Last night Thursday at 20.29 the change of leadership was confirmed, you would have though that this would have been of some interest to council officers, at 8.47 they posted to their facebook wall http://www.facebook.com/pages/Thanet-District-Council/83700846372?sk=wallstrangely what they posted a press release from much earlier in the day “Newington development”
No mention of the change of leadership there even now 20 hours later, one would have though after the mess up over the promoting of the royal visit they would have sorted out their facebook wall, most teenagers seem to manage to this OK.
A scout around the local blogs took me to Cllr Simon Moores Thanet Life blog where Simon posted about the change of leadership, see http://birchington.blogspot.com/2011/12/hard-left-turn-for-thanet.html
Interestingly on the Thanet Life sidebar is a bit called MY BLOG LIST and one of the blogs on Simon’s list is the council’s very own news called “Thanet District Council news feed” don’t worry it won’t eat you, the feed bit is just computer jargon leaking out.
This hungry thing is time stamped, and goodness me the officers must have been watching The Scry at Night in their crystal balls, sorry about that, I meant watching their members through a wormhole in time, it seems they announced the demise of Bob Bayford two hours before it happened.
I have been trying to find out where we go from here, by this I mean, do the Conservatives table a vote of no confidence in Clive Hart at the next council meeting, perhaps the conservative group have a plan B which involves spiking the Labour groups drinks with laxatives before the next council meeting.
Perhaps the Conservatives have another candidate in mind, one who the independents would get on better with, one whom other Conservative would get along better with, perhaps they will revisit the elected leader idea, all a bit hard to say really.
Me I’m only trying to trade in one of the Thanet towns, customers battle up the narrow pavements (the council didn’t finish off the pedestrianisation to the publicly consulted plans of “Impact, Labour or conservative I can’t remember, I think Impact was a Conservative initiative, so probably Labour) through the groups of unemployable yelling obscenities, moved here by the social engineering initiative (possibly down to the London boroughs, or anyone who complained about them in Newington or Millmead, I think I am blaming the Conservatives for this one, Boris’s social cleansing plan) oh yes, along the broken uneven pavements (probably down to KCC that would be a Conservative problem) around the groups of smoking inebriates outside the pubs (definitely down to Labour, that one)
It is beginning to look as though the council staff have gone home for the weekend without posting the details of the new cabinet posts, so here they are
It is beginning to look as though the council staff have gone home for the weekend without posting the details of the new cabinet posts, so here they are
Cllr. Alan Poole is the council’s new Deputy Leader. The other members of Cabinet are as follows:
Cabinet Member (Labour) | Portfolio |
Cllr. Clive Hart | Economic Development and Regeneration (which also includes the |
Cllr. Iris Johnston | Community Services (which includes housing need and homelessness, private sector housing, housing intervention, the Margate Task Force, licensing and land charges, community safety, parking, sport, art, museums, the Thanet Coast Project, indoor and outdoor leisure, play services and events) |
Cllr. Alan Poole | Environmental Services (which includes waste and recycling, street cleaning, public toilets, environmental health, coastal protection, parks, allotments, building control, general estate management, crematorium and cemeteries, asset management, planning applications, planning enforcement and conservation) |
Cllr. Rick Everitt | Performance (which includes financial services, governance and risk, legal services, democratic services, contract management and corporate information and communications) |
Cllr. Michelle Fenner | Partnerships and Tourism (which includes shared services, such as East Kent Housing, human resources, East Kent Audit, customer services, revenues and benefits and IT services) |
Perhaps they will appear soon predated to the time they should have done it, presumably before I posted them.
I suppose the problem for the Labour group now is securing some support from the independents, my guess is that Jack Cohen is more anti Bob Bayford than pro Labour.
It is a pity that the dealings with the independents go down the road of handing out lucrative seats, I suppose the council mindset is framed around what councillors get from their posts.
I may continue this one.
Peter it is probably a case of trying to manage comments on an iphone, rather than deliberately not publishing your comments, I would bung him an email.
ReplyDeleteGot in one, Peter, you have no idea!
ReplyDeleteThat shut him up Peter.
ReplyDeleteWhat next?
ReplyDeletePlesurama development to be axed on grounds that the developer is too late. Garden/park put in it place.
Those Margate centric people never wanted a successful sea front development in Ramsgate.
No night flights and thus as the Manson boss threatens the airport will close.
No airport equals no China gateway.
The EKO partnership between KCC and TDC will be disolved and the land sold. Clive Hart will relish the though of getting one over on KCC after loosing his seat there.
Thus plenty of new housing around Manston and proper family homes rather than HMO. At least 30% will be social housing.
Major investment in Northdown Road.
And Cliftonville will probable get the biggest swimming pool in the world with a special lane for tdc employees and councillors!
Manson is a notorious mass murderer, incarcerated in a Californian jail. What has the boss of the prison to do with night-flights?
