.html

http://bignewsmargate.blogspot.com/2012/01/east-kent-hospitals-turn-back-clocks.html

http://villeviews.blogspot.com/2012/01/labouring-over-budget-conservative.html

even the council managed to get a press release out at about half nine this morning

http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/2012/01/thanet-district-council-budget-201213.html

whether it ever makes it on to the council’s own website remains to be seen.

The problems here still seem to be as bad as ever, with the council using the internet in the strangest possible way. They have just managed to Decembers dead whale story on their facebook wall, see http://www.facebook.com/pages/Thanet-District-Council/83700846372?sk=wall

For me the council’s latest big omission was failing to tell anyone they had published the Ramsgate Port and Harbour Draft Masterplan 2011 see http://tdc-mg-dmz.thanet.gov.uk/mgConvert2PDF.aspx?ID=16189 Readit noticed this one see http://in2thanet.blogspot.com/2012/01/port-masterplan-2011.html and although it is called the 2011 plan the council only published it yesterday.

The problem always seems to come back to differentiating between what’s important and what isn’t. Sometimes I get indicators, like today.

“Dear all

Details of day seven of the Dreamland CPO Public Inquiry are now available on the council's website:

http://www.thanet.gov.uk/environment---planning/planning/ldf-and-local-plan/dreamland/public-inquiry.aspx

You may find the cross examination of Dan Ryan particularly interesting.

We expect the remainder of the objectors' evidence to be given today and then the council's evidence will begin when the Inquiry resumes on the afternoon of Wednesday 15 February.

Regards,”

This is about http://www.thanet.gov.uk/environment__planning/planning/ldf_and_local_plan/dreamland/public_inquiry/public_inquiry_day_7_summary/cross_examination_dan_ryan.aspx

Ramsgate lawn http://www.londonarray.com/2011/08/26/1683/.

Tesco seem to have done it again having opened a store in Ramsgate, this time Hereson Road, see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2010/07/thanet-tesco-and-human-environment-and.html they now plan to close it.

Perhaps they will have a go at the M&S site in the town now Peacocks have gone bust.

I suppose this could be an ominous sign for Margate, as if they open their new store and it doesn’t make enough money, then they will obviously cut their losses pretty quickly.

I will ramble on here if I get time.

The blog inspector calls, The Turner Contemporary starts on book destruction project, not my day, but my day off a ramble.

2012-01-19T17:31:00.006Z

The Isle of Thanet Gazette’s Andrew Woodman is tweeting tonight’s council meeting live as it is happening, I hope he has a decent keyboard on his phone, here is the link http://twitter.com/ThanetGazette

My day off didn’t go too well really as most of my commitments were after lunch, although more importantly after it stopped raining. Having got the children to school the rain came, so I sat at the computer answering correspondence, only about 100 unanswered emails left to go now, sorry if you are on the list.

I did manage to take a few pictures, pretty wacky sky today so what you see is what you get, some shot out of the car window, well the rest are at http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop112/id8.htm

Lunch in the garden centre and it was really very good, they have an offer of two lunches off the specials board for £10 at the moment, one to remember especially if you have young children as they have a large soft play area.

I am not really sure what to make of the latest in the John Worrow saga, I guess there may be something behind it in terms of real discrimination, although frankly when someone who is reasonably articulate and appears to be reasonably well educated engages in some sort of discriminatory behaviour, one tends to assume they have mental health issues, so I suppose the sympathy goes as much to wards the discriminator as the discriminated. That said I was taught to box by a Welshman and still have a tendency to duck when I hear the accent, particularly when associated with the word boyo. Pavlovian maybe but defiantly a toy lose in the attic.

I guess most of you will have read http://birchington.blogspot.com/2012/01/on-pulse.html and http://bignewsmargate.blogspot.com/2012/01/blogging-hell.html

I did email John Worrow thus:

“From: michaelchild to: *****@******

John I have to say I am not happy about this idea of policing local blogs with Thanet blog wardens and it is my intention to write a post about it.

I though I would ask you if there is any extra information I ought to know before I do so.

Frankly the notion that the Thanet blogs are spreading Racial and Religious Hatred is preposterous.

Anyway any thoughts from you before I write my post?

Best regards Michael”

But haven’t had a reply. I am also a bit uncertain where John falls in the council now, Labour, Independent, on his own, anyone know?

The latest Turner Contemporary project seems to be about doing something other than reading them with books see http://www.turnercontemporary.org/blog/learning/blank-canvas-by-lucy-steggals-lead-artist-6

I guess Fahrenheit 451 was a bit before it’s time, but now in the age of the Kindle, what are we going to do with all the books?

I am trying to draw Albert Einstein this is the beginning of the sketch, his must be one of the most recognisable faces in the world but trying to extract what it is that makes him look like he does is proving remarkably difficult.

Looking on the internet to see how well other people have succeeded in drawing him, it seems I am not the only person to have difficulty, there are some obvious computer generated and traced drawings but not much else.

I have added a bit more hair and some clothing and sprayed it with fixative so it is a bit wet at the moment, perhaps a bit of paint will make the situation different

Richborough Power Station, going going gone.

2012-01-18T22:38:00.002Z

The council have decided Richborough power station is to go between March and November.

When it was fuelled with orimulsion people complained that it damaged the paintwork on cars parked near it, makes you wonder what breathing the fumes did to people.

Dreamland, public enquiry to run on and The Los Angeles Times coverage.

2012-01-18T12:19:00.000Z

I have just received notification that the Dreamland public enquiry is due to run on, this is what the council has to say:

“The report from day five of the Dreamland CPO Public Inquiry is now available on the council's website: http://www.thanet.gov.uk/environment---planning/planning/ldf-and-local-plan/dreamland/public-inquiry.aspx

We are aware that there have been questions from members of the public about the remaining dates for the Inquiry and we have updated the information on this page with the latest details that we have on this. As soon as we have any further confirmed dates, we will put the information on this page.”

Also an interesting article on Dreamland in The Los Angeles Times, see http://www.latimes.com/travel/deals/themeparks/la-trb-dreamland-margate-england-01201217,0,30872,full.story

The pictures are from http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/dreamland_cinema_1935.htm and although the printing quality owes much to the advanced potato print they are fairly interesting.

More about this if I get time.

Marlowe Academy in Trouble Again? and a ramble

2012-01-17T10:36:00.025Z

Reading The Guardian yesterday http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/jan/16/academies-special-measures-apprenticeships I noticed this article, which says:

"In December, we reported on the Marlowe Academy in Ramsgate, in Thanet, Kent, one of the worst-performing secondary schools in the country, which, after failing to make significant improvements on its GCSE results, had effectively been taken over by the Academies Education Trust (AET), which sponsors 14 schools in England.

A headteacher at the time said that since the government had announced it was raising floor targets (the minimum standard of attainment), academy chains were eyeing up failing schools, hoping to take advantage of their misfortune.

But, despite parachuting in a new head and deputy head, it seems the AET is yet to make its mark on the academy. After a recent Ofsted inspection, the school has been placed in special measures, the Guardian has learned.

A spokesperson for the AET said they would not be able to comment until the report had been published by Ofsted."

Well to be honest I was following up on John Worrows post about the difficulties encountered by gay teenagers, which like so many of his posts is now deleted, so I was googling away trying to work out what the problems are for the youf locally.

The picture is of a Chatham House School production, see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2010/08/chatham-house-ramsgate-school.html

I find it a bit strange that The Marlowe Academy has mopped up so much public money and still appears to failing the youf of today. It started out as Conyngham School when it opened in 1963, named after The Marquess of Conyngham, hope I spelt all that OK, there were unfortunate associations with the C word when it came to hurling insults, although I doubt that is why the name was changed to The Ramsgate School. Now however rebuilt as The Marlowe Academy one wonders will they change the name again.

As you see from the picture the young Christopher Marlowe could easily have played a girl in the school play once the facial fungus had been removed. Christopher didn’t make it to thirty as he was stabbed to death not long after being arrested, probably for heresy. The arrest not the stabbing I mean, perhaps that is why he was stabbed too.

To quote Marlowe himself “while the boy, naive and unaware of Greek love practices, said that, "You are deceiv'd, I am no woman”

Anyway while I was contemplating the likelihood of homophobia being greater of lesser among the pupils of a school named after Marlowe, who must hold the accolade of being one of the stately homos of England. I came across this rather disturbing article about the way we are failing our youth here in Thanet yet again.

Bit of a fragmented post today with the bookshop being busier than usual, an interesting addition to the Ramsgate business for sale here http://www.primelocation.com/uk-property-for-sale/details/id/TEPA2409687/

Back to John Worrow’s blog and before I go further I think it would be apposite for me to produce some sort of joke relating to him and homosexuality.

This one relates to you having the right screen size and browser, assuming you have the right conditions and you have opened his website you should have a tab reading John Worrow – Your Camp.

Ok it wasn’t that funny, but it was only to prove the point that there is a difference between humour and homophobia, even when that humour is linked to a person’s sexual preferences.

John’s latest post http://worrowsworld.blogspot.com/2012/01/fair-play-statement.html seems to be saying that Simon Moores isn’t homophobic and James, I assume he means James Maskell isn’t a bigot.

I won't bother to comment there as the post and all of its comments will probably vanish like the two previous ones about, teenage homophobia and homophobia in the Church of England, both of these subjects interest me and I would have commented on the posts, had I not expected them to be deleted.

I will start with The Church of England and tackling homophobia.

I would guess that the church as a whole are in a difficult position on this one, I think there is a genuine desire to change attitudes and a complex biblical and doctrinal history going back a very long time to overcome.

I would reckon that the Church of England is making more progress on this and other discrimination issues than most, and most of the other world religions don’t really seem to have started on the issue.

With the female clergy issue a lot of people have left the Church of England for other churches where they don’t have any female clergy.

One wonders just where this will all go, I suppose απελουσασθε απελουσασθε means therefore Εδικαιωθητε (St Paul’s own words) as a non practicing homosexual better have a look at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-gay-churchman-and-an-unholy-row-6290223.html if you don’t know what I am talking about, and the Greek is 1 Corinthians 6:11.

On to the victimisation of gay youth although staying for a moment with the theme of males in dresses, more of the photos from the Chatham House productions here http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/chathamhouse/ a consideration being how one works out, at an age where it is difficult to tell what sex some people are, who it is one is attracted to and what ones orientation is, I do wonder if gay youth have a category that is separate from youth.

Anyway having read John’s post I spent an edifying evening looking at some of the Stonewall statistics, after which I had a look at some of the surveys from outside the gay community, frankly as far as I can see, things are bad in teenage word of sexuality in the UK.

See http://www.womensaid.org.uk/domestic-violence-press-information.asp?itemid=1783&itemTitle=Women%92s+Aid+launches+teenage+domestic+violence+campaign+with+Bliss+magazine&section=0001000100150001&sectionTitle=Press+releases and http://www.nspcc.org.uk/news-and-views/media-centre/press-releases/2009/09-09-01-teen-girls-abused-by-boyfriends/09-09-01_teen_girls_abused_by_boyfriends_warns_NSPCC_wdn75755.html

I would say that one way and another something has gone badly wrong with our society.

Oh well here’s one of the pictures I took today.

Three threes plus four fours is the same as five fives.

David Hockney and other thoughts about art in fact a Sunday ramble

2012-01-15T11:43:00.010Z

David Hockney portrait, well a quick sketch really as he was on the today program this morning, apparently he is the greatest living artist, what with Richard O'Dwyer being extradited to America to stand trial for breach of copyright, where if found guilty he could be locked up for years, I am being naturally cautious about using any pictures from elsewhere on the web, hence the sketch.

I guess it isn’t so funny down Graduate Lane these days, some of the things we did when we were students, dear oh dear.

Not quite sure how you measure the greatness or for that matter smallness of an artist, however I would guess that whatever the measurement I would count as one of the smallest.

What’s all this got to do with Thanet? Well I suppose I was thinking about our own Turner Contemporary art gallery and what sort of future it has, after all David is showing a new exhibition at The Tate http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/hockney/tickets/ starting this week. At £14 per ticket and booking strongly recommended there may be some potential for The Turner to recoup.

Would I go over to Margate and spend £14 to look at these pictures? Well the answer is yes I would, would people come from all over the place and pay to look at an exhibition like the Hockney one? I think the answer is that they probably would.

I was trying to do a sketch of our own dear Tracey Emin that wasn’t as unkind as my previous ones, as I don’t really think that caricature is the way I want to go with the pencil, when the Today program came on.

Although I don’t use the rubber much for adjustment, I guess most of the whole sketches get rubbed out to make room for more, most just aren’t any good, here are this mornings http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop112/id5.htm you see what I mean.

