Margate’s Big Event and Thanet District Council Publications

Various reflections and comment on the blogs about Margate’s Big Event that can be summarised as:
Yes it was successful in terms of a lot of people being there.

It didn’t help local businesses much as it was too far away from them, if anything it took people out of the town centres.

Internet wise it wasn’t publicised properly meaning that at least one disabled person I know of missed the Red Arrows.

It wasn’t environmentally friendly.

It cost a substantial amount that could possibly been better spent elsewhere.

On reflection I would say that events like Broadstairs folk week and Dickens week probably do the most for local businesses, as they happen throughout the town with quite a lot of the events occurring during normal trading hours.

I think it probably true to say that from an environmental point of view if it didn’t happen in Margate it would probably happen elsewhere and that relative to the huge amount of car use and long distance air travel the effects of this sort of event are relatively insignificant.

In terms of cost I suspect a lot of it was met by sponsorship, something that will probably be a lot harder to find for next year, so I would imagine a certain amount of uncertainty hangs over its future.

My own opinion is that the council should be looking towards events that take place in the trading centres of the towns and adjacent to the main beaches, with the hope of revitalising them.

Now I come to council documents, many of you will know that I now have a new blog http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/ the idea being to make newly published material from Thanet District Council available in one place, properly searchable, with the right type of feeds so we can keep up with it and don’t miss anything important.

From the start it has never been my intention to criticise the council there and I am getting some cooperation from them with this site.

Here however is another matter and these are observations that come out of adding material to this site.

Council photographs, what happens to them?

Very occasionally when the council sends me a press release they also send me the accompanying photographs this happened with Margate’s Big Event press release see http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/2009/06/record-visitor-numbers-for-margate.html the pictures are of good quality, presumably paid for out of council tax, what I can’t understand is why they don’t appear on the council’s website.

Newly published documents appear in rather a bizarre place on the councils website, despite it being such an important part of their site with the most new material on it, there is no direct link on their homepage, you have to follow the following links to get there.

TDC Home Page > Council & Democracy > Councillors, Democracy & Elections > Committees.

This is made even worse by the search box on their homepage not being able to find the newly published documents, it is as though once they have done all this work they try to hide it like their pictures.

Anyway enough of that I will try to end on a high note.

First from one of the council documents I published today I noticed that the council intend to waive mooring for the Dunkirk little ships when they return to Ramsgate next year.

Also plenty of video if the big event appearing on Youtube below just an example.