Looking along Ramsgate seafront from the old marina pool site where most local people I have spoken to want our new swimming pool but our politicians won’t even give that as an option in consultation despite the site being earmarked for one. Next comes the olds Nero’s demolished by the council despite my protests. Then you come to arches under the road running down the cliff some of which look very dangerous indeed and our strange change from a one-way road with parking spaces facing either the cliff or the sea to an unnecessary two-way road with no parking. Next the council built wall of sand that we presumably paid for, totally out of scale with the height of the waves in a normal sea and washed away in the next few days. Then the Pleasurama experiment in crippling the town by giving the architect an impossible remit, I wonder what happened to insurance money from the Pleasurama fire. On to the pavilion half empty with all its windows blocked up spoiled by a bad rich tenant and the council not implementing the most basic control over the way they treated the building. Then the cliff behind Kent terrace the façade visibly parting next to the houses I am told by experts in danger of collapsing. Then the harbour so badly silted up that even the ferries have started going aground. Then the port the harbour extensions built without a sand proof membrane or any understanding of the tidal flow in the bay and the buildings that were supposed to be screened from view by being next to the cliff, looking like prefabs that can be removed at a moments notice. Then the western undercliff used as a lorry park and lorry drivers toilet, behind it the motor museum and model village both gone. The disused lift where water collects in a deep pool at the top of the cliff next to it a sure sign of imminent cliff collapse and lack of the most basic maintenance. Do you think we have been short changed here in Ramsgate by both administrations?
It seems someone has forgotten the way councils take bids. They use a points system that means that any company bidding less than all the others automatically gets the contract regardless of merit. If interested I can show you an endless tour of such less public short order failed works that the council swears blind was "to standard" because the company that did the work "carried out tests" after.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that this kind of test was (a) not suited to the work, (b) meaninglessly easy to fabricate due to conflict of interests and (c) known in the industry as not being so reliable and (d) the completion was announced in the press while work was ongoing meant nothing to them. After three years I have given up and have only gained a stalker from within the council's collection of civil servants for all the photographic evidence I collected.
Just be careful - Thanet is not a civil place to complain.
I would say we are being short changed Michael. It's hard to know whether it's due to incompetent administrations, or, as matt b hints, barefaced corruption. Whatever the reason, it's about time it stopped and this place got its act together.
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