I thought though the Hockney one had better have a bit of watercolour, pencil sketches don’t seem to agree with my camera, which seems to make the paper rather grey and the pencil rather grey.

I had a chat about the Turner gallery with an artist friend the other day, he didn’t think as much of the youf exhibition as I did, badly hung, he said, the early Turners I said, dreadful he said. Well I won the Turner argument on the palate, which in my opinion hardly changed from when the gallery label said he was 9 but I thought were done when he was 11. Badly labelled I conceded.

What with Miliband saying that if Labour get in the cuts will go on and one thing or another I guess there will come a time when the Turner will have to look to its laurels, so I wonder out of the 300,000 was it in seven months and guessing only a third would be going too look at the pictures. The rest going to use the café, which after all is the only bit if the building that has the window pointing the right way, at the sunset, that is, or to use the loos, they could still be looking at £1,400,000 I guess more than enough to run the gallery.

Incidentally a useful tip if you want to add watercolour to a pencil sketch, is to spray it with fixative first as this prevents the pencil from smudging.

Back to David Hockney, it may interest people that for the last few years David, I guess since 2001as my copy of his book about this, “Secret Knowledge” and I doubt he would have said much about it before the book was published, or it wouldn’t have sold that well, came out then. David has been working on a theory that some of the old masters where not as masterly as we thought.

The gist of the thing is that hundreds of years before film was invented they were using something like a camera without film and putting their paper, canvas or possibly even slate where the film would go.

It seems there are a lot more left handed people than one would expect in great paintings, because the lens, pinhole or whatever turns people into a mirror image so the right handed people become left handed, one to look out for in the gallery.

There are often problems on the blogs with people quoting other people wrongly or out of context and a certain amount of editing has to be done, however imagine the difficulties for the people who quoted Martin Luther King Jr. out of context in granite, see http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mlk-memorials-drum-major-quote-will-be-corrected-interior-secretary-says/2012/01/13/gIQAnjYvwP_story.html?hpid=z2

I guess that as the day progresses I may watch the various Martin Luther King speeches on youtube and have a go at drawing him. Frankly I find it easiest to get a likeness drawing women aged between about 20 and 50. So a black man may present too much of a challenge for me.

I also have considerable difficulty telling if I have managed to get a likeness of anyone because I have a mental block when it comes to recognising anyone. The people who know me well tend to remind me of who they are, it isn’t a case of all black people looking the same to me, but one of trying to recognise who people are regardless of anything much. In fact Jocelyn who is the sectary of the Ramsgate Society and I see about once every two months, the problem goes away with people who I see most weeks, despite the fact that he is a tall black Jamaican, knows me well enough to say, hello Michael it’s Jocelyn when he comes into the bookshop.

So yes despite the fact that I have drawn him several times if David Hockney came into my bookshop I would probably only get a bit of a notion that I ought to recognise him and try and sos out during any conversation who he actually was.

When it comes to the watercolouring there is no such thing as a black or white person, just various mixes of red yellow brown and sometimes blue, I suppose if one was really good at it, it would be possible to make up all of the colours from red yellw and blue, like a colour printer does.

I will ramble on, probably.

Here is a first attempt, to illustrate the point, trying to get at what makes this individual different from the rest of the individuals on the planet.

What I am saying is something like I am in the right ball park and then there is the human propensity to see what we expect to see, I couldn’t for instance draw the inside of a mask, it’s impossible, no matter how well I drew it, your brain would turn the back of a mask into the front of a mask, because it has a propensity to see human faces the right way out.

After my first attempt at drawing MLK we had a power failure, one thing I can’t do is draw without fairly good light and by the time we had done all the things that needed daylight, that was it. The power is back on now but it is really too late in the day to have another go.

A Shop in Margate High Street

2012-01-14T16:33:00.005Z

A businessman friend of mine called in to see me today, he is in the fine arts business and like so many people his business has moved onto the internet, obviously talk turned to the Turner Contemporary and the potential commercial spin-offs.

Would he consider trading in Margate? The main thing that seemed to put him off was the level of business rates, this surprised me as the business rates on my shop in King Street Ramsgate are fairly low and as I qualify for small business rates relief, rates are not a major consideration.

It seems that he looked at a few shops in Margate High Street that could be bought or rented reasonably cheaply, but the rateable values were consistent with a thriving shopping centre, roughly similar to those in the middle of Canterbury.

I just had a look at this and frankly the rateable values seem to be all over place, see http://www.2010.voa.gov.uk/rli/en/basic/find/select/_params/page/4 I hope the link works.

There is also a sort of cut off point with small business rates relief and not knowing if the relief will last for a few years, which complicates the problem.

I haven’t gone into this one in great detail as I ran out of time and though that posting the general idea on the blog could attract some informative comment.

The next bit is really wild guesswork, but may help some people who have no notion of any of all of this form some sort of mental framework to make judgments with.

I am also thinking of the larger of the small shops here, big enough for some stock and working very roughly I will use 10 square feet to equal one square metre to explain where I am coming from here.

I would guess a medium sized small shop would be about 1,000 square feet or 100 square meters and I would guess that in a bad site like Margate High Street the rent should be about £100 per week, giving a rateable value of £5,000 per year, with the precept and no rates relief this would mean rates of about £50 per week.

In the middle of Canterbury I would expect the same shop to have a rent of about £1,000 per week and rates of about £500.

The pictures in this post are all from the book I publish, Margate and Westgate With Birchington 1903-04, see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/margate_and_westgate_with_birchington_1903_04.htm interesting as I believe this is the first one to have photographic advertisements and therefore photos of many of the Margate shops that you date accurately.

The pictures would have been taken in 1902 or early 1903, I guess opening a shop in the High Street then would have been easier.

I will ramble on here as I work out what is reality and what is supposition.

I suppose this book and how it came to be published may help with understanding the type of problem that exists in retail today. Margate Museum had a copy of it and about three years ago the then sectary of the Ramsgate Society tried to borrow it from them so I could copy it and do a reprint of it, so that it would be accessible to local people.

They wouldn’t play ball, so I bought a copy of the original, probably best not think about the price here. Anyway I have done a reprint of it and I suppose of all the books about Margate from this period it really is the most desirable item. I would say that most people in Margate would like to own a copy frankly at a tenner the reprint is pretty good value, about the cost of an average lunch out.

Then there is the problem of selling it in Margate, where there isn’t a bookshop, WH Smith is part of a big chain and don’t want to play ball, the tourist information office did stock our books for a while, but I think their bureaucracy beat them in the end. So at the moment most people come over from Margate to my bookshop in Ramsgate to buy it and a few order it online.

What I am getting at here is that it is a reasonable and saleable product, with a reasonable demand in Margate wanting a shop to sell it.

Coming back the High Street problem, in the first instance my guess is that towns need a shopping centre to be towns, I would say that without this they become little more than housing estates. I also think that once the town centre has been fragmented by putting residential on the ground floor where the shops were there is really no way back. This situation is made much more difficult because most people wouldn’t want to live on the ground floor in the town centre. There is a strange way that because of housing benefit and a general housing shortage that people are made to live where they wouldn’t normally want to and a sort of minimum rent develops that doesn’t entirely reflect what would happen in a truly open market.

There is also a situation where it is much more difficult for rents and rates to fluctuate in a way that represents supply and demand. Also there is the charity shop, in many cases I find it both hard to understand how the economics of some charity shops actually works, or if the charity involved derives anything much from them.

Friday the thirteenth, an auspicious day for Thanet District Council? Another councillor resigns the whip and other rambles about our little isle.

2012-01-13T11:34:00.012Z

The situation at the moment seems to be that we have now got 5 independent councillors as Ian Driver has resigned from the Thanet Labour group, I have to admit that this quite surprised me.

My reasoning being, having done this, how would a socialist in Thanet ever get elected as a councillor again without the support of the local Labour group? Perhaps I am missing something here but to me it seems that in Thanet there isn’t much political ground left of Labour or right of Conservative. I don’t think that standing as an independent candidate in the ground outside has much mileage.

Do I think that these councillors that resign the whip should stand for re-election? Well frankly no I don’t think that party politics of the conventional sort is appropriate at district council level and I always vote for the individual and not the party.

At the moment I suppose what I want my councillors to be doing regardless of their political party is to try and get the best for the local area and to try to achieve something in the direction of what local people want in terms of the direction the council is moving in.

Most of the local people I speak to are against the live animal exports and see to see Ian Driver more as a force in this area than a force for the political extreme left.

I guess this week most of us want to see our councillors supporting the council’s bid to get Dreamland and turn it into a visitor attraction and I am told that the lack of numbers at the public enquiry is being seen used by legal team who want to develop the site as mostly housing, as an indicator of lack of interest in the heritage leisure park.

Obviously an important factor here is does this defection mean that the local Conservative group have a realistic chance of winning a confidence vote in the council and regaining Conservative control.

A busy Friday in the bookshop for me today, so I haven’t managed to get out and get a Gazette, obviously the leaked information about EKO Eurokent is of great interest to me, so here is the link to that story http://www.thisiskent.co.uk/Councils-property-firm-lost-pound-300-000/story-14412242-detail/story.html

I guess that some of you are wondering what EKO is all about, clicking on this link may help a bit http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/search/label/Eurokent as it takes you to the posts I put up when trying to find out from a somewhat reluctant council.

Like the Dreamland site this is about putting more housing where perhaps housing isn’t appropriate, only in this case the property developer seems to be our local councils and the land seems to be prime agricultural land and our children’s playing fields.

I spent a fair bit of yesterday evening looking at the equality issues that John Worrow is now to champion, see http://www.stonewall.org.uk/what_we_do/2583.asp and am coming to the conclusion that there are still some very real issues here.

I suppose the problem for me is that being a white heterosexual male I don’t often come up against anything remotely like discrimination, I was one disabled but that was a long time ago when discrimination hadn’t really entered into the world of awareness.

Being in wheelchair meant being a cripple, if the disabled word had come along it was a new one, homosexuality was still theoretically illegal and the word gay meant carefree and happy.

In the world of secondhand bookselling where almost everyone involved is fairly eccentric, I don’t think there is very much discrimination, certainly books have been a major factor in changing attitudes towards discrimination.

Although there are areas where there are surprising gaps, for instance you may wish to try and name three famous American feminist novelists, this isn’t as easy as you first would suppose.

So now we come to what really bugs me about Ian Driver and that is total lack of any attempt to communicate why he has resigned the Labour whip to us lot the Thanet voters.

He has a blog http://redthanet.blogspot.com/ a twitter account https://twitter.com/#!/ianddriver so why not tell us, the local people what he is up to and why?

Mike Harrison is saying that this is a flowerpot issue see http://newingtonblogspot.blogspot.com/2012/01/expected-resignation-happens-again.html there are other indicators online see http://www.whatnextjournal.co.uk/Pages/back/Wnext6/Slp.html

I think and of course we won’t really know until he tells us that What Ian is against is the floral display budget about £20,000 and the events budget about £165,000, it think what he is saying is that there should be no council funded events and no council funded flowerpots next year, as this costs the council £185,000. This has to be put into the perspective of the council’s overall budget of about £22,500,000 which means that roughly for every thousand pounds the council spend about £1 is spent on events and flowers.

We now of course come to what happens at next Thursdays council meeting to approve the budget, see http://tdc-mg-dmz.thanet.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=141&MId=2612&Ver=4

Where for instance do the Conservatives stand, do they vote against the budget, because it is a Labour one on principle? I suppose the answer to that would be yes.

The rest of the independents, where do they stand, I would guess that they had considerable influence in the formation of this budget.

There is also of course where Ian stands, obtaining from the vote because he doesn’t want the flower pots is one thing, but obtaining on a vote of confidence, if this then means he lets the Conservatives get in could be something to live down for him.

So now we come to the really tricky bit and that is what are the solutions open to trying to deal with the serious problems that Thanet has.

Here in Ramsgate many of the problems that we have relate to council owned properties, Pleasurama, casino, museum, Albion House, Westcliff Hall and so on, so I suppose many of us here are waiting to see if the Labour group stay in power for any length of time whether any of these problems will get solved.

There is a perception in the town that many of these problems were related to spite towards a town that has mostly Labour councillors and I guess the Conservative stance that the business with the community centre in Broadstairs was an act of spite by the new Labour administration towards a town where the majority of councillors are Conservative lends more weight to this perception.

It does look as though Ian may have quite a lot on his plate at the moment as I think there were some interesting ramifications at last nights live animal export protest at Port Ramsgate, I think this facebook thingy will open even if you are not a member of it http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stop-Live-Exports-From-The-Port-of-Ramsgate/205331499512961 let me know if it doesn’t and I will fiddle with it.

