The end of the silent UKIP administration at Thanet Council and I have a bad campervan day.

Up until this week I have to admit I was despairing of the UKIP administration at Thanet Council, had the new leader down as hopeless, assumed that he was only in the job for the money and was going to hang in for as long as he could by doing and saying nothing.

Anyway this week everything has changed and Chris Wells has made the first step in representing the electorate by communicating in a public forum that he hasn’t got total control over.

There may have been more instances but the first two I have spotted was his response here yesterday:

“Perhaps I can help. It would appear that in previous years this vessel has been accepted in to Margate harbour without the necessary insurance or statutory requirements being fulfilled.

We have now made it clear to the operator the documentation and level of notice we require for them to berth in the harbour, none of this information has been provided, we have also offered them the use of Ramsgate Port at a reduced rate, but due to the nature of the vessel and the fact that it has two fixed paddles they would need a tug to manoeuvre, a cost they are not willing to incur.”

And his response today to the open letter from one of leaders of the Save Manston Airport group.

“Dear Beau,

I acknowledge receipt of your 'open', undated email.

The accompanying comments upbraid me for not providing 'regular updates'. This phrase, on which you build so much angst, is a myth. The statement merely described the form in which updates would be issued.

I am then accused of wrongdoing in not issuing a statement from TDC; an action that would have been in breach of the spirit of the original statement. I note, however, you pass no comment on the evidence from your own and other campaign facebook pages of briefing to you by Tony Freudman, in clear breach of the same agreement.

The remainder of your letter is dedicated to the single issue of Indemnity Partnership. Your assertions, seemingly mainly based on your blind faith in the information provided by Tony Freudman, is that "all is safe to proceed with a CPO, at no risk to TDC".

You claim it is safe; Tony Freudman assures you it is safe; so what can dedicated campaigners do to relieve the perceived risk to the Council Tax payer, and achieve your dream of seeing RiverOak run Manston Airport?

Why not use the strength in your numbers, that oft repeated 9,000 members, and their belief in your commentary. Crowd fund it as guarantors. 9000 guarantors supporting the Indemnity Partner at £1000 each could create a guarantor cushion of £9 million. And, as you constantly tell us there is no risk, it's a risk free win-win.

You have such absolute faith and belief in RiverOak and Tony Freudman, why don't you contact them and offer guarantor-ship for their plan.

Over to you.

Best wishes

Chris Wells

Sent from my iPad”

Now anything written or said by any senor local figure is very easy to rip apart, poke fun at and so on, which is the main reason for controls on comments here, in fact there seems to be a whole group of people who hate all politicians on principle, nevertheless they are our representatives and some how we need some way that we can communicate in a public forum, on the internet, our politicians and us that is.

Anyway enough of that apart from rendering my heartfelt thanks to Chris for coming out of the closet and assuring him that any obnoxious comment directed towards him here will be deleted immediately. And a question to everyone else, would you rather our representatives communicated with us or not?

On to my day, the bad campervan day, no painting today. In order to continue doing the paintings of the local area that I regularly put on this blog I need to buy a cheap campervan and I spent the day driving around looking at the ones I could find on the internet.

My minimum requirements for painting is a table with a good clear window above parked cars in front of it, tea and coffee making facilities an a loo. I only looked at campers with move than months mot on them priced under £2,000. I only want to use it for pottering around East Kent, so I am not looking for something flash, well it’s either been an unlucky day or the internet has had an adverse effect on used vehicle sales. We sell some secondhand on the internet and buy some on the internet and believe me when I say the incidence of books described as in very good condition when in fact they have half the pages missing is very low, this wasn’t the case with the campervans I saw today.   

So sorry no picture today it was wasted.