Pancake Day Ramble about paint, presents, politics and the pope.

At my age one seldom gets unexpected presents and so it was with great pleasure I received a lump of paint that I use from fellow blogger Alan http://alan-turtle.blogspot.co.uk/

This is a colour that you just can’t buy anymore Brown Madder Alizarin, I am very funny about paint I like it to have names with historical and scientific interest, of course mainly it has to be the right colour.

Watercolour paint which is the type I mostly use either comes in tubes or in lumps that are in a little plastic box called a half pan, once the half pan is empty I usual fill it up by squirting paint from a tube into it, this is the cheapest way to do it.

I really don’t get much time to paint and draw, which means I carry all the equipment around in the hope that the moment will arrive. You don’t really need many colours but you do need primary colours, red, yellow and blue and as well as the fairly washy ones it helps to have ones that are very dark and powerful, Brown Madder Alizarin is my dark and powerful red.

If you draw your hand which is always handy as model in Brown Madder Alizarin it will look fairly red, you can draw with watercolour using an ordinary mapping pen, the normal dip pens are no good for this. If you are not an idiot like me you will probably select the hand that isn’t doing the drawing and therefore moving.

I guess you can either see what I like about the colour or will avoid it, which is the easiest course as you can no longer buy it.

I had one of those long chats today with a member of the Conservative party locally, I think he was trying to make out exactly what a lot of the local Conservative councillors are, since they don’t seem to be identifiably Conservative.

I think he was also trying to make out Ian Driver who seems to be the only councillor actively forming an opposition.

When you try to explain our local politics you find yourself in considerable difficulty, I mean yes for the most part the Labour Councillors are identifiably Labour, so is Ramsgate Labour? Another difficult one as most Ramsgate people seem fairly happy with the Conservative MP they elected.

Perhaps I will come back to this subject later.

I guess one has to say something about the resignation of the pope, most people are talking about it and very few seem to know what to make of it, a bit like the abdication of an English monarch it just doesn’t happen voluntarily.

Pushing 60 myself I do wonder why popes are so old, I know St Peter, simplistically the first pope lived to about 60, but that was the end not the beginning and Christ only lived to be about 33 1/3 perhaps the church only trusts old people in role.

One wonders what would happen in industry if a prerequisite for the day to day running of major companies was being past retirement age.

I have resisted, with some difficulty, pope cartoons about giving up dresses for lent or only eating seahorse on Friday, although I am not sure I will be able to keep this up.

Back to local politics, I guess about the most popular Ramsgate politician I can remember was Jonathan Aitken, a hard act to follow, he was excellent constituency mp. 

Another reason that it is so very difficult to explain how Ramsgate can be almost exclusively Labour when it comes to council elections. 

I guess much of it is down to bad presentation, click on the link to read their press releases http://thanetpress.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Conservative%20Group%20Press%20Release and you will get some idea of what I mean. 

Anyway the upshot of this conversation, like the one I had with the ex council leader the other day was for me to ask this Conservative what he though the solution was.

His solution is a unitary authority, his arguments for this seemed fairly sound and there wasn’t much I could say about the issue as I know very little about them.

Looking at this area I haven’t yet managed to work out how the balance of political power would work out, but I think that may be the main snag i.e. always having the same party in power.   

Back to thoughts on popes.

I guess the problem electing a pope is that they are very difficult if not impossible to get rid of, so if you chose one that isn’t any good you are stuffed. The only solution would seem to be choosing one who is so old that you won’t have them for too long.  

Back to local politics this time it’s Alan Poole, he seems to have started early canvassing for the county council elections on behalf of the Conservative party here in Ramsgate.

This is an interesting opportunity to watch a member of our Labour district council cabinet in action, watch the Thanet Watch video below.   

About 1 min 20 secs into the video Alan stands up and tells his voters that them holding meetings with the bbc present generates bad publicity, in fact he gives them a right ticking off.

He also tells them it will make it more difficult for the developers to get the money he wants them to get so he and they can get on with the luxury apartment development that local people don’t want on the town’s main leisure and tourism site.

Not only did he seem to be doing a superb job for the Conservative party but he seems to be 100% supportive of a development that is to be built without having the life and limb safety checks the environment agency recommend.

He certainly comes across as being on the developer’s side and not at all on the side of the Ramsgate people who voted for him.  

You can see the mayor and his wife who I assume will be standing in the county council soon looking on with interest.

This does of course beg the question of where apart from Cllr Driver is the opposition and why are they missing this opportunity to regain support in Ramsgate.   

I will ramble on here.