I went down into the middle of Ramsgate to sign the Dreamland petition today and recommend anyone else who has time to do this.
See Will Scobie’s blog if you don’t know what this is all about http://williamscobie.blogspot.com/
News, Local history and Thanet issues from Michael's Bookshop in Ramsgate see www.michaelsbookshop.com I publish over 200 books about the history of this area click here to look at them.
Friday 6 January 2012
Dreamland Petition in Ramsgate Today
22 comments:
Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.
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S*d Dreamland, knock it all down and build decent council houses on it!!
ReplyDeleteIf Dreamland had to knocked down I can't see the point in more social housing when there aren't enough jobs in the area as it is. If they were to go to local people (which might not be the case) it will just move people out of flats in Cliftonville etc to be replaced by others possibly displaced from London due to benefit changes up there and they will then probably be unemployed due to lack of jobs.
ReplyDeleteAlso the local infrastructure does not seem to be coping very well with population levels as it is as it's hard to get a dentist, doctor and with hospital waiting lists etc etc. Some children also have to travel a fair distance to attend school. This also needs to be sorted in conjunction with extra housing.
I believe that we need to develop by bringing new businesses in to area to regenerate the area which will then improve the area with the jobs and affluence it brings and the private sector will provide housing to meet the additional demand.
What a pathetic short sighted and moronic thing to say 14:10
ReplyDeleteThere are more than enough empty homes in Margate alone to help solve the crisis in the housing stock. Just like the failed plans to destroy Thanet's open spaces, Margate's Dreamland should be regenerated into a contemporary version of its glory days, not substituted for low cost housing andall of the social implications that could bring.
Thanet IS a jewel in the crown of the entire south east, until people like you realise this we will never get anywhere,some of us are trying to make it better perhaps your energy could be better spent supporting that.
Anon 15:20 I could not agree more with your post, very well put and shows that there are some forward thinkers in Thanet.
ReplyDeleteIf the local populous would just stop moaning, get up off its backside and become involved, we would see a very different Thanet in a very short space of time.
Maybe a wish too far though....
Have no doubts the local populous were queuing up to sign the petition to get Dreamland returned to a leisure site, as they would to get the same for the Pleasurama site here in Ramsgate.
ReplyDeleteAnon 15 21
ReplyDeletesaid " not substituted for low cost housing and all of the social implications that could bring."
Much has been written elsewhere about thoughtless offensive comments and this is another prime example. The casual acceptance that everyone who lives in low cost social housing are all going to cause social problems is symptomatic of an outdated attitude to people less well off than yourself and usually found in the Conservative Party.
I can imagine that any tenant of a low cost house would be quite justified in feeling offended at such an attitude.
I am pleased to see youngsters like Will becoming involved as it shows that social concience is not dead and allows old farts like me to retire to the back benches in the knowledge that the future is in safe hands.
Totally agree Michael,the pleasurama site is a disgrace and heads should roll over the mess the whole thing has become.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it so difficult for Councillors to get off the comfy seat and actually do something about it,Hopefully clive and his team will breath some new air into the issue. Margate,Ramsgate and Broadstairs are the flagships of this isle, they are subject to utter neglect by the very people in place to promote them, whats needed is a ground swell of opinion by the populous to push forward the needed improvements, a tough call in Thanet !
Cllr Harrison:
ReplyDelete"and usually found in the Conservative Party."
As you said, isn't it awful that people tend to generalise about others....
..and no, I'm not affiliated to any party and none of my views align strictly to one political party. But this is exactly what people dislike about politics - running the other party down at every opportunity instead of saying what THEY will be doing.
Shouldn't he be in school?
ReplyDeleteCllr Harrison:
ReplyDeleteI would be interested to hear your views on:
Council meeting 16 Dec 2010; Agenda item 232 "Planning Policy Restricting Flats and the Loss of Family homes". Supporting paper: "Annex 2 - Planning Background and Evidence Paper".
Its difficult to argue with there being a need for more family houses in Thanet - particularly more *affordable* family homes.
However, the reader might be forgiven for getting the impression that this supporting paper didn't exactly express a 'glowing opinion' of people living in low-cost rented flats !
According to the minutes, this motion was passed unanimously.
"..and allows old farts like me to retire to the back benches"
ReplyDeleteAmen to that; but why not go the whole hog and retire altogether? Youngsters can't get involved whilst old crusties occupy all of the seats.
Mike I think the point here is you have to differentiate within social housing and the lower end of the rented housing, and that as social housing tends to mostly be in defined areas it is the ordinary working people living there that suffer most from its problems.
ReplyDeleteBelieve me I am right in the middle of a lot of social housing and mixed quality rented accommodation and living in a bit of a mix for that matter.
The housing of ordinary working people is what should take priority, especially those who have lived in the area for some time.
The problem is what to do with the benefit class, those people who have social problems, drug addiction and so on and what to do with the group of society who see early pregnancy as a road to housing.
Now where I live in the eastcliff area of Ramsgate there have been some problems mostly related to drop of quality of life for the ordinary working tenants when tenants with no interest in anything much but themselves have moved into the area.
Don’t get me wrong here we can and have managed a fair proportion of problem people and I can assure you the people who I am talking about are unlikely to be offended by anything much.