I will ramble on here as the day progresses

Day off ramble

2012-01-12T17:46:00.004Z

Very relaxed day off today so not the most exciting post coming up here, having got up late and slowly we went to Broadstairs to drop off some books, have a pizza and in my case sketch the view from the table in the restaurant.

As you see the view was basically brown and grey, one for the sketch book not the wall.

In my defence I took a photo of the view and some other photos which I have bunged on the internet here http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop112/id4.htm

We ate here

I can’t manage a three course lunch at lunch time, but a pizza and a cup of tea goes down very nicely and works out at about a tenner, this is probably the best pizza available in the area, best to book a table.

I was going to link to what I thought an interesting post by John Worrow but he seems to have deleted it before I could, here is the link to the article that it was about http://www.stonewall.org.uk/documents/times_coverage.jpg

An interesting reflection on changing times, the other news item to catch my eye today was the one about Velvet Underground suing Andy Warhol over the banana, see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-16525982 another interesting reflection on changing times.

Very interesting article here about taking photographs in a public place http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8950398/Jules-Mattsson-compensated-for-military-parade-photo-ban.html as it is the photographer managed to record the police telling him not to do what he is legally allowed to do.

The Charles Dickens pub in Broadstairs is getting a makeover having been bought by Frank Thorley, I would guess it will be open again for the tourist season.

O Dreamland

2012-01-10T21:19:00.007Z

O Dreamland is a 1953 documentary by British film director Lindsay Anderson, filmed at Dreamland.

Here are the reports about day one of the public enquiry http://www.thanet.gov.uk/default.aspx?page=14804

Here is day 2 http://www.thanet.gov.uk/environment__planning/planning/ldf_and_local_plan/dreamland/public_inquiry/public_inquiry_day_2_summary.aspx

and day 3 http://www.thanet.gov.uk/environment---planning/planning/ldf-and-local-plan/dreamland/public-inquiry.aspx

and day 4 http://www.thanet.gov.uk/environment__planning/planning/ldf_and_local_plan/dreamland/public_inquiry/public_inquiry_day_4_summary.aspx

and day 5 http://www.thanet.gov.uk/environment__planning/planning/ldf_and_local_plan/dreamland/public_inquiry/public_inquiry_day_5_summary.aspx

Ferry Thoughts and pictures.

2012-01-10T13:18:00.006Z

With the end of Sea France and Flybe pulling out of Manston I was thinking what a tenuous business the short haul passenger travel business is, so have bunged up some pictures of earlier contenders in this part of the world.

It always surprises me that the Ramsgate to Ostende ferry is viable and with Sea France not being seen as viable even by the French courts it does make one wonder how a channel crossing that is much further can work as well as it evidently does.

I have bunged in a fairly mild complaint to the council about their tourism websites, see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/112/ the idea being not to waste too much officer time answering it, but in the hope that they will try and get the situation sorted out.

I used the council’s automated complaints form, something that didn’t work that well last time I used it, so it will be interesting to see if it works this time.

Yet another press release from the Conservative group, see http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/2012/01/labour-punish-broadstairs-in.html strange how after all those years in power and a decided reluctance to communicate what they were up to, they seem to have gone critical.

Long may it last is my view and hopefully next time they are back in power they will continue to publish their view of what is going on at the council.

Something that really does concern me is the extent to which council decisions are aimed at political spite towards parts of Thanet where the opposition holds the majority.

Certainly the Conservative press release seems to suggest that this is how the business with Broadstairs community centre is being viewed by the Conservative group.

My own guess here is that the people for the community centre completely messed up by not taking part in the asset disposal consultation process.

However it is fairly strange that with Broadstairs just down the road from me I genuinely don’t have anything like an unbiased view on what really happened here.

I guess if the Conservative group had made much of an effort to communicate with us locals before they went out of power, then we may have had some more idea of the ins and outs of the issue.

Not that I am saying that any of the local political groups or any of the local councils have mastered using the internet to reach out to people.

I suppose that in terms of success it is the local councillors blogs that come closest, with the only real consistency coming from Thanet Life.

View the end of the most recent Thanet visitor attraction

2012-01-10T11:51:00.001Z

This is the deinstallation video and they say there will be more of them

Thanet District Council Cabinet Reshuffle and a heap of Conservative press releases.

2012-01-09T18:02:00.006Z

Plenty of information coming in for my press release blog today, but what does it all mean?

First the cabinet reshuffle, see http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/2012/01/cabinet-changes-announced.html

Then it seems that the Conservatives view the cancellation of the Broadstairs fireworks as a debacle, see http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/2012/01/margate-football-club-labour-indecision.html does one take this to mean that had the Conservatives remained in power, the fireworks would have gone off?

This one is interesting as it seems to be saying that Labour have plundered the council’s reserves http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/2012/01/labour-budget-changes-same-old-labour.html

There is also this one http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/2012/01/ramsgate-harbour-and-marina-cllr.html

And while I was writing this and finding some pictures it seems Simon has posted about the same thing http://birchington.blogspot.com/2012/01/all-change-for-musical-chairs.html 10 minutes between posts is about as close as it gets.

How are the mighty fallen though, before Christmas I thought Simon was cabinet member for rubbish and apparently he though that he was 'His Luminescence, the Cabinet Member for Planning, the Environment & Regulatory Issues'. This only goes to show how wrong one can be.

I think I have sorted out the cabinet changes the previous administration did quite a bit of this, see http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/2010/07/cabinet-changes.html http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/2011/06/changes-announced-to-cabinet-and-shadow.html I think it is a bit like the cat and its sparrow in yesterdays post. A sort of inter species thing and you would have to be a councillor to understand it.

I will ramble on here as I try to work out what this is all about, what’s literary quote, “one decoding is another encoding” do feel free to make some suggestions in the comments.

The cat the council, a breakdown of communication between species? A Sunday afternoon ramble.

2012-01-08T17:51:00.001Z

Having had a bout of man flue for the last few days and feeling a little weak as far as I am concerned this rather dull winter Sunday has been cancelled due to lack of interest.

One of the things that I have to do, don’t particularly want to is to pursue the council about the way they are failing to promote and manage leisure in Thanet.

So inbetween the various things one has to do at the weekend, especially if one has children, I have been vaguely trying to compose something for the council, that on the one hand may do something to help put the problems with the way they are handling local events right, while on the other hand not sounding too much as though I am just trying to get at them.

Next doors cat often asks to be let in here, but only managed to actually get in one, not because I dislike cats, but because I don’t want to steal away someone else’s cat, and a cat once moved into a secondhand bookshop is very hard to budge.

Now this cat moved in nextdoor sometime in November and is something of an ornithologist, though it has considerable impediment to this pastime in the form of a bell around its neck.

We have a large amount of sparrows that live in the garden and a very large bush there where the sparrows like to congregate and do whatever it is that sparrows do.

So for the last three months this cat from next door has been a regular visitor to our garden where it waits in the bush, trying to keep as still as possible so that the bell around its neck doesn’t ring and scare the sparrows away.

Rather like the Japanese whalers, I think the cat has really always wanted to catch a sparrow for further study, scientific purposes only you understand.

Anyway while I was composing this rather boring missive to the council and wondering how a mere cold could have brought me so low, a great caterwauling started to come from the vicinity of the garden.

There was the cat who had finally managed to capture a sparrow and had brought it as a gift for us in the hope that we would now let it in.

After about two hours of the cat caterwauling and cavorting around enthusiastically with the dead sparrow outside the back door, presumably hoping to impress us all with its prowess as an ornithologist, it occurred to me that communicating with the cat about the sparrow was very similar with communicating with the council about local leisure.

The problem is something like this, I pay the council to do various things on my behalf, one of which is to promote and supply information about Thanet events online.

So the council spend this money on three websites to promote local events, which seems fair enough, a good idea in fact.

A glance at the local paper website shows that there are events on in Thanet every day http://www.kentonline.co.uk/thanet_extra/news/2012/january/4/your_guide_to_whats_on_in_tha.aspx

One council website has no events for the whole of January, one has just one event and the other has some but only one for Ramsgate for the whole of January, and not for instance the blessing of the sea that Simon has done today’s post about, see http://birchington.blogspot.com/2012/01/blessing-of-sea-margate-2012.html

Perhaps like the cat is approaching us, I am approaching the council in quite the wrong way.

Sorry the pictures of the cat are not very good, all the good ones showed the sparrow and I was concerned about people’s sensibilities.

The Turner Contemporary Margate Last Chance to see Nothing in the World But Youth.

2012-01-07T16:20:00.013Z

Tomorrow Sunday 8^th January 2012 is your last chance to see this exhibition and if you haven’t done so yet it really is worth seeing.

Peter Blake Self Portrait with Badges 1961 Oil on board © Peter Blake

From Monday the upstairs part of the gallery will be closed until Tuesday 17th January 2012 when the Hamish Fulton: Walk Exhibition starts but won’t be completely open until Saturday 28th January 2012 when the Turner and the Elements Exhibition starts.

Santiago Mostyn Callie on the sandbank from excerpt all most heaven 2008 © Santiago Mostyn

The pictures above are a couple of the ones in the current exhibition reproduced here with kind permission etc.

So what so special about this guy Will Turner?

Well for me is, and I only have even a vague notion of watercolour painting, is that he managed to get so much light in his pictures and I suppose that he managed to do a lot with not very much on the palate front.

Most of his watercolours seem to have been accomplished with four different colours, here they are.

And despite what the experts say if you take any old turner watercolour and have a go at reproducing the colours like this.

You seem to be able to make the colours.

If you are not very careful things go rather ice cream like, see what I mean.

I got a load of cheap watercolour paper for Christmas, so I can play and play and play.

Anyway using some Turner colour I am wondering what Turner would paint related to Hamish’s walks, sploshing some water and some paint on for the background, this bit of Christmas paper is about A3 size you get something like this.

However taking a closer look at the figures they won’t conform and walk properly, in fact they seem to be larking about, this happens with watercolour paint, it wouldn’t dare happen in a photograph, see what I mean.

The point I am making here is something like it wasn’t me gov, I have added a few more people and put a two pound coin in the picture for the size of the things.

Anyway here is the finished sketch, I didn’t use the India ink for the black that Turner used as it’s a bit of a permanent thing to have about with children, I used what he would have called bone black but now is rather euphemistically called ivory black.

Well that was my bit on Hamish’s walk see http://www.turnercontemporary.org/exhibitions/hamish-fulton I am sort of working on the principle that words fail me so I thought I would try expressing my self mostly in images.

The next four pictures are representative of Turner on the elements and I expect some of them will feature in the exhibition.

Anyway what I am trying to get at here is why the Turner pictures above are art and why the exhibition will be worth going to see and this is sort of tied in with why I can’t paint something from them.

I aim to ramble on about art and stuff here.

Dreamland Petition in Ramsgate Today

2012-01-06T13:12:00.001Z

I went down into the middle of Ramsgate to sign the Dreamland petition today and recommend anyone else who has time to do this.

See Will Scobie’s blog if you don’t know what this is all about http://williamscobie.blogspot.com/

It only really remains for me to say something patronising and condescending about young people in politics and I am done here, I sure I will think of something in a mo.

Thanet District Council, tourism, events, we pay the piper and everything goes quiet.

2012-01-05T13:09:00.008Z

The whole business of how the council manages tourism and events when viewed from the outside seems like one great disaster area.

I generally have to view it from as far away as Ramsgate and fight with the modern inventions of the telephone and internet, in order to find out what’s on locally.

Anyone who doubts what I mean evidently hasn’t tried ringing up the tourist information office in Margate during the last year and encountered the wonderful and presumably expensive automated switchboard machine, that having made you angry, always seems to send you to the same officer.

Anyone who still doubts this evidently hasn’t tried using the council’s tourist information online.

There are three council funded tourist websites, remember you are paying for this to a greater or lesser extent if you are a uk taxpayer.

Here is the first most recent council tourism website’s page for events this January http://www.warmingwords.org.uk/january.aspx

Here is another http://communityportal.thanet.gov.uk/home/

And last of all here is the one that they pay a private company to manage for them

http://www.visitthanet.co.uk/

Some ways of gauging there effectiveness would be the way the covered recent events on their website.

How for instance they covered the recent Broadstairs New Year fireworks fiasco, how the told us the event was on and how they told us the event had been cancelled.

How for instance the covered the recent Ramsgate new Year fireworks that did actually happen.

How for instance they covered the recent royal visit of Her Majesty the Queen to Margate.

The simple answer here is that none of their three tourism websites mentioned any of the above events.

