Having done everything I could think of to get the council to promote this weekend’s events in some sort of balanced way, I had a look to see if there had been any improvement.They seem to have balanced thing up by deleting everything from their homepage that relates to events that are happening this weekend in Thanet.
The link to “Heritage Open Days come to Margate” has gone, it is hard to say if this was by accident or design, as the other part of their homepage that promotes local events removes them for the day that they are actually on.
This means that http://communityportal.thanet.gov.uk/events/event/?EventID=610 that they were promoting yesterday, isn’t there today, because today is the day the event is actually happening, this happens to all of the events posted in the part of their homepage called “Events”.
The bizarre nature of this part of their homage doesn’t stop there, the top event there is “Murderers, Magicians, Madmen and Monarchs” if you click on this link it takes you to another page on the council’s website http://www.thanet.gov.uk/Events.aspx?EventID=561
This page tells you all about the event, apart that is from where the event is happening.
The next link in the list is called “An evening with World Tree Music” this event isn’t even in Thanet.
All of this would perhaps be amusing if it wasn’t for two things, one being that we are paying for this website and the other that we are paying for the council, to open various council owned buildings this weekend.
The council run tourism website isn’t much better, see http://www.visitthanet.co.uk/ some events are there if you look hard enough, some are not.
The fundamental problem here is that the council’s tourist information officers, the people who actually know what’s on in Thanet, don’t appear to have the facility to control and publish what is on any of the councils various web pages that are about what’s supposed to be on.
Something like a simple page showing the week's main events in Thanet just doesn’t exist and with so much of our economy based on the hope of getting people from other areas to visit Thanet, this sort of chaos isn’t good.
Anyone who doubts this only has to try and use the internet to find out what’s on here, with the council monopolising most of the high search engine results with various different and failed web presences, that claim to answer the simple question, what’s on in Thanet?
You are right to highlight this Michael - it's a pretty poor show. And these people are actually being paid!!
ReplyDeleteMichael, I took you at your word and put 'What's on in Thanet' into a google search. Up came a page whence I proceeded to 'Browse all events' and there they were neatly tabulated including Margate's Heritage Event and where as well as when. Seems things can be found from a not desperately complicated search process.
ReplyDelete19.16 I followed your instructions and found 5 of the 17 heritage events that I believe were on in Thanet today, on the next page I found links to 4 of the 18 that I believe are on tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteThe first link is to European Day of Jewish Culture and Heritage, it says this is taking place at Ramsgate Harbour. This takes you to a visit Thanet website page http://www.visitthanet.co.uk/thedms.asp?dms=13&p1=db&p2=ev&feature=1037&GroupId=1&venue=3201210&easi=true that tell you the event is at Thanet & District Reform Synagogue, Margate Road, Ramsgate.
At the end of the page it says that access is from: Honeysuckle Road, Ramsgate CT11 8AA Dumpton Park Drive, Ramsgate CT11 8AD, entrance east of the Montefiore Medical Centre.
This is about a mile and a half away.
Sorry to point this out so graphically, but this is what happens when IT officers, who are evidently geographically disadvantaged, try to write a leisure website, instead if facilitating simple IT provisions that enable tourist information officers to do so.