As a local businessman the removal of Ramsgate’s main sands car park for an ill-conceived roundabout is one of the most irritating things that has happened in town this year. As you see the people building it down there are taking up concrete surface and replacing it with cobbles and slabs sitting on loose sand, even right next to the edge of the sea defence, what do they think will happen in a big storm, which would turn them into dangerous projectiles? These people just don’t seem to have any experience of the problems associated with building on a sea defence, how do they think rescue vehicles would get through in a tidal surge storm at night with waves full of their cobbles. It effectively prevents any chance of the residents getting out via Augusta stairs without being stoned to death.Well it was on the approved plans but so are people’s heads are shown embedded in the concrete ceiling and vehicles are shown concreted into the roof of the car park, I am beginning to wonder if it is intended that these should be real features of the competed building.
Incidentally I notice the Isle of Thanet Gazette have done an article on some of the Titanic aspects of the Pleasurama development.
Obviously I know nothing about construction, and I do think the cobbled roundabout is or shortly will be very pretty - is it sensible to do this just before a year's worth of construction and plant machinery are due to go over it? Even if they ar eusing the other end for main access, there's bound to be a load of site traffic this end, and yet they seem to eb doing the final tidying-up first. Cunning.
ReplyDeleteAnd full marks Michael for finally prising offical communication about flood risk on to the agenda... I'd have thought all you need to do is make sure it's seen by the banks and insurance companies and this development will have its funding withdrawn quicker than a sailing ship can say "we're not coming, there's winds forecast". (Yes I am a little bitter...)
What can I say? Good work on Pleasurama Michael. I’m not sure about the cobblestones, whether they will end up as projectiles?
ReplyDeleteOn reflection, I think it’s best to think of us rather like the characters in “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” with the Vogon Constructor Fleet hoving into view above Ramsgate. As soon as we all realize that the power of local government is really a metaphor for one and councillors are in fact rather closer to Arthur Dent in their powers, then perhaps we’ll all be happier!!
Arthur: All my life I've had this strange feeling that there's something big and sinister going on in the world.
ReplyDeleteSlartibartfast: No, that's perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the universe gets that.”
If there was a storm strong enough to tear up cobblestones, I think the promenade would be the least of our troubles. No-one is saying anything about those potentially lethal roof slates! Phone the council someone!
ReplyDeleteJethro its not if it’s when, see the next post as no words of mine would be as convincing as a picture in this case. If you email me details of the slates and the url of your own blog as I seem to have lost it and there is no link on your profile, I will do what I can.
ReplyDeleteNow I see what the post above was about! Michael, these guys aren't really serious about loose pretty cobbles on that location?
ReplyDeleteThis is folly at its most culpable and irresponsible. Let alone the available projectiles lifted by wave action, repairs following each storm will be costly! Are KCC highways doing this? Get on to them KCC councillors as they are wasting tax-payers money with this surfacing in this location!
Surely these are more likely to be used as projectiles by the, er, local gentry?
ReplyDelete