Ramsgate Harbour Christmas Lights and a ramble

Very difficult to photograph with a mobile phone, and what? I should have taken a proper camera with me. Sorrow.




Behold a mobile phone video, probably even worse

Here in the bookshop in Ramsgate things are going pretty well, lots of books priced and put away today, here is today's bookshop post http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/google-buns-in-bookshop.html  the downside of all this is not enough time to do blog posts about local issues.

The main local issue being Dreamland in Margate, the site owners Thanet District Council say they have a £2m overspend, the site operators Sands Heritage LTD say the have made a net loss of £5m since opening in June of this year and they are applying for a  Company Voluntary Administration (CVA) which should mean they can carry on trading.

The Royal School for the Deaf in Margate seems to have been forced into administration by the The Care Quality Commission (CQC) I guess I am a bit suspicious of what looks like a government department behaving in what looks like a heavy handed way resulting in the imminent closure of a major institution in the only UKIP governed district.

One thing one can be fairly certain of is that the deaf children and adults will not see any benefits.

My understanding is that work is supposed to start on The Pavilion in Ramsgate in January but there has been some sort of hiccough with planning application, let's hope this doesn't mean a TDC delay meaning that it won't be ready to open for next summer. No mention of this in the new TDC press pack pdf https://www.visitthanetbusiness.co.uk/media/2718/ramsgate-press-pack-final.pdf

No mention of the Pleasurama development aka Royal Sands either.

Having just used YouTube to put the video of the lights up, I noticed that one of my video offerings has been blocked in Germany for copyright reasons, here it is.


What should I have done

Made an animation?



Try to put sound on the video, herding musicians and cats there isn't much in it. I will look on with interest to see if this one gets blocked anywhere.

Put up a link to the BBC news item on Dreamland with Sir Roger Gale saying that TDC should go into administration, the article is 7mins 30 secs in, you have to let the intro play first before you can jump to the article http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06r733p/south-east-today-09122015

The latest on Pleasurama, should one say it, the latest painting of the cliff façade apparently they used the wrong paint so it will have to be painted again. My guess is that it is us the council taxpayers who will pay and not whoever made the mistake.

The real issue here comes back to a full and independent survey of the cliff façade structure, and by this I mean independent of the council's engineers who signed off the first cliff repair job and don't seem to think that a survey of the façade foundations should be part of surveying the structure.  

The recent Tripadvisor reviews on Dreamland are not so good, see http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g503912-d7999625-Reviews-Dreamland_Margate-Margate_Isle_of_Thanet_Kent_England.html#REVIEWS 

Then there is the business of demolishing the Port Ramsgate buildings, blow this for a lark I think I will do something else.