With the recent change from Conservative to Labour leadership at the council cabinet portfolio responsibility for this has changed from Chris Wells to Iris Johnston. Well I had a long chat on the phone with Iris yesterday evening, which was supposed to be about the Broadstairs firework fiasco, not her fault as she came to the job too late.

I then found myself trying to explain to Iris what was wrong with the way the council manage their tourist websites, there were pros and cons here as iris doesn’t understand the internet from the point of view of someone publishing to it, but she does tell you what she thinks you said which is a considerable aid to this sort of communication.

Anyone who has ever played one of those games where everyone sits in a circle and you whisper something to the person next to you who then whispers it to the person next them, until what you said comes back to you as something completely different, will understand what I mean here.

With the royal visit coverage I went to the extent of making a formal complaint about the council’s internet publicity, I hardly ever do this as I am told that it wastes the council’s time when they could be doing something more useful.

Anyway here is the blog post with the complaint and responses for anyone who wants to read it http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2011/12/thanet-district-council-her-majesty.html

Of these various council funded tourism websites, the one the council obviously sees as the most important feeds its events in a way that they appear on the council’s main website homepage.

At the moment it is the events listed below that appear on the council’s homepage i.e. the most important and expensive part of their whole internet operation.

Events

St. Laurence Church Tour (January)

The Book of Kells

St. Laurence Church Tour (February)

St. Laurence Church Tour (March)

Thanet Gang Show 2012

Added to this is one of the strange TDCIT feed faults so the event vanishes the day before it is on.

I suppose in reflection it is as well that there isn’t anything else important happening in Thanet between now and The Thanet Gang Show in April.

Wait a sec, isn’t some little known artist exhibiting some of his local pictures in a little known gallery somewhere in Thanet.

Here is sketch of him from my sketchbook, of course you won’t recognise him as I can’t paint either.

This next picture is interesting and shows some interesting internet use by the council, you will see that their latest press release the one about the fireworks fiasco has appeared not at the top of the list as one would expect, but further down underneath the one they issued a couple of days ago on the 3^rd.

This means that the press release doesn’t appear on the councils facebook wall at all, see http://www.facebook.com/pages/Thanet-District-Council/83700846372?sk=wall

While you ponder why the council would want to put the press release see http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/2012/01/broadstairs-new-years-eve-fireworks.html about the fireworks in the day before yesterday’s paper, you may wish to wonder what the council’s remit is when it comes to leisure.

Looking further into the way the council uses the internet I have been trying to use what I take to be their premier in house events site http://communityportal.thanet.gov.uk/home/

I base the premier on the fact that the events from it feed directly onto the council’s main website homepage and in house on the web address being an extension of the councils main web address.

This is where I think I am going to need some expert help ad I can only find six events listed on it, see http://communityportal.thanet.gov.uk/events/

According to the website the promotion of these six events is part funded by the EEC which sort of makes one wonder how expensive theis is and where the rest of the funding comes from.

I will ramble on about this issue as the day progresses.

Broadstairs Fireworks Fiasco, aftermath complaint and foi and the bloggers dilemma.

2012-01-03T12:18:00.001Z

As a prominent local blogger I have some sort of duty to represent my readers, I either stop blogging at some point and give up, or continue and press cases with the local authorities.

The Broadstairs fireworks event cancellation has potentially far-reaching effects for local quality of life and local businesses and seems to go against national government policy, which is for reducing red tape and making it easer to hold local events.

One of the problems I face as a blogger with this type of incident is that the local press are in decline, my guess is that they are more interested in holding onto their jobs and advertising revenue, much of which comes from local authorities, than going and asking them difficult questions. However the councils press department that presumably was set up partly to deal with difficult questions from the press is closed to me, I can only guess this is because they didn’t like the difficult questions that I was asking them.

The readership of this blog is fairly small in terms of the size of the local population one lot of web statistics tell me that it was read 700 times yesterday another lot of statistics that measures the different ip addresses says that about 5,000 different ones access it in a month. This sort of statistical information is difficult to assess in terms of real readership, on the one hand I know that a lot of people read the blogs from work, so where I can extrapolate an ip address I can get a bit more information, I know for instance that the Kent County Council one made about 200 visits and I would guess these weren’t all the same person visiting, on the other hand quite a lot of visits, an increasing amount are made by mobile devices, so the same person would appear twice, if like me they use both their pc and mobile to access the blogs.

In the case of what happens in local authorities and I mean by this the various local councils, police, fire and ambulance services, they obviously have to balance public risk and therefore what events may cost them against local people having some quality of life. There is a sense in which all of their jobs would be easier and there expenses lower, if there were never any fireworks ever again anywhere under any circumstances. This of course means they can always produce a strong and sensible sounding case for stopping any individual event, obviously if there were no fireworks allowed in this country, then no children would ever be injured by one and the case for not having injured children is always a strong one. Obviously this taken to its logical conclusion means no transport no machinery and so on to, no life.

With Thanet District Council and the councils that predate it, my guess is that some time in the council’s history a clerk probably on a salary of about £30k pa in todays Mars Bars, was allocated to smooth the way for local events, a further guess is that this developed into a department, responsible for local events with a senior officer on about 50k with about four assistants on about £30k.

Various negotiations made them unsackable with guaranteed pensions, a whole department costing say £250k then had the brilliant idea that they could charge for licensing local events, bringing in say £150k, i.e. a net loss of £100k.

The next stage is to regulate local events with ever more complex rules, so there are less local events and therefore less income. In local government terms and healt and safety term, the culmination of this would result in a net cost of £250k and no local events.

Back to my dilemma, as I can’t use the press department, I have to use the facilities that have been opened up under the auspices of open government to the every individual. Official complaint and the freedom of information act. In reality when asking questions from a media point of view i.e. on behalf or 5,000 of you that read this blog, a dialogue with the council would be better for me and probably better and more significantly cheaper for them.

As it is I ask my questions this way and probably won’t get an answer for at least a month, so if I ask them, “is the sky blue?” and in a months time they reply “the sky is orange” and then I reply that I have evidence that it is blue and send them this evidence, then they reply that having read my evidence they concede the sky is blue, the whole process of asking them why they have painted the moon blue, so we can’t see it could take about a year.

What this means is that I have to try and think of all my questions in one go, part of this is looking for what their motives could be in performing a seemingly senseless act like causing the cancellation of the Broadstairs fireworks event.

So below in blue, is my first daft of my request to them and as I am asking this on behalf of you my readers, then you may have thoughts about this that you may wish to put as comments.

Hi this is an official complaint and foi request relating to the cancellation of the Broadstairs fireworks display, please also be aware that this complaint and responses to it are for publication as I run one of the more popular local internet blogs http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/ readership at the moment is about 5,000 unique individual readers per month.

Under normal circumstances I would ask for this information via the press office but as the council views independent internet news publication as unaccredited so I am barred from using this facility. However this is factor that you may wish to consider in relation to the time you take to make the response.

The background to this is that the general consensus of local opinion seems to be that, the council, in a time when national government policy is to make this type of public event subject to less red tape and easier to put on, produced increased regulation and prevented an annual event that had the same safety precautions as last year and previous years.

The substance of my complaint is that the council stopped a regular popular event with insufficient notice to the organisers by increased red tape and that they failed to engage the public in this issue; provided no press release and no public explanation.

I am also complaining that the council knew in advance that the event would not take place and so didn’t publicise it on their tourism websites.

The following questions should be answered under foi legislation.

1 Was there any political motivation for this action, I ask this as the Ramsgate display went ahead as normal, Ramsgate is predominantly Labour and Broadstairs predominantly Conservative and TDC has just changed from Conservative to Labour control. I have subsectioned this question to facilitate ease of answers.

A Did the new administration put any pressure on officers to stop the event?

B Did the previous (shadow) administration put any pressure on officers to stop the event, to show the new administration in a bad light?

C Did officers act in this way to ingratiate themselves with the new administration?

2 Which council department was responsible for the increased regulation of the event and what is the remit of this department?

3 What is the cost of this department? I have subsectioned this for ease of answering.

A How many officers are employed in this department?

B What is their total remuneration?

C What approximately are the other costs of this department?

D How much does this department generate in income form fines, Licensing etc?

4 Is it the council’s intention to stop the program of firework displays that normally occur throughout the year in Broadstairs?

5 Is it the council’s intention to increase the regulation and red tape for events in Thanet?

6 Did the council have any other motivation for preventing this event occurring that I haven’t thought of so haven’t asked about?

7 Why didn’t this event appear on any of the council’s three tourism websites before it was cancelled?

8 Were there any significant differences between this years even and previous years events that caused the council to prevent the event from occurring?

I will add anything that occurs to me and anything anyone suggests that makes sense.

Few pictures of Ramsgate today and a bit of a ramble

2012-01-02T15:35:00.004Z

One of those January days when Ramsgate doesn’t seem to know that it’s supposed to be winter, a short walk and a few pictures, nothing special see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop112/id3.htm

Looking at the various local disaster areas I was vaguely wondering if Ramsgate will fare any better under TDC Labour leadership, my hope is that they will at least try to resolve some of the easy ones, if only for the pr value.

Getting the maritime museum open would seem to be an easy one, getting it open under the auspices of The Preston Steam Trust is the option that I am hoping for as my understanding is that the trust intend to partly finance the museum and tug restoration by holding a series of events and if there is one thing Ramsgate really needs is some decent events to attract tourists during the summer.

With Ramsgate the Pleasurama disaster area is the big one and my guess is that one of the first things the Pleasurama developers will do is to approach the new administration asking for more delays and concessions.

According to the local paper http://www.thisiskent.co.uk/Businessman-Jimmy-Godden-sells-Ramsgate-seafront/story-14055028-detail/story.html The Boulevard Amusement Arcade is about to be turned into one huge estate agent for the development.

I don’t necessarily believe what the local paper has to say, their last error apparently was blaming the wrong councillor for the email leak, not that this really matters as I don’t think there is anyone who uses the internet who hasn’t clicked on reply all and included some unintentional recipients.

I guess an old grammar schoolboy and OU graduate like Allan Poole though it best to take this one on the chin.

I bumped into the chap behind the slipways development and mentioned that I had received the new flood risk assessment, he told me it had been prepared by the same people who did the one for The Turner Centre, which is strange as it is definitely not prepared by the firm who did the Turner contemporary one, perhaps he said what he meant which would be rather funny in the circumstances.

An amusing dialogue between councillors starting on Thanet Life, one being Will Scobie who I believe to be the only councillor to have had any formal education on the subject of politics and the other being Simon Moores who I assumed held higher education in a place of some respect.

They are both individuals who I consider to be above average intelligence and both of them have had some difficulties with their studies. Simon did his doctorate and his thesis was published by a well know publisher, this is about as good a mandate for a doctorate as you can get and then years later his university was discredited. And Will seems have done his masters specialising in the EU which in the present circumstances could all have been a bit of a waste of time.

Simon started with a shot well below the belt “, while young Will Scobie has demonstrated, at times, that he's barely out of short trousers.” Well see http://birchington.blogspot.com/2012/01/in-shadows.html the picture of Chris Wells ready to battle at cabinet is worth the visit on its own.

As you can see from the picture, the youf of today have been busy again and it looks a though there will soon be strong smell of dope in our kitchen.

I will probably ramble on here.

Appy Olympic New Year, Pinch and a Punch a first of the Month look at the Thanet Blogs and blogging.

2012-01-01T15:01:00.003Z

The new thing for me this year is the improvement of mobile phones to the point where I can blog anywhere quickly easily and with pictures.

The good thing about this is that the equipment is small enough to carry around with me all the time. The bad thing about this is the equipment is small.

Time to turn out my pockets, the contents allow me to draw, paint, take reasonable photographs, type text with large sausage like fingers and publish drawings, paintings, photographs and text to the internet, where the whole world can access it.

It is only recently that this has all come together in a manageable and affordable way, the ongoing cost is mobile internet access which added on to a pay as you go phone is £20 for 6 months.

The largest item is the sketchbook and if I have to look presentable I use a smaller one. To me this is a culmination of technology that has been developing during my lifetime and in terms of the gear you carry around with you to communicate with the rest of the world, I don’t think it can be improved upon a lot.

Unfolded it looks like this.

With the blogs, well things have changed over the last year on the Thanet blogging front, but the reading audience has grown steadily. Here is the link to December referral statistics, note new boys e.g. Will Scobie didn’t have a link to this blog for the whole month, so his statistics are not representative of his popularity http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop112/

Back to the new technology of blogging and the internet.

I suppose it would be true to say this goes back at least to Turners time, in the early 1700s he organised his painting and drawing equipment to fit in his pockets.