ReplyDeleteI see you have your silly echo back, Peter, and no, my friend, he shut no one up. Peter does not have a clue other than making short cryptic comments generally lacking in any real message. He flits from Tory to Labour, local shops to Tesco and naked ladies to Clive Hart's luvvly hair at a whim (hope I spelt that right).
ReplyDeletePeople inevitably resort to insults when they can't give intelligent answers and know that they're in the wrong.
ReplyDeleteto anonymous at 14:18,
ReplyDeleteHaving pushed Peter aside, pray what is it that you have to offer that is so erudite and enlightening.
You may be offended by Peter's remarks; but surely you must acknowledge his integrity bearing in mind that he does not hide his identity behind anonymous.
To anonymous at 14:18,
ReplyDeleteYou have asked for a check of your spelling: 'whim' is correct. However, no dictionary has yet defined your word 'luvvy'. Can you please clarify.
I would say that the main thing the combined councils TDC and KCC could have done to mitigate the effects Westwood Cross decimating the town centres would have been a well thought out parking plan.
ReplyDeleteOne of the problems is that the councils get the revenue for parking directly, but the business rates revenue is apportioned back to them through central government, so there isn’t a financial incentive to keep the shops open. In fact if the shops are converted to residential the benefit.
The increased parking restrictions where I am trying to trade, when related to no increase where the parking is significantly more hazardous near to my children’s school, is suggestive of some influence from the out of town shopping chains.
John
Luvvy
(also luvvie)
noun (plural luvvies)
British informal
1 often derogatory an actor or actress, especially one who is particularly effusive or affected:
it’s a rough deal for the poor luvvies being paid to watch movies and party.
Oxford English Dictionary.
However 14.18 luvvly doesn’t apper.
Thank you Michael, But then neither does the word 'apper' appear. [Sorry, I couldn't resist that]
ReplyDeleteAh I see what you mean John, I have turned of predictive text on my android and crave after the old Windows Mobile phone with a proper keyboard and spell checker that one of my children has inherited.
ReplyDeletePeter and Echo, a pregnant pause may have given your dual postings some credibility, but you are not even smart enough for that. You are out of your league, sunshine, so live with it.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, local government employee is not my scene, with or without free parking.
John, the word was 'luvvly' not 'luvvy' and was more intended as the Thames Estuary vernacular version than the Oxford dictionary. As to my contribution, it was but some pay back for the many snide and belittling comments I have had to take from nature boy from time to time.
ReplyDeleteWhilst he frequently decries the anonymous contributor he is not above using such label himself to support his own, invariably facetious, comments. Hence mt
y reference to his echo.
I will, as I normally do, return to the thread having had this little exchange.
Bit of finger trouble there and 'mt y' should be just 'my'- due apologies to all those reaching for their dictionaries.
ReplyDeleteThe villages generally do much better than the major towns in Thanet as well as being nicer places to live. So what's to suggest. Free parking in Minster maybe?
ReplyDeletePeter I think the problem here is that the previous administration had isolated themselves from Thanet, apart from their own patch, central Margate to visit the council offices and possibly Westwood to do some shopping.
ReplyDeleteIn many cases I think they just didn’t believe the issues people raised, and were much more receptive to offices answers.
I know it’s my old gripe, but Pleasurama is the issue that I understand in the most detail so I will use it as an example, pretty much everyone in Ramsgate sees it regularly, including the officers.
On the gates there is a sign saying that it has a HSE licence for two years that is just about to run out, this licence is for 200 people working on the site, over the whole of the two years the maximum number of workers on the site has been 4, it doesn’t take much to work out that at this rate it will take 100 years to build. So no assurances that it is on target are likely to be believed.
The council spent about a million pounds having cliff wall fixed, almost as soon as the scaffolding came down the cracks started appearing and the weeds started growing out of them. Now no matter what assurances that officers give that the repair has worked properly, we the councillors who live here can see that something has gone wrong.
Then there is the look of the work that has actually been done on the site, everyone who has lived in the town for any length of time knows that the site is subject to storm damage from the sea.
Some will be old enough to remember the storm in the late 1970s when part of the harbour wall, consisting or 3 ton granite blocks was washed away over night and the sea stove in the doors along the front Pleasurama and flooded the inside.
The construction just doesn’t look strong enough to deal with what was a fairly minor storm.
As a Minster resident (moved over from Ramsgate about 18 months ago) I can tell you that there is a free car park in the centre of the village and I don't know of anywhere in the village where people have to pay to park. Our shops are thriving, off the top of my head we have:
ReplyDelete3 Pubs
1 RBL Club
Small Supermarket
Post Office
Butchers
Greengrocers
Bakers
Pharmacy
Fish & Chip Shop
Chinese Restaurant
Italian Restaurant
Indian Restaurant
Haberdashery
Kebab Shop
Hairdressers
3 Charity Shops
plus more
So, maybe there is something in this free parking thing....
A good example RossM.
ReplyDeleteWingham also has a free car park in the centre of town and its High St appears to be doing well.
[I know that Wingham is not in Thanet]