But there is a very real problem, particularly in areas where there is a lot of low end residential accommodation, I can in fact hear some of the problem yelling obscenities at each other outside my window as I write this.
I don’t think the anonymous commentators here really count that much, but as a real person with some considerable expedience do you have any realistic solutions.
If the new Labour administration feels the need to build affordable housing they should prioritize it to working families such as nurses, ambulance drivers, firemen, police etc.
ReplyDeleteMichael's point about the density of low end residential accomodation is one that I wholeheartedly agree with. As an example converting the former guest houses in Cliftonville to flats has resulted in some of the most deprived areas in the whole of Kent which is a disgrace.
ReplyDeleteThis has had a knock on effect on to the once thriving Northdown Road which now seems to have more than its' fair share of fast food outlets but few actual shops presumably because a lot of the flats have inadequate, poor or no kitchen facilities for residents.
Rather than knocking down Dreamland it would be better to remove some of the poorer housing in the area.
Anon 20.29
ReplyDeleteTotally agree, and the lessons still have not been learned, 86 flat were approved some time ago on the old police station, Cavendish Street, in the centre of Ramsgate. Who will occupy these? Hardly the DFL elite.
20.29 Readit I think the problem there is that this is the wrong place for more housing, too close to the prime part of the town, beach, shopping centre, Turner. If Margate is going to be revitalised the critical thing is to make the best of the main non residential sites.
ReplyDeleteYou can see that the Turner being leisure that isn’t just related to food drink and profit is starting to turn the corner for part of Margate but the whole thing really turns on the town being a viable leisure destination at the very least for a day out.
A very large site in the centre of a town like this is something that almost no towns have, this gives Margate a huge potential edge over other towns when it comes to regeneration through leisure.
Of course if you think there is potential for regeneration through manufacturing industry or some huge service industry then it changes the picture totally, but I don’t think there is at the moment.
The only one I can see is the prosperous southeast looking for a day out.
I care so little for the colour of the political scene, I do care what our councilers and TDC officers actualy do, just to remind you, Arlington house, we the Thanet People own the freehold, not TDC, not one administration, not in the past or present has enforced the maintence, WHY!!!!! so its left to rot, roll on the heritage listing
ReplyDeletethe inside has not been painted in over 25 yrs it should be done every 5 years, its got so it stinks as bad as MP's Expenses. The car park, the leasholder is told in the lease the car park must remain open, why is it closed, the insurance is not paid, thats why, who enforces the lease, TDC do so ask them why they let them get away with it. what happend at broadstairs new years eve fireworks, incompetence by TDC officers and Councilors HANG YOUR HEAD IN SHAME and name all of them in local newspaper, where is the local business at the BIG EVENT, it comes from n Wales, so they take even more pennies out of our economy and send it to Wales, Brilliant idea! Not one local business was invited to participate or to tender for stalls. We really need new blood in council, its been run like a fiefdom for far too long, and oh yes, didnt the present owner of Dreamland get 1 million Quid when he bought Dreamland, and yes it did come from Thanets residents, Maybe, just maybe if all the coucilers sat on their hands instead of sticking them out, palm up and actualy did something for us mere mortals and not for a political party, we would at least start to respect them.
Dreamland like the Turner will bring full wallets to Thanet, our job is to give them a fantastic time and send them home with their wallets empty, but a big smile plasterd all over their faces, Margate Caves, the only poisonous air that existed was from local councillers spouting it was as poisonous as beelzebub's breath, what a bunch of liars, the air is as clean in the caves as up here. All the facts and people involved should be questioned, prefferably in court for bringing the council into disripute
We in Thanet can only dream.
ReplyDeleteCllr Stephen Greenhalgh, the leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Council in London, has just announced that council tax in his Borough will be cut again in 2012 by 3.75% - the sixth year in a row that he has either frozen or reduced the burden on local council tax payers. He recently announced that he will be stepping down as council leader in May, but during his six years in the role, he has never increased council tax, and has pioneered the combining of services, management and overhead costs across neighbouring authorities as a way of delivering value for money. Moreover, he has presided over a near halving of the council’s debts during his tenure as leader - whilst seeing residents’ satisfaction with council services reach record levels.
This may be all well and good, but how did he do on the party politics front? I bet Thanet can beat him in this game. Men like Cllr Stephen Greenland have some rare notion that he was elected to make things better for the people of Hammersmith & Fulham. How quaint. I bet there are some in TDC who will scorn such a curious endeavour.
Kapo,
ReplyDeleteYou have asked several questions. You can be answered by a single word, "incompetence".
Mike Harrison - there's two things I hate in this world - people who are intolerant of other peoples political beliefs.......and the Tories.
ReplyDeleteMy only hope with the new TDC regime, is that the institutional discrimination by TDC of Ramsgate ceases and TDC gets behind the new listing status of our Royal Harbour.
ReplyDeleteYou may well get your wish, but institutional discrimination against Broadstairs under the new regime has got off to a flyer. The new leader says he is going to work with Broadstairs Council though after this auspicious start I would say he has a fat chance.
ReplyDeleteLooks like open warfare has been declared.