The mobile internet world of apps and touchscreens presents certain problems as it is mostly aimed at the consumer and it seems to be intended that anything the consumer adds to internet in terms of text will be very small.

Now I like to drivel on a considerable amount and at the moment this means I need a proper full sized keyboard, the latest addition to my kit being a folding one of these.

I am not going down the road that Clive Hart and Simon Moores and most recently Alan Poole have floundered in and frankly an ipad would be both too big and too expensive for my pocket.

If I am going to carry around a mandbag it has to be a full-sized laptop. The thing that does truly amaze me is the movement from a keyboard with a conventional spellchecker to this ghastly thing called predictive text. In other words the computer guesses the word you want to write and writes it, making you look a total plonkner.

I will ramble on about this inbetween the other things I am doing today.

Thanet Predictions for 2012

2011-12-31T15:32:00.004Z

I am feeling my way with this one and will add things as they come to mind, first with the subject, then perhaps the possibilities followed by some sort of prediction.

Local politics.

Council leadership.

This is a bit of a tricky one, my guess is the Conservative group will try to put up some sort of leadership challenge fairly early in the new year, probably with a leader from the existing shadow cabinet: Bob Bayford, Alasdair Bruce, Simon Moores, Chris Wells and Martin Wise.

So the first prediction is it will be one of these.

The other variable here is which councillors will get ill, die, vanish or disgrace themselves so badly that they are unable to hold office or change sides, changing the political spectrum.

With this one, it isn’t necessary to think in terms of individuals, only which group they fall into: Labour, Conservative or independent.

I think recently the Conservatives have the worst record on this, however I suppose the laws of chance mean that it must be a Labour councillors turn soon.

Airport.

Will Infratil pull out or won’t they? This of course is also effected by who they could sell it to, my guess is the chance to sell to anyone is something they would jump at and of course any prospective buyer may not want to run it as a conventional airport.

Will we get any sort of night flights policy?

China Gateway with a share price of 4.38p see http://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/prices-and-markets/stocks/summary/company-summary.html?fourWayKey=GB00B1P70L34GBGBXASQ1 and the failure to secure the 106 I don’t see much progress there over the next year.

Pleasurama

The 2 year health and safety permit for the site runs out early 2012, this was for 200 workers, I have never seen more than four workers on the site, so the calculation that if it takes 200 workers 2 years to build it then with four workers on site will probably take 100 years to complete seems about right.

Will the new administration try and do anything about this one?

The options here are I think, end the development agreement based on the developer being 98 years behind schedule (sorry that can’t be right I think I mean two), insist on the basic safety checks recommended by the environment agency, allow the developer more time, nothing.

Dreamland

I think this one may be a bit tenuous and that we perhaps need to sign the petition to impress the planning inspector. Have a look at Will Scobie’s blog http://williamscobie.blogspot.com/2011/12/save-dreamland-campaign.html

Not sure about petitioning in Margate High Street on bank holiday Monday, will anyone be there? I think the choice here is between a developer who wants to get the maximum profit from housing on the site and local people who want thw maimum leisure on the site.

Eurokent.

Houses again with this one although the two of the main contenders as developers seem to be TDC and KCC leisure too, there is also the sexist factor here, remember our new cabinet has female members.

Here in Kent Ramsgate was the first place to have a female mayor, Janet, and it was this Janet who gave Jacky Baker’s farm to the town, this is what she had to say about it:

“ In providing the ground for the young people of the town a new lung had been added to the borough [Ramsgate] which would be appreciated not only by those alive now but by their children’s children.”

Now a big chunk of this land was swapped with a big chunk of the Eurokent land and if the houses are built I don’t think there are plans to swap it back, just build houses on the swapped playing fields.

What with one thing and another I am predicting that this development will flounder.

Developers seem to predict that profit will only be derived from either providing people housing, prepared food or alcoholic drink. Looking to cash in on this has few exceptions.

So I predict there will several new developments based on this.

Funny how the various plans for providing economic regeneration in Thanet are either environmentally bad like the airport, or economically damaging like importing goods from China.

So I would predict that there will be at least one large regeneration plan that involves damage to the UK economy or the environment.

I will add to this as new years eve progresses, hopefully answers will appear in the crystal ball or some other glass.

New Year Fireworks in Ramsgate but not in Broadstairs.

2011-12-30T12:40:00.008Z

There will be a firework display over Ramsgate Harbour at midnight on Saturday 31st December 2011 to welcome in the New Year.

There won’t be a firework display in Broadstairs to welcome in the New Year as it has been cancelled for health and safety reasons.

I hope this information is right as there is no mention of either event on the various council what’s on websites and phoning up the tourist information office reveals they are on holiday, as does phoning the council.

The Isle of Thanet Gazette’s front page story is about leaked emails about the Broadstairs cancellation from the new council cabinet.

Here is the online version of the Gazette article http://www.thisiskent.co.uk/Fireworks-row-blows-faces-council/story-14279080-detail/story.html not an easy thing to find.

The pictures, are of the Ramsgate Festival of Britain illuminations, although I am not completely certain of the second one down.

And this is a picture of Dinah Sheridan who did the turning on, of the illuminations that is.

I am wondering just what TDCSAG (Thanet District Council Safety Advisory Group) is all about, who it comprises how much they all get paid and why they concluded that a firework display that has been held for the past few years with the same safety arrangements is dangerous this year.

Perhaps if I could find contact details for them then perhaps I could get them to look into the Pleasurama safety issues.

Onto the new Labour cabinet and their misuse of ITC, very funny I though ccing the wrong people in the email exchange, when it comes to touch screen devices I don’t think I want be the one casting the first stone though.

Personally as a – not sure even middle-aged is a good description here unless we can expect people to live to about 120 – man with large sausage like fingers and a creative approach to spelling, I find predictive text and virtual keyboards a bit of a challenge.

Then we come to another question, is the local press politically biased? I am always being told that this blog is, I suppose one answer to this is that after the accidental email exchange they may be.

I think, the press are stupid intentionally or not, is obviously the best Michelle Fenner quote of the year, in fact in view of the time left she will have to be pretty sharp to improve on it.

Some interesting thought here on the difference between press that is stupid by mistake, for instance not checking who is cc’d when you send an email and a press that is stupid deliberately. I find as a blogger being stupid deliberately can be a fallback when all else fails trying to get some point across.

Oh yes I have just discovered Professor Emin was guest editor on the Today program on Wednesday, as she was interviewing some local people readers may want have a listen. Linking to Auntie is not necessarily a straightforward business so the link may not last or it may not work, if it does you click on the links on the page you get to hear bits of the program http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9668000/9668740.stm

I will ramble on about this one.

Rising to the challenge of drawing Ed Miliband

2011-12-29T16:31:00.005Z

Ed Miliband is today’s subject for a series of stock cartoon figures that I am knocking together for my own amusement, this is the first attempt at the business of trying to work out with a pencil what it is that makes him recognisable as who he is.

You have to appreciate from the artistic point of view I am not trying to produce a portrait here, but a cartoon that represents what he looks like.

I will probably drivel on about this as attempts at trying to achieve this go wrong.

A second attempt at Ed Miliband, not an easy one this, however I have noticed that with this sort of caricature once you settle on an image there is a sense in which peoples perception of the subject subtly changes to include the caricature in the recognition of the subject.

Ed Miliband. You’ll never have it so good.

As you see this sort of basic format allows one to produce a rough cartoon.

Post Christmas Trauma

2011-12-28T14:39:00.006Z

It is probably allright for you but I am now back at work in my bookshop, to be honest I did open half an hour late and wouldn’t call what I am doing exactly work.

I think it’s a case of no news is good news, not knowing what’s going on locally I had a look at the other blogs, Simon Moores seems to complaining about his rubbish collection, see http://birchington.blogspot.com/2011/12/its-xmas-wednesday.html I did put the press release up ages ago see http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/2011/12/christmas-waste-and-recycling.html the council’s website has the same date on the release but knowing them it may have appeared much later which is probably what Simon is talking about, this is particularly evident as the press release before the rubbish one on the councils website has later date.

It certainly hasn’t appeared on the council’s Facebook wall http://www.facebook.com/pages/Thanet-District-Council/83700846372?sk=wall yet.

Trying to follow, or at least make some sort of sense of the argument surrounding John Worrow which seems to be the liveliest debate on the Thanet blogs at the moment, probably more due to the absence of news than anything else, is a bit of a tricky one, see.

http://worrowsworld.blogspot.com/

http://villeviews.blogspot.com/2011/12/dear-readers.html

This seems to be an argument partly about humour and homosexuality, the first question begged here is. Is sex funny? As an amateur historian, I would say the answer to this one is yes.

The questions here get trickier, the next one being, is homosexuality funny? On the whole I believe the answer here is something along the lines of, at least as funny as heterosexuality.

I think the problem here may be to do when this sort of humour relates to a know individual in a public forum.

Other factors here that make the subject a bit difficult seem to be, not knowing who the individuals are and in one case not understanding the joke, or possibly insult. I mean I have sorted out the backs to the wall thing, but what on earth are Mogs in this context? Even the youf of today seem a bit nonplussed by this reference.

This does get even trickier as a google search seems to suggest that the only place the comments exist on the internet is on the blog of the person complaining about the comments.

Back in the Christmas theme for a mo some sort of fight between various god bothering groups seems to have broken out the location of the birth of Jesus.

Back in my god bothering days I studied St Paul’s letters to the Corinthians in Greek, they give an interesting insight into the early church, with St Paul arguing that for instance they didn’t have to uncircumcise one another to convert from Judaism to Christianity nor did they have to get drunk on the wine at communion services.

I suppose this sort of thing can happen if you get a group of men who are not allowed female or gay relationships, then they are likely to fight. Funny old thing religion.

I may ramble on although as we are doing Christmas dinner for somewhere between 20 and 30 today I may get distracted.

St Stephen’s day, Boxing day.

2011-12-26T18:19:00.000Z

St Stephen was stoned to death by an angry mob egged on by St Paul (who was running the cloakroom) after saying he had seen god, this was before St Paul had his vision on the road to Damascus, so technically not a saint at the time.

Also called Boxing day, this is the day to give gifts to your servants, it is also a traditional day to go fox hunting.

Having just eaten The Feast of Stephen, and settled various disputes relating to French Knitting, the old toys are often the most contentious, I though, having no servants or horse I would do a quick post.

This is loosely based around having to answer questions about the meaning and significance of Boxing Day posed by my children hence the illustration.

Happy Christmas

2011-12-25T19:46:00.003Z

The picture of the Christmas tree, a work in progress a sort of ecard if you like, bit of a complex issue this, as most of the decorations have been made by my children, so the previous picture just wouldn’t do, very little artistic licence when it comes to children.

One of my children has been engaged in colouring the feet for her balloon while I have been painting and said I ought to put a picture of the balloon on the blog, not for me to argue.

However you look at Christmas it is the celebration of the start of a major world religion in one sense and in the other the celebration of a teenage pregnancy.

Of course we are looking at the middle east two thousand years ago where the foundation of religions was not uncommon and the normal age to get married was twelve.

Being a pregnant teen two millennia ago in an atmosphere of a forthcoming messiah, with ones virginity presumably a subject of scrutiny, in a country occupied by a militaristic foreign power, doesn’t sound easy.

The way we celebrate Christmas has developed in the strange way that things human do, hence a religion that started in a hot part of the world is celebrated with pine trees and snow.

That’s as far as the ecard goes, I had a bit of an artistic accident with it after that, but learnt a new watercolour technique because of the accident, so overall I very happy about spoiling the picture.

Paint is something that I don’t really understand properly and don’t want to learn from people who do yet.

The easiest way to explain this is like this. I can draw people fairly well. My definition of this is explained in the table below with 1 being not so good and four and a half fairly well.

1 you can tell it’s a person.

2 you can tell the sex of the person.

3 you can tell the age of the person.

4 you can tell the type, e.g. pipe smoking car driving chap of the 1940s

5 you can tell who the actual person is.

Anyway I read this book saying that necks are particularly difficult to draw after which I couldn’t draw them for months.

I may ramble on a bit.

Christmas initial thoughts

2011-12-24T20:27:00.003Z

Having finished work and wrapped up, I am now examining the tree, and considering Christmas.

The youf of today seem to be discovering the true meaning of differential.

I wonder if it is possible to paint the decorations on the tree at the rate the children are putting them on the tree soon won’t be visible.

Well I have put some tinsel on and got some sort of approval from the children who are still loading the tree.

I have now put some decorations on, the children watching me taking pictures of the picture of the tree asked the obvious question. “Why don’t you just take a picture of the tree daddy?”

