UKIP wins again and Ramsgate in the news

I am still wondering just what this means in terms of messages to local politicians, and yes there is an obvious message here to national government, a star aspect of which is European referendum or we just won’t vote for you.

Here are ward results for 2007

Election Candidate	Party	Votes	%
Martin Wise	Conservative Party	1381	24%	Elected
Brian Sullivan	Conservative Party	1240	22%	Elected
Sandy Ezekiel	Conservative Party	1225	21%	Elected
Sandy Hart	The Labour Party Candidate	574	10%	Not elected
Margaret Mary Main	The Labour Party Candidate	522	9%	Not elected
Patricia Moore	The Labour Party Candidate	452	8%	Not elected
Dennis Ernest Franklin	The Green Party	352	6%	Not elected

And for 2011

Election Candidate	Party	Votes	%
Sandy Ezekiel	Conservative Party Candidate	1187	18%	Elected
Martin Wise	Conservative Party	1165	18%	Elected
Brian Sullivan	Conservative Party Candidate	1155	18%	Elected
William Friend	Independent	601	9%	Not elected
Louise Friend	Independent	598	9%	Not elected
Elizabeth Poole	The Labour Party Candidate	515	8%	Not elected
Margaret Symonds	The Labour Party Candidate	490	8%	Not elected
Matthew Rowland Poole	The Labour Party Candidate	456	7%	Not elected
Timothy Peter Patrick Spencer	The Green Party	283	4%	Not elected

And for yesterday 2013

Rozanne Duncan	UKIP	699	41%	Elected
Wendy Chaplin	The Conservative Party Candidate	526	31%	Not elected
Alan Currie	Labour Party Candidate	352	20%	Not elected
Louise Elizabeth Oldfield	Independent	112	7%	Not elected
Seth Proctor	Liberal Democrat	32	2%	Not elected

2007

Con 67%

Lab  27%

Green 6%

2011

Con  54%

Lab 23%

Ind  18%

Green 4%

2013

UKIP 41%

Con 31%

Lab 20%

Ind 7%

Lib Den 2%         

This sort of maths is not my strong point, swings and voting trends and of course who came out worse.

One thing that interesting is Labour maintaining their share of the vote particularly if you take Louise Oldfield’s vote into account, it does look like most of the UKIP votes came from the 50% fall in Conservative votes.

Does this mean that the remaining Labour voters are broadly in favour of not having a referendum on Europe I wonder?  

It also makes on wonder about the Lib Dem position which is being presented as preventing the Conservatives form having a referendum on Europe.

I guess if there is one thing that politicians seem to want to do, it is to ignore the electorate, and although I am not so sure that the electorate would vote to come out of Europe, people seem to pretty much universally resent being promised a referendum on the matter and then not getting one.    

On a truly bizarre note and before I consider the Ramsgate Town Council results, Ramsgate is in the national news today, see http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2321841/Police-warn-girl-10-chalk-hopscotch-grid-pavement-outside-home-criminal-damage.html  or http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/tenyearold-girl-warned-by-kent-police-that-hopscotch-lines-are-illegal-and-constitute-criminal-damage-claims-father-8610608.html

As someone who has children of around this age I encourage them to see police officers as being there to help them, a few recent experiences suggest that this may not be entirely the case. Although for me this has been incidences of the officers deal with adults in front of children and of course the general lack of policing where I live in the middle of Ramsgate. Our children are of course aware of the swearing, shouting and occasionally fighting drunks outside of where we live, that goes on until the early hours of the morning. I can well believe that police resources are diverted towards crimes like hopscotch.     

Here are the Ramsgate Town council results yesterday 2013 

Election Candidate	Party	Votes	%
Trevor Leslie Shonk	UKIP	224	40%	Elected
Scott Dumigan	Labour Party Candidate	217	39%	Not elected
Barbara Byne	The Conservative Party Candidate	94	17%	Not elected
Brian Urwin	Independent	22	4%	Not elected
Seth Proctor	Liberal Democrat	3	1%	Not elected

 

  Update: A Kent Police spokesperson said: "The officer concerned has been advised and accepted that it was wrong to advise the young girl that chalking a hopscotch grid was not criminal damage.

http://www.thisiskent.co.uk/Officer-warned-Ramsgate-girl-hopscotch-lines/story-18948455-detail/story.html#axzz2SUtkkJEA

New Mayor of Ramsgate Decision Tonight

Dave Green centre, the current mayor of Ramsgate comes to full term today and the word on the street is that he won’t be the standing member again. Deputy Ralph who some say was being groomed for mayor and other independent GoD, were ousted by the Labour landslide, reputedly caused by the Ramsgate air attack.

Our very own Labour town councillors are now; Peter Campbell, Mary Dwyer, Tony Ovenden, Rick Everitt, David Green, Corinna Huxley, Steven Alexandrou, Kim Gibson, Pat Moore, Richard Nicholson, Kay Dark, Ian Driver, Elizabeth Green, Michelle Fenner, Alan Poole,

The only councillor not Labour is Conservative Patrick Doyle, I think it is fairly unlikely that he will be the new mayor.

In town councils the mayor is also the leader of the council, you could go along to this evening’s meeting and see who is chosen, with such a large political majority I wouldn’t expect fireworks though.

Whoever it is the Labour town council certainly have a powerful mandate to govern Ramsgate, compared with our somewhat divided district council, where there is wildly speculative rubbish circulating to the effect that the local Conservatives may be considering going it alone without an overall majority, that independents are being offered committee seats or even cabinet seats. I believe the old Chinese curse is. “May you live in interesting times!”

