Just before lunchtime yesterday – Friday – market day in
Ramsgate I walked down King Street from my bookshop. With all of our UKIP
councillors at TDC, the UKIP offices being at the end of King Street and KCC
being responsible for blocked drains and uneven pavements, this is a journey
that provokes some thought. Perhaps UKIP councillors float in the air with
their eyes shut, perhaps they are just ignored at KCC, perhaps blocked drains
and uneven pavements are something they just don’t notice.
Moving the rubbish collection to late on Friday morning is
down to TDC and with so much invested in Margate at the moment, with Dreamland
due to open soon, I guess it is at least understandable why TDC would want
Ramsgate to fail, any of those shoppers they can get out of Ramsgate may just
go to Margate, a forlorn hope but there you go.
Anyway right in the middle of the very busy market there is
a pop up Labour TDC councillors stall, the idea of this or perhaps the hope of
this is that when we get to the polling station in May and are faced with the
three sets of ballot papers. One for the parliamentary elections where we
chose. What? MP, prime minister, different coalition. One for TDC councillors
where we chose. What? A councillor who will represent us, Margate council, a
labour councillor – even they seem to think that TDC will be run by a
Conservative/UKIP coalition made up of the North Thanet Conservative old guard.
One for RTC councillors where we chose. What?
My guess is that the results in this election are going to
be something of a three way split here in Thanet, Labour, Conservative and
UKIP, but will many people who vote say UKIP on one ballot paper, vote
differently on the others?
So how did Labour do? Their leadership of TDC hangs on
getting voted in in Ramsgate. So have they done much for Ramsgate.
The main Ramsgate issues below and how they have faired
under three years of Labour.
Night Flights: Well the airport has gone and I don’t think
it would be easy to attach much blame for this to any political party, so no
real score here.
Westcliff Hall: still the same, no score
Harbour Arches: much improved, 8 out of 10?
Café on the end of pier: reinstated 10 out of 10
Albion House: sorted 10 out of 10
Maritime Museum: open for most of the summer: 6 out of 10
Pavillion: going to be big pub 5 out of 10
Town centre: well buying up a significant shop in a pretty much fully let shopping parade next to the main car park to turn the shop part into social housing, this has to be a minus 10.
Pleasurama: no change so no score.
Port Ramsgate: this would have been a no score, but with TDC
ex senior officers putting together their rubbish plan I think this may be a
minus 10.
Of course at this point it may be a good idea to speculate where
we would be if the Conservatives had stayed in power, my guess and this is only
based on what they managed to do for Ramsgate during the 8 years they were in
power, is that we would have been even worse off.
I asked the Labour councillors various questions and got the
expected answers apart from when I asked them if they had had a flutter on Will
winning the parliamentary elections and becoming MP for Thanet South. The odds
are 8 to 1 at the moment which I think is pretty good, and no they hadn’t.
I may ramble on here
Percentage achieving 5+ A*-C GCSEs (or equivalent) including English and maths GCSEs