The question for the adults is, how much of the tree does your mind decorate for you?

Strange business the feast of Christmas, the commercial, religious and traditional, none of which stand up well to much scrutiny. I only mention this as I have to answer questions from enquiring young minds.

Oranges are not the only fruit.

2011-12-23T14:37:00.001Z

Strange little story about a hypothetical council today, this has no relationship whatever to local events and any comments should be also framed in a hypothetical form.

One way or another god has had a bit of a downer on the eating of apples and has always encouraged the eating of oranges and for, well a very long time the apple eaters have done their apple eating on the quiet.

There are some groups who believe god is a woman, whatever the truth of this he has been very quiet on the subject of cherries and on the whole they have never been used for political purposes.

Anyway fairly recently in terms of the very long time, the eating of apples stopped being illegal, in fact it became illegal to persecute people for eating apples, if god had anything to say about this she didn’t say.

Some of the churches though remained pretty strict about this and anyone eating apples was certainly frowned upon. The eating of the young apples and oranges that weren’t yet ripe is of course a different thing altogether and is against the law, however it seemed that some members of the churches, where any apple eating had to be done in secret had also been eating some of the apples and oranges that weren’t ripe at all, in secret. Nothing much you understand has been said or will be said here about cherries.

Anyway into all this political and religious confusion comes Don a young chap keen on apples and he joins the orange party who although they once had no truck with apple eaters have now adopted a more pragmatic approach. Well they had to really, anyone persecuting an apple eater could wind up in a lot of trouble with the law.

Anyway Don tells them that he is an apple eater and asks if this will cause any problems if he runs for office. They tell Don that this is no problem at all and in fact one of their own prominent politicians is also an apple eater, but of course they don’t exactly advertise the fact. But as a lot of the voters are also apple eaters so they don’t exactly cover it up either.

Well Don says he wouldn’t want to advertise his apple eating either, for one thing his old mum is very religious and would probably go apoplectic if she found out he had been eating apples.

Everything goes well and Don stands for election as an orange party candidate, the apple eaters vote for him because they know he is an apple eater and the people whose religious convictions are against apple eaters vote for him, because he is standing for the orange party.

Then comes a bit of a problem for Don, in the village he represents business isn’t so good and the shopkeepers and shoppers, many of who voted for him, say to him. “In the next village, where they elected a well known Orange party candidate and parking is free there, while we have to pay for it, can you sort this out for us.”

So anyway Don goes and tells the chiefs of the orange party that he won’t vote for parking charges in his village, frankly the villagers would make his life hell if he did.

To this the chiefs of the orange party say. “You can’t do that Don, it may not look like it but the parking in your little village street makes lots of money for our good causes” Don isn’t really sure about this but it is obvious that his villagers really aren’t going to believe that the parking money gathered in their little village is very significant and what with that and the next village down the road having free parking, Don is in a bit of a no win situation. So Don says to the orange party chiefs. “Too bad I am going to vote for the free parking anyway.” So the orange party chiefs say. “In that case we will put it around that you have been eating apples.”

The orange party think the lemon party are load of trouble makers and worse of all they hold 10 seats while the orange party hold 11 and being trouble makers you can pretty much guarantee that what ever the orange party vote for the lemon party will vote against. Of course the lemon party think the same thing about the orange party and while all this is going on the lemon party have decided to challenge the orange party’s leadership. This is partly because one of the orange party members is away and partly because there are a few politicians that don’t belong to either party and they have done a deal with the orange party which seems to be wearing a bit thin.

The lemon party have a bit of a different history on the eating of apples, but it is as well to remember they have the same sort of proportion of religious members and no one really wants to wind up god.

In recent years the lemon party has been right behind the eating of apples although predominantly made up of orange eaters, of course the orange party came along first, so they grabbed the name orange party.

Anyway the lemon party had decided to hold this vote saying that they had no confidence in the leader of the orange party and Don thought that one way or another going along with this one would get the free parking.

However having done this there are the orange party who know he has been at the apples and still holding this over him.

So anyway what with the lemon party being very friendly and saying that they will look after Don he goes one step further and votes for the lemon party leader.

So now a situation has developed where the lemon party’s hold on power is dependant on someone the orange party has a hold over, either continuing to support the lemon party or at least not supporting the orange party.

Of course members of the lemon party would like to be able to say that the orange party have done wrong here, by persecuting someone for eating apples, but the orange party haven’t done anything wrong.

In fact if anyone were to even suggest that the orange party have persecuted anyone for eating apples, then the orange party may take legal action against them, for suggesting that the orange party have broken the law when they haven’t.

I will ramble on with this one

Day off ramble.

2011-12-22T17:47:00.010Z

Before the flack starts flying and as Don has broken the news I should point out that the decision by Flybe to pull out of Manston in March was made before the change in administration and I am told has nothing to do with night flights.

It’s nearly Christmas and I have primary school children who are on holiday, their excitement is fairly extreme so please excuse more than the usual level of errors.

Lunch at the café on the promenade in Westgate today, I tried a watercolour of the sea while the children were eating up, consuming the enviable ice cream etc and although the watercolour didn’t turn out any good, I think I am finally getting used to painting and drawing in public.

With the night flights issue, I suppose one answer would be to allow Manston the proportion of night flights to day flights as that enjoyed by Gatwick and Heathrow.

The pictures in this post were taken in Birchington and Westgate today.

More thoughts about Manston, I think the hope was that the better road network would make it work a regional airport, evidently this has failed. I don’t think any better rail network would help that much as if you are going by train and then plane from the southeast then it’s going to be one of the main London airports.

I think that KIA are hoping that freight will pull them through somehow, but as most of the freight will be heading for the M25 it seems unlikely that this will work.

What I don’t think Infratil have thought through here is that they only have three options, sell the airport, close it to save money or continue to subsidise it to the tune of around £1m per year. Well I guess there are no takers for buying it and they have gone down the subsidise it route, so far so good and then they seem to have thrown common sense out of the window.

Once they had made the decision that they were going to run it at a considerable loss, they then went down the road of engaging in activities that generated bad publicity.

I would say the way off the ground for Manston would be to exploit the historic aviation and to make it a tourist attraction. I doubt that the recent sanctions business which highlighted that people would still prefer to fly from Heathrow or Gatwick even when the plane was going to land and takeoff from Manston, exactly enhanced the airlines view of it as a viable destination.

The decision has been on the cards for some time and I heard it had been confirmed over weekend and mentioned this to Simon who said he had already heard about it. But then it isn’t the place local bloggers to jump the gun on this sort of information, however is does show readers the position that bloggers are often in, sitting on information that for one reason or another it is better not to publish, and I suppose one would have looked a bit of a clot if they had changed their minds.

I will ramble on.

Thanet District Councillors, some idle speculation.

2011-12-20T20:59:00.005Z

Looking over the recent events and blog dialogues I am trying to form an accurate picture of what has happened with our district government here in Thanet.

Call it for historical record if you like, I have been trying to ask some fairly searching questions of both councillors and others with an interest in our local politics both on and off line.

The main theme here is about how different parts of Thanet are treated under different administrations.

An example of what I mean here is say Birchington and Westgate have fairly similar shopping centres and layouts, Westgate has a Conservative cabinet member as a councillor and has free parking, Birchington doesn’t and doesn’t. In fact judjing by recent events all of the Birchington councillors seemed happy to vote against the party line on the parking issue.

OK this is probably just coincidence but it gives you the idea of where I am coming from.

The searching questions I have been asking are of a more serious nature, these really relate to the way Ramsgate was treated under the last eight years of Conservative Government at district level and were some of the things that happened motivated by spite by a Conservative controlled council towards an area where the councillors were predominantly Labour.

What has happened to council owned assets in the town look to be something more than could be achieved by coincidence.

Some of the things that happened looked and until they are explained, still look, like acts of spite, where everyone lost. The Historic Ship Pontoon is an example of what I mean.

For anyone who doesn’t know about this, there is a condemned pontoon with limited services opposite the café culture, with the noise and late night antisocial behaviour you would expect, this effectively makes it unletable, in terms of ordinary leisure craft moorings. The council let these moorings to historic vessels at reduced mooring fees.

Everyone gained from this state of affairs, the historic vessel owners got reduced mooring fees, the council got fees where they otherwise wouldn’t, the café culture was enhanced by view of the historic vessels opposite.

The council decided to stop this arrangement, so the pontoon is empty. There may be an explanation, but I have asked and none has been forthcoming.

The other day I heard that Ramsgate swimming pool had been delayed because of an argument as to whether a pedestrian could pass a bicycle on a two metre path, I probably got the wrong end of the stick here and it was two feet, which does sound like a reasonable problem. However this got me thinking if some of the other things, particularly those related to council owned property in Ramsgate, could be explained as spite directed at the Labour group by the Conservative group.

Pleasurama on the surface may look like a series of unfortunate mistakes that has lead to it being a building site for the entire duration of the Conservative administration. But suppose a serious attempt is ever made to develop it, a proper flood risk and cliff condition assessment and proper foundations going into the chalk bedrock I would imagine would be indicators of this. The council would have liability for both the cliff behind and the sea defences in front of it a difficult position, what could possibly the motives that lead to the Conservative group going against the advice of the council’s chief financial officer and issuing agreements that put it in this position?

The maritime museum is another one, well the list goes on.

Now I would say that there is a fairly general consensus that the old Conservative administration, the one before the one that has just been deposed, had much to be desired. So a very big question to the new Conservative administration, is what have they been doing for the last seven months?

Two ex cabinet members have been very noticeable in the recent blog debate but have dodged around these questions, one seems to be baiting John Worrow at the end of the thread http://birchington.blogspot.com/2011/12/parking-matters.html I am wondering what the motive could be in this, as John does seem to be in position of some influence in Thanet politics at the moment.

Would the Labour group create a cabinet post for John? It seems unlikely, would the Conservatives group take John back, that seems unlikely too.

So what were and are the motives of the Conservative group? Do they intent to try and seize power back and what will be their intentions if they do? Do they perhaps intend to have some sort of shadow cabinet reshuffle?

The main Labour presence on the Blogs at the moment is Will Scobie, I believe that he is the only councillor on either side who has had any professional training in politics, so this may be a shrewd move on the part of the Labour group.

I am hoping we will see some activity on the presently dormant Labour blogs http://eastclifframsgate.blogspot.com/ and http://newingtonblogspot.blogspot.com/ perhaps these two experienced Labour councillors are biding there time.

There is of course the possibility of some sort of reorganisation of the Labour cabinet that could include them, I believe it was the Conservatives that reduced the size of the cabinet.

I suppose one aspect of the last Conservative cabinet that seemed unwise was combining a major portfolio with the position of leader, makes one wonder really.

All of the pictures in this post are of well known parts of Thanet, I wonder how many you can identify?

We now come to some speculation about the new leader Clive Hart, I don’t think I have ever met him and in the fullness of time I will put some of the local issues to him, probably as open letters, as I did with the previous leadership.

Just after he became elected a well known Conservative blogger seemed to be saying that Clive is a bit of a slow person, this didn’t seem to tally with him working for 15 years as a supply electrician. A Live Sparks with slow reactions would be unlikely to survive 10 years, particularly with a few apprentices about, you know how it is with young people and their rather direct sense of humour.

Some people seemed to be saying that he would be a bit of a puppet leader, but this doesn’t ring right with someone who was a union pay negotiator, something that is usually synonymous with the word shrewd.

I may ramble on here.

The Zen of the local Conservative Groups and Labour groups online.

2011-12-20T14:33:00.000Z

Since the Conservatives lost the confidence vote in their leader there has been an increased Conservative internet presence, with what I take as a genuine attempt to communicate with local people.

The latest one of these forays into hyperspace being today’s news announcement on The South Thanet Conservative Website.

Statement regarding Cllr Bob Bayford http://www.souththanetconservatives.org.uk/news/statement-regarding-cllr-bob-bayford

“Friday, 16 December, 2011

Owing to the defection of Cllr John Worrow (Conservative - Birchington, North Thanet), the leadership of Thanet District Council has been taken by Cllr Hart (Labour). Cllr Bob Bayford and the Conservative group have our total support.”

Although the thing is dated last Friday it only appeared today, a bit like some of the TDC press releases do.

This is a bit of a strange one as I had sort of assumed that the Thanet District Council Conservative Group already had the support of The South Thanet Conservative Association, perhaps there is some strange code here that you need to be in local politics to follow.

To me it seems to fall into the same bracket as the statement “The Titanic is unsinkable” as it immediately begs the question: Who said that The South Thanet Conservative Association didn’t support Cllr Bob Bayford et al.

