Sunday Ramble

I took my youngest children to healey on the cliff top in Broadstairs, so there will be some pictures of there eventually, healeying – not sure of the spelling – involves moving around in trainers with wheels set in the heals. I expect this is theoretically bad for them so we compounded the mission with Happy Meals at McDonald’s helium balloons and free kaleidoscopes included.

The sunshine, the weather in general was superb for the time of year, much more like spring than winter, the children put an imaginary coin into the clifftop binoculars, something that doesn’t normally work, however it worked today.

First a glance at the other local blogs for anything that could remotely be called a local news story, especially one not covered by the remaining local newspapers.

This involves looking at blogs that have posted in the last week and appear in “the latest posts on other blogs” thing on my sidebar, if I have missed any with even the remotest local connection please let me know and I will add them.

There is quite a bit of local interest on Simon Moores Thanet Life blog this week, see http://birchington.blogspot.com/ and as Simon must get the award for the most communicative councillor, when it comes to the internet, he also comes in for a mild amount of teasing from me in these Sunday rambles.

I will take his latest post for this http://birchington.blogspot.com/2011/01/where-did-they-go.html which seems to suggest that all Conservative politicians are good and all Labour politicians are bad.

Pity things aren’t as simple as this or we could devise a political truth test based on the old riddle, something along the following lines.

All Conservative politicians tell the truth and all Labour politicians lie, so how do you spot the lie, if you are asking a politician but you don’t know which party they belong to?

The answer is to ask them, if I ask a member of the other main political party is asked (any question) what will there answer be? The answer will always be a lie, oh well perhaps there is something in this after all.

Ken Gregory on his Village Voice blog, see http://villagevoices.blogspot.com/2011/01/so-whats-new.html says he is about to reveal all. I really think the council should consider stopping their member exercising sessions, surely they can see it leads to trouble.

Perhaps the new chief executive will put a stop to this as not only is she to be female but also has the same name as famous Scottish poet.

Here are the today’s pictures of Broadstairs http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/netbook111/id3.htm my children were particularly pleased with the roadworks that left the whole pier area free of traffic for them.

Matt on Thanet Star has picked up on a Commercial Group Properties release that they are issuing more shares see http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ThanetStar/~3/wlVUUIFEiQw/is-the-china-gateway-in-trouble this looks to me to be a way of transferring money for day to day running from the directors other companies.

I should think the deal they have done to raise another loan from the Israeli Discount Bank is of more significance as there is a profit sharing aspect and presumably punitive interest involved.

This is the firm behind the China Gateway development at Manston, they had hoped to finance their operation for some time to come by selling their Dover property, but the sale fell through.

Back to today’s outing, something that is not to be scorned about McDonald’s is that that they now do reasonable coffee and have a good strong WiFi connection, if like me you travel about with some sort of portable computer, this can be very useful.

With the help of Simon who works for me on Saturdays, I have now got my mobile phone configured so that I can get a cheap internet connection just about anywhere, this is a pay as you go PDA phone with a £20 for six months internet add on.

The connection isn’t as fast as WiFi and wouldn’t be any good for publishing a load of pictures like I have just done, but it is quite adequate for posting and commenting on blogs. You can also use the modem in the phone to get your laptop online.

Tony Bignews Margate is once again getting stuck into the excesses of KCC, http://bignewsmargate.blogspot.com/2011/01/is-our-conservative-kent-council-guilty.html you have to admire his tenacity and personally having recently attempted to publish blog posts using a mobile phone, something Tony does regularly, that too.

Reading the KCC page that Tony links to http://www.kent.gov.uk/news_and_events/news_archive/statement_on_rosalind_turner.aspx it is looking as though the word restructuring is changing its meaning in the English language.

I had the same word used to explain to me a local paper ceasing to be a paper, see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2011/01/read-all-about-it-your-thanet-gone-as.html perhaps restructuring will come to mean, sacking and business failure soon.

As I have mentioned before small pieces of personal technology, that I carry around with me, don’t last very long, the latest victim being the pocket camera that I usually keep in my pocket. This was a Ricoh Caplio GX a state of the art camera in 2004, if you have one of these I recommend that you buy it a screen protector.

I notice Ken Gregory has put up another post, at least this time he doesn’t say he will reveal all, but it does say that it will put an end to rumours, the only rumour I remember recently surrounding Ken was that he has been deselected, Sorry I should have said restructured, by the TDC Conservative group for the May elections.

Perhaps his posts are some sort of beginning of a rather obstruce election campaign, are we I wonder about to se the formation of the local Rumour party?

I am reading Julian Stockwin’s novel “Invasion” at the moment which has an excellent account of a Deal hoveling in it, this is one of his series of Napoleonic novels about the Royal Navy, if you like the Hornblower novels you will probably like these. I haven’t checked but I expect we have several available secondhand in the bookshop.

Dave Green on Eastcliff Matters has posted about the closure of the firestation at Westwood, see http://eastclifframsgate.blogspot.com/2011/01/ramsgate-fire-station-to-close.html he says this could happen as early as April. He then goes on to say that specialist vehicles would be moved to the new fire station at Ramsgate. I don’t k now is this is some sort of early April fools joke from Dave, or if he knows something that I don’t, as far as I know the new fire station at Ramsgate hasn’t even reached the planning stage yet, I don’t think they have even agreed a site yet. There is a rumour that they may use the old gasworks site in Ramsgate, I don’t quite know what the implications would be in building a fire station on highly contaminated land, I suppose there could be risks associated with water used in fire practices on the site draining away and spreading the contamination.

An interesting comment from Roger Gale this week, he says that if he could afford it he would by a property in Margate, see http://www.yourthanet.co.uk/p_148/Article/a_10522/Margate_tipped_to_be_2011_property_investment_hotspot

I will ramble on if I get a chance.