Anyway I had a look at the North Thanet Conservative Association website http://ntca.org.uk/index.html this is very odd and seems to suggest that they think the internet may be something important, but haven’t used it yet.

After this I was prompted to look at the opposition, first The North Thanet Labour Group and then The South Thanet Labour Group.

http://www.souththanetlabour.org.uk/

http://www.thanet-labour-group.org.uk/

http://www.btinternet.com/~poole/

If North Thanet Labour exist on the internet I couldn’t find it, perhaps it was blown away by Roger Gale.

I may ramble on a bit about this.

Parking in the Thanet towns

2011-12-19T17:26:00.006Z

I went to the Turner Contemporary yesterday afternoon.

The weather was very cold so I parked in the car park between the old town and the high street, new machine there that was confusing people. I wanted three hours parking and I think two was about £1.20 so I put £2 in and it only allowed me 2 hours, this meant that I didn’t have time to visit the small shops.

There were two parking attendants on Sunday afternoon in the freezing wind giving visitors to the gallery parking tickets to enhance their Thanet leisure experience.

I wonder how cost effective this is.

I am mastering the camera on my mobile phone and was pleased with the one of The Kiss, I wanted to take a picture of the sculpture, that could only be achieved in The Turner Contemporary, for the chap who works at The Tate and allowed us to take pictures of The Kiss here.

I believe it was Victoria Pomery who was mainly responsible for getting The Kiss in Thanet an I am working up to producing a watercolour that incorporates her in a picture of the sculpture as a thank you too.

I don’t have much difficulty with face on and quarter profile likenesses but the total profiles needed when there faces share two eyes I find difficult so I wanted a lot of shots of the sculpture.

Back to the parking issue. The bit of Ramsgate I trade in used to be on a very busy road until Ramsgate town centre was pedestrianised and since then there is very little traffic flow as King Street and the surrounding streets only leads to the car park. However since the reduction in traffic, there has been a considerable increase in double yellows on this area.

Conversely where there is much more traffic near one of the local schools and the new Tesco, some aspects of the parking appear fairly dangerous.

The road behind my bookshop where I used to park my van across my own garage gates, is a dead end and now has double yellow lines, I certainly wonder why

The most extraordinary application of the parking rules that I have ever seen is the road to nowhere behind Ramsgate Sands, the combination of no loading and double yellow lines on this quiet road with no through traffic, suggests a degree of malice directed towards tourism in Ramsgate of maniac proportions, see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2011/06/yellow-peril-at-ramsgate-main-sands.html

Incidentally the main Thanet blogs sem to have gone parking mad today see:

http://bignewsmargate.blogspot.com/2011/12/information-for-cllr-worrow.html

http://birchington.blogspot.com/2011/12/parking-matters.html

great minds thinking alike?

I will ramble on here.

Who is Smudger, the Isle of Thanet Gazette Columnist?

2011-12-18T11:37:00.004Z

Is it Rebecca Smith the Editor of The Isle of Thanet Gazette? This seems to be a forgone conclusion on Thanet Life, see http://birchington.blogspot.com/2011/12/first-casualty-of-circulation.html and is Smudger after Simon’s colon, wife or even child?

Do we have a News of the World situation here, see Tony Bignews http://bignewsmargate.blogspot.com/2011/12/time-on-my-side.html who is missing his Sunday morning paper.

More elusive posting on Worrows World, see http://worrowsworld.blogspot.com/2011/12/in-run-up-to-2012-local-council.html probably best not a quick sketch for this one.

Meanwhile on Will Scobie’s blog Chris Wells and Peter Checksfield are trying to identify an anonymous commentator who says they are an ex Conservative Councillor, see http://williamscobie.blogspot.com/2011/12/more-time-for-politics.html probably best not a sketch for this one either.

Of course Simon Moores, Chris Wells, Peter Checksfield, Will Scobie, John Worrow, Tony Flaig all have something in common with me, which is they engage in open internet forums under their real names. You may not agree with what they say, but at least you know who they are.

Obviously vague imaginary sketches of anonymous newspaper columnists are fair game as are artists, the prime minister, with local councillors I have been very restrained so far with what you could call rather tasteful drawings.

A question though, with a new administration which I hope will be a little more lightharted, are councillors fair game for the odd cartoon sketch?

I may ramble on this Sunday morning as I try to follow the other Thanet blogs.

Day off ramble, Tracey Emin, Westwood Cross, Ramsgate Town Centre.

2011-12-15T19:25:00.001Z

Tracey Emin has just got the highly prestigious post of Eranda Professor of Drawing at The Royal Academy Schools of art.

One of my problems in life has been my drawing ability, I would say that the victims generally don’t like it very much, I very nearly got expelled from school over it and have only recently taken it up again. Well of course I wouldn’t dare use one of Tracey’s drawings to illustrate this post because of the copyright implications, so I have used one of my own.

Christopher Le Brun, president of the Royal Academy, said he was "delighted" with Emin's appointment and Eileen Cooper, keeper of the Royal Academy Schools, said: "In the history of the Royal Academy, we've never had a female professor before. I'm proud and delighted by this development."

I have to say I wish Tracey all the luck in the world with this one, it isn’t something I would like to have to teach as often the results are unpredictable.

I went to Westwood Cross today, something I rarely do and once again was struck by the restrictions of the infrastructure, having spent about half an hour in a traffic jam we eventually managed to park. One is only too aware that the number of shoppers there, is limited by the number who can actually get there and park.

The net result of all this is when we got into the shops they weren’t especially busy.

With all of the depressing news about shops and traditional town centres, I really can’t understand what is happening in Ramsgate town centre at the moment, nearly all of the previously empty shops seem to have been taken, a lot by national chains and have either reopened or are about to.

I am learning to sew at the moment so you can say this post is the displacement therapy while I work what I work out just what it is I have done wrong.

So be warned I may ramble on some more, in fact if the piece of fabric I am working on at the moment doesn’t soon respond to the fine tuning sledgehammer it may be a very long post indeed.

Thanet Under the Red Flag, government by the people for the people?

2011-12-14T11:59:00.001Z

A week in politics is a long time, and by the end of tomorrow the new Labour leadership will have had a week to settle down, I will be tackling them about local issues, mostly Ramsgate issues, not because I think Ramsgate should have any preferential treatment, but because Ramsgate is where I am and it is the issues that I understand the best.

It does look as though the new administration are going to be a bit better at with the internet, I have already received and posted their press release about last night’s cabinet meeting, see http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-tdc-labour-cabinet-leading-by.html

Nothing yet from the opposition, perhaps they are yet to find their feet in this position, they don’t even seem to have posted details of their shadow cabinet.

Well I say nothing, there is the rather strange post on Cllr Simon Moores’s blog Thanet Life, see http://birchington.blogspot.com/2011/12/touch-of-class.html saying that he received a notification from the new leader on sub standard stationary.

At first I thought this was supposed to be humorous, it seems that Simon craved Basildon Bond, which is I believe stationary used mostly by the lower middle classes.

At least it seems Simon knows his place, Clive Hart on the other hand is harder to judge, in terms of political manuscripts on lined paper I was a bit spoiled for choice.

I may ramble on if I get time.

A couple of other notes here:

First there has been a large influx of forged banknotes, especially £20 notes into Thanet, you can normally check that they are ok inconspicuously as the writing “BANK 0F ENGLAND” is raised on the real ones and you can feel it even in a dimly lit bar.

The other is that TDC have just fed a two week old press release and it has just appeared on Simon’s blog in the two week ago position as though nothing has happened in between, well I thought it was funny.

One view of the Thanet blogs

2011-12-13T21:58:00.003Z

The whole Thanet blogging scene like the Thanet political scene is on the change so I have updated http://thanetblogs.blogspot.com/ adding Will Scobie’s blog and Ville Views blog to the site.

The idea of http://thanetblogs.blogspot.com/ is to be able to keep up with the comment as well as the posts on the main Thanet blogs, it’s very much an old fashioned, seat of the pants no frills computing site, lifting the info very quickly from the other sites.

I find it particularly useful when using an internet phone to keep up with the local dialogue.

Still on the computing front, do you reckon you could tell a phishing site from a real one, try the quiz at http://www.opendns.com/phishing-quiz/ I got two wrong, although this was because I was a bit over cautious.

Anyone recognise the picture above and what’s happened?

The answer shown in the picture above, if you look carefully at the first picture the one at the top of the post, you will see this lump had become detached at the bottom where someone has driven into it.

Amazing design a concrete lump too low to see at the end of disabled parking spaces, perhaps the disabled drivers bumping into them is some sort of Turnip Prize exhibit.

Thanet District Council and the new Conservative cabinet what went wrong? A bit of a ramble.

2011-12-12T15:54:00.005Z

I suppose that so much of the comment, interest, whatever you like to call it has been focused on John Worrow, that the main long term problem for any council with no overall majority has to face, hasn’t really been mentioned.

This is how the governing group manages the independents and opposition councillors.

The new Conservative cabinet in Thanet started in an unusual position, in as much as they were poles apart from the old Conservative cabinet of Ezekiel & Co. so they inherited a situation where the previous cabinet, while theoretically on the same side and therefore difficult for them to criticise, was viewed by them as something not very good.

I think the new Conservative group viewed themselves as a group of academics, inhabiting a somewhat higher country of the mind than the geography the rest of us inhabit.

This higher country of the mind is also an area often inhabited by senior local government officers, lets face it if you can’t get job as a captain of industry and you can’t get a job as a senior civil servant in national government, you can’t get a job at county level, well I don’t suppose I have to draw a diagram.

When it comes to dealing with the problems in local government, it is having a very complex set of rules and producing intricate paperwork that fills the bill and ensures you keep your job, the maxim being. Make it long make it complicated make it up if you have to.

With the internet I have caught them out on several occasions and posted about it, they take a very complex document, that probably even they don’t understand and lift it from another council’s website, replacing the word Thanet with the name of the other council.

Now the council cabinet are supposed to represent the people of Thanet, and the officers are supposed to present the information for the decision of the cabinet in a form that ordinary people can understand.

What seems to have happened is that our new intellectual cabinet, we shall call them the collegiate after the fictional character College, the tramp; went of for a tramp through the high country of the mind with the officers. Well this was all fine and dandy, in these ebony towers it isn’t necessary understand what is going on, just that they appear to, until they had to hand out chairs to the independents.

Well it seems one of the independents didn’t understand the rules here and visibly failed to understand what was probably incomprehensible anyway, to which the collegiate responded along the lines of, you’re just not clever enough to understand the framework.

I had a bit of this sort of nonsense over Pleasurama, I pointed out to the councillors and the officers, that the EA officer with the qualifications in costal engineering, had said that come a big tide and storm, the thousand or so people living in the new development could all be trapped inside.

I said to them, look the only expert who has pronounced on this thing says it needs pedestrian escapes and a risk assessment. I was assured that this didn’t matter as all the proper procedures had been followed, as though this would hold back the sea.

Anyway no one likes to be perceived as stupid, so after a lot of failed smoothing out, this independent voted against the Conservatives. This surprised the others as they had all agreed to vote for them, one did and the other one abstained, well you know the rest.

After this and even more amusing was that the other two Birchington Conservative councillors voted against the Conservatives and with Labour for their free parking.

How things will go now are a bit hard to say, I think Sandy Ezekiel is up before the beak next week, so how that pans out could effect the Conservative numbers for a while.

With this following the rules thing, the latest laugh is on the sidebar of Thanet life, as I predicted in my previous post the council have put up the new cabinet posts, that they should have put up last Friday today, but as they can’t admit that they forgot to do it on time, it appeared there date stamped Friday.

I suppose the a good example of this is the current tangle over Europe, the eurocrats have built a whole continent based of the expansion of legislation and bureaucracy.

Now pretty much everyone can see that the countries of Europe managed to rub along by having exchange rates between their currencies.

If the Germans all rushed around being productive, while the Spanish sat outside the taverna and the Spanish economy went a bit pear shaped, the value of the peseta became less so Spanish holidays became cheaper, more people went there on holiday and the Spanish economy improved.

Masses of eurocrats and members from all countries have to do something, usually something expensive, billions were spent on the single currency, and it doesn’t work.

Well the Germans are printing Marks, which seems to be the nearest anyone has come to saying it was just a mistake.

I suppose they could get rid of nearly all of the people involved and go back to a common market, throw all of the European legislation out of the window, I don’t see much chance though.

I find as Europe progressed through this grand dream I have more European friends and one thing they all seem to have in common is a dislike for the great central bureaucracy.

I wonder if there is a way to government at any level, where it common sense that prevails.

Back to the collegiate cabinet and the notion that they had drifted of into some high country of the mind where they thought the complexities of running Thanet requires superior minds and that only they were capable of running our little island.

I suppose the culmination of this was losing the confidence vote in their leader they carried the thing through to what they saw as the logical conclusion and put the same man up for election by the same people who had just voted him out.

Did they I wonder, feel that there was no other Conservative councillor that would get the votes of the independents and the Conservative councillor who had defected. After all the votes of all the other Conservative councillors would be guaranteed pretty much whichever of their number they put up for election.

Perhaps it was just because they really had no plan B, kamikaze perhaps, anyone got any ideas?

I was wondering if this has ever happened before, I mean a politician losing a vote of confidence and then being put up for election again by his party in front of the people who have just voted him down, I can’t find any incidence of this elsewhere historically, can anyone else?

I may ramble on a bit more.

Ramsgate harbour Slipways Plans, nice railway shed shame about the waves.

2011-12-10T15:28:00.003Z

This is one of those last chance to have your say things, it relates to the well known local developer, who has recently been responsible for the restoration of the Custom House and the Marina Restaurant, both very attractive and viable developments.

The Custom House is now the home to Ramsgate Town Council and because of the way this has been arranged, the subletting of the other parts of the building mean that the parts used by the council are effectively rent free.

Commercially the difficulty with the slipways partly relates to their commercial viability and partly to the commercial viability of Ramsgate Harbour without slipways.

The slipway operators take on this, being that only slipway No1 is commercially viable, this viability is partly related to the rent and rates for the site, the rent being set by TDC and the rates by the Inland Revenue.

Slipway 4 is really just a bit of sloping concrete with a trolley on it that leads into the workshops and has really been replaced by the TDC owned lifting cradle, in fact the lifting cradle means that much of the work on the smaller craft can be done without the slipways, so the cradles very existence renders the whole slipway operation less viable.

Slipway 2’s cradle (the bit that goes up and down on the rails) was condemned by TDC a couple of years ago and hasn’t been replaced.

The TDC owned lifting cradle (don't get your cradles muddled or you bring up the wrong baby) near the harbour gates has limitations, both in terms of weight and in terms of the beam (width) of the vessels that can use it.

Slipway 3 has mostly been used for the windfarms catamarans (wide twin hulled vessels) during the last couple of years. These are both to wide and too heavy for the lifting cradle.

Slipway 1 has to stay whatever happens as it is a heritage lump, a listed Victorian slipway. Slipway one is mostly used for much larger vessels, often for replating and when a vessel is on slipway one (one has been stuck on it for about the last 3 months awaiting parts) the only way to get the windfarm vessels out of the water, for repairs and maintenance is to use slipway 3.

The overall commercial viability of the harbour is a difficult one, it seems to have an income from mooring and port fees in the multimillion pound a year bracket and harbour maintenance appears to have been fairly minimal over the past few years.

I am no accountant, so I can’t extrapolate what actual income TDC receive from the harbour, but assume it is a fair amount.

Part of the problem here is that TDC haven’t yet produced their harbour master plan, so it is difficult to tell how vital the slipways are to the overall long-term commercial viability of the harbour.

Most especially this relates to the windfarm vessels, it is unclear just how vital the long term use of the slipways is to the windfarm operators, obviously it would detrimental to TDC’s income if they took their operation elsewhere.

Another factor with the windfarm vessels is that they are new and still under warranty, so the work on them is mostly done by firms from outside the area, this means that there is very little to be derived, in the way of income, for the slipway operator for letting them use the slipways.

Anyway what happened was that the developer bought half of the lease from the slipways operator for £90,000 and TDC issued a separate split lease to him, roughly covering the area for slipways 2 to 4.

There is an added problem here, which is did TDC issue the lease with the full knowledge that the developer wanted to use the site as a bar and restaurant complex? Meaning that if TDC try to enforce the terms of the lease i.e. that the site be used for ship repairs, could this be open to a legal dispute?

One last thing on the lease, which is that I think when it was issued officers omitted the side access to the maritime museum, which if this was just a mistake, could lead to more delays in granting the maritime museum lease.

That was the background, so now onto the planning applications, the first application was for the modern brightly coloured development in the picture.

Apart from all of the problems mentioned above, for me the main problem was the flood risk assessment presented with these plans.

This flood risk assessment had various flaws the most glaring of which was that the flood risk assessor had made an error and confused Mean High Tide with Maximum High Tide.

Whatever the financial implications of the development, it was obvious that a building, inhabited parts of which would definitely flood, was a non starter, so my main objection to the first development was on the grounds that the flood risk assessment was wrong.

One of the factors with planning applications is that if they get turned down, then you have a limited time in which to reapply before you have to start all over again and pay the planning fee again, this can be several thousand pounds.

So I think there was a bit of a rush getting this one in, when I looked at the application I soon realised that they had used the faulty flood risk assessment that had been a major factor in the council’s turning down of the previous plans.

Something important to understand with flood risk assessments and the business of building on the foreshore is that the sea has waves, so you have to make an allowance for what the Environment Agency call RIZ, they explain this in their letter to the council about the Pleasurama development, click on the link to read it http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/ea/

Usually design of this sort of development design revolves around two factors, the height of the sea defence in front of it, relative to the maximum high tide, and the distance that it is behind the sea defence to allow for wave dissipation.

Both of the applications for building on the slipways involve building part of the new development on a small pier above the sea, so there will be no wave dissipation, plus the added problem of any floating objects getting trapped below the development and being impacted into the bottom of the development by wave action.

Now the latest development the one that looks like an Edwardian railway shed, was designed by one of the senior planning officers who has just left the council, so you would have assumed that he would have known about this.

In fact I am very surprised that he has put the cart before the horse in this way, the normal approach, I would have thought, would be to do the flood risk assessment first and then design the building to be safe within the constraints of the existing environment.

Anyway when I went to object to this development based mostly on the fact that the flood risk assessment was wrong, I spoke to the officer in charge of the application, who said that the wrong flood risk assessment had been submitted and I could delay my objection until he let me know that the right assessment had been submitted and I had had a chance to check it was ok.

I also had a chat with the developer, who said pretty much the same and that the assessment would be with the council in few days. Much more than a few days passed and so I contacted the officer in charge of the application.

He said that the new flood risk assessment still hadn’t been submitted and as time is running out on this one, I would need to object in the next few days, based on the existing, wrong assessment.

So if you want to comment on this one, you had better be quick.

The main planning reference is L/TH/11/0875 the council’s planning website is http://www.ukplanning.com/thanet

The council’s planning website is a strange place and there seems to be pretty much the same application filed under the ref F/TH/11/0874 I can’t link to the plans as unlike normal websites the web address of the page the plans are on doesn’t stay the same.

The first applications relating to the previous brightly coloured development are: The one to demolish the slipways workshops winding houses etc L/TH/10/0736 and the development F/TH/10/0737 may be helpful in trying to assess this new one.

The officer tells me that the retention of the slipways for continued viability of the harbour as a whole are a valid reason for objection too.

On a more personal note here I think there is the whole business of the expanding café culture to consider, my guess is that rather like the case in Whitstable, the background of a real working harbour is a major attraction.

On the face of it the working fishing boat environment can be fairy disruptive and sometimes rather smelly, but it is something real going on and is obviously a major factor in the very successful regeneration of Whitstable.

With the fast train, Ramsgate is now a faster and easier commute to London than Whitstable is, regeneration is now extending from the café culture into the High Street with new shops opening.

I think there is a very real danger that the part of the harbour next to the café culture could turn into just a parking area for expensive and somewhat similar boats, not really much of an attraction.

Thanet District Council, the red flag flies high, what next.

2011-12-09T16:35:00.005Z

Last night Thursday at 20.29 the change of leadership was confirmed, you would have though that this would have been of some interest to council officers, at 8.47 they posted to their facebook wall http://www.facebook.com/pages/Thanet-District-Council/83700846372?sk=wallstrangely what they posted a press release from much earlier in the day “Newington development”

No mention of the change of leadership there even now 20 hours later, one would have though after the mess up over the promoting of the royal visit they would have sorted out their facebook wall, most teenagers seem to manage to this OK.

A scout around the local blogs took me to Cllr Simon Moores Thanet Life blog where Simon posted about the change of leadership, see http://birchington.blogspot.com/2011/12/hard-left-turn-for-thanet.html

Interestingly on the Thanet Life sidebar is a bit called MY BLOG LIST and one of the blogs on Simon’s list is the council’s very own news called “Thanet District Council news feed” don’t worry it won’t eat you, the feed bit is just computer jargon leaking out.

This hungry thing is time stamped, and goodness me the officers must have been watching The Scry at Night in their crystal balls, sorry about that, I meant watching their members through a wormhole in time, it seems they announced the demise of Bob Bayford two hours before it happened.

I have been trying to find out where we go from here, by this I mean, do the Conservatives table a vote of no confidence in Clive Hart at the next council meeting, perhaps the conservative group have a plan B which involves spiking the Labour groups drinks with laxatives before the next council meeting.

Perhaps the Conservatives have another candidate in mind, one who the independents would get on better with, one whom other Conservative would get along better with, perhaps they will revisit the elected leader idea, all a bit hard to say really.

Me I’m only trying to trade in one of the Thanet towns, customers battle up the narrow pavements (the council didn’t finish off the pedestrianisation to the publicly consulted plans of “Impact, Labour or conservative I can’t remember, I think Impact was a Conservative initiative, so probably Labour) through the groups of unemployable yelling obscenities, moved here by the social engineering initiative (possibly down to the London boroughs, or anyone who complained about them in Newington or Millmead, I think I am blaming the Conservatives for this one, Boris’s social cleansing plan) oh yes, along the broken uneven pavements (probably down to KCC that would be a Conservative problem) around the groups of smoking inebriates outside the pubs (definitely down to Labour, that one)

It is beginning to look as though the council staff have gone home for the weekend without posting the details of the new cabinet posts, so here they are

Cllr. Alan Poole is the council’s new Deputy Leader. The other members of Cabinet are as follows:

Cabinet Member (Labour)	Portfolio
Cllr. Clive Hart	Economic Development and Regeneration (which also includes the Port ofRamsgate, harbours, strategic planning and Dreamland)
Cllr. Iris Johnston	Community Services (which includes housing need and homelessness, private sector housing, housing intervention, the Margate Task Force, licensing and land charges, community safety, parking, sport, art, museums, the Thanet Coast Project, indoor and outdoor leisure, play services and events)
Cllr. Alan Poole	Environmental Services (which includes waste and recycling, street cleaning, public toilets, environmental health, coastal protection, parks, allotments, building control, general estate management, crematorium and cemeteries, asset management, planning applications, planning enforcement and conservation)
Cllr. Rick Everitt	Performance (which includes financial services, governance and risk, legal services, democratic services, contract management and corporate information and communications)
Cllr. Michelle Fenner	Partnerships and Tourism (which includes shared services, such as East Kent Housing, human resources, East Kent Audit, customer services, revenues and benefits and IT services)

Perhaps they will appear soon predated to the time they should have done it, presumably before I posted them.

I suppose the problem for the Labour group now is securing some support from the independents, my guess is that Jack Cohen is more anti Bob Bayford than pro Labour.

It is a pity that the dealings with the independents go down the road of handing out lucrative seats, I suppose the council mindset is framed around what councillors get from their posts.

I may continue this one.

Bob Bayford is voted out by a 28/26 vote

2011-12-08T20:25:00.012Z

I believe the candidates for leader are Bob Bayford and Clive Hart.

This suggests a sort of confused arrogance on the part of the local Conservative group, to put up the same man for leadership candidate who has just been voted out as leader.

Clive Hart is now the new leader of the council.

I am hoping that at the very least we will get some sort of continuity for a while.

It would have been 28/27 if Simon Moores had been there, councillor Tom King obstained.

Not really sure what difference having a Labour council will make, perhaps an end to night flights, possibly some sort of cabinet representation for Ramsgate.

One thing I can say in Clive Hart’s favour is that he does respond to my emails.

I am not really sure what sort of a leader Bob was, my personal opinion was a bit on the lazy side, or I would have had more from him in the way of replies.

What amazes my is the ineptitude of the Conservative group in putting him up as candidate immediately after him losing a confidence vote, it suggests a complete lack of aptitude for managing a council with no overall majority.

Unless I suppose they were so certain that they were going to lose that they didn’t bother putting anyone else up.

Politically I am very much a floating voter, so I can assure readers that a TDC labour administration will get just as hard a time from me as the Conservative ones have.

I suppose the main question is, will this be better or worse for Thanet? The other question is will the Labour group be better at getting the wishes of local people pressed above the wishes of the senior council officers, most of whom live outside Thanet.