Meanwhile Labour’s erstwhile pleas involve wildly speculative rubbish begging independent members cross half the floor that are said to be even more rewarding.

Word is that stalwart independents wish to remain independent, but planning is thought to be a substantial carrot, albeit on a string. 

Ramsgate Town Council Albion House and the Custom House.

A few thoughts here that come from reading today’s Isle of Thanet Gazette see http://www.thisiskent.co.uk/thanet/Ramsgate-town-council-moves-109-years/article-1797328-detail/article.html and Mark Nottingham’s blog see http://marknottingham.blogspot.com/2010/02/ramsgates-new-town-hall.html

The main thing that concerns me here is that this issue could divide many people who are pro Ramsgate and should be on the same side, the problem being that that the issue of saving Albion House has got confused with the issue of finding an appropriate home for our town council.

Much of this is to do with how grant funding works, the problem being that grant funding that would be available to a non government organisation, and was available for the restoration of the Custom House wouldn’t as far as I understand, be available either to TDC or RTC.

I may have misunderstood this in some way, so please correct me if I am wrong, but as I understand it there are only two ways forward for Albion House, one is to form a charitable trust that can get the grants another is to sell it to a private company that can get the grants.

Now at the moment TDC are using Albion House to fight a legal battle with local residents at our expense see http://thanetstrife.blogspot.com/2010/02/expensive-tdc-fight-to-oppose-hoots.html something that I find rather depressing.

The bottom line here though is that TDC has operated a strange policy of making such services as they provide in Ramsgate fairly inaccessible and fragmented through a number of different buildings.

Their offices in York Street, The Town Partnership in York Street (another closed shop now), Albion House (a building that has to have netting on it to stop bits of it falling on people that was never given disabled access), The Tourist Information office (moved from building to building in the town until it was moved to where no tourist would be likely to find it).

I also noticed that TDC want you to pay them to film The Custom House see http://www.thanet.gov.uk/leisure__culture/filming_in_thanet/custom_house_ramsgate.aspx something I found a bit bizarre in the circumstances.

There is also a bit of a myth that Albion House has a long history of being Ramsgate’s town hall, this is just not the case, Ramsgate’s New Town Hall was in the market place on the junction of Harbour Street and Queen Street. It was the town hall from about 1840 to 1955 when it was demolished.

Morning walk and Ramsgate town council

I have just published the latest town council documents at http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/2009/12/ramsgate-town-council-agenda.html I haven’t had a chance to read them yet.

I managed to get out for a short walk this morning the pictures are at http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/blogpicts129/id26.htm

A few things I noticed that appear in the pictures, a bit of damage to the Pleasurama hoardings, they have taken out more of the blockwork in the cliff façade my hope is that this will make them have a proper look at the foundations, the scaffolding has come off of the customs house after the restoration work on the front, there was more rubbish than usual in the inner basin, another new shop has opened in Ramsgate selling carpets.

Ramsgate town was very busy this morning when I bought the Christmas vegetables on the way back from my walk, I thought it an interesting reflection on the cost of Christmas that a turkey breast roast from the butcher and the vegetables for Christmas dinner for 20 people cost less than £20.
I have the bookshop open today for the final and forgotten presents, despite the folk myth women as well as men, about 50 50.

Ramsgate Town Council gets a town clerk from Lydd

Ramsgate council has appointed a town clerk Richard Styles, he is Lydd’s town clerk at the moment and to start with he will only be working on Fridays, as he has to work out his notice at Lydd.

This is very important as the town council has to have a town clerk to function, it is also reassuring that the council has appointed someone experienced, who I gather is keen to take the council to quality status.

I couldn’t find a picture Richard Styles so have illustrated this post with a picture of a previous Ramsgate town clerk, Blasdale Clarke, he is the one bewigged seated at the desk.

It is with some interest that I speculate, will our new town clerk wear a wig to fit in with our, so far ceremonial council?

Ramsgate Town Council update, some more pictures, in the wind, and a ramble.

Boundary Road Gas Storage Facility and other issues have gone up the town council’s website click on the link to view http://www.ramsgatetc.kentparishes.gov.uk/default.cfm?pid=messages

One thing you can certainly say about this website that Dave Green has written is that it’s green, yep one of the greenest websites I have ever seen.

It was very windy this morning and I am afraid I didn’t manage to capture this well on the few pictures I took on my morning walk, click on the link to view them http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/blogpicts11/id29.htm

One problem was that the sand blowing through the air just made the pictures look fuzzy.

I can’t quite believe what I have just read but the thing about the gasworks and the water seems to be saying that they are pumping drinking water within Ramsgate, this is what it says:

"I have a response from Morgan Sproates, TDC contaminated land officer.
In relation to providing you with reassurance that the site does not present a wider risk to the environment, there are two key reports highlighting the findings with respect to Groundwater Resources (MWH Final P20 Quantitative Risk Assessment, Ref. 410/002601, May 2004) and Human Health (MWH Quantitative Human Health Risk Assessment Final Issue 1, Ref. 410/002601, May 2004).

In brief, the controlled waters risk assessment indicates that the
chalk groundwater has the possibility to be impacted by contaminants in the made ground and perched groundwater (e.g. coal tars, etc...).
However, the chalk groundwater potable water supply abstraction points located 1300m from the site are not considered to have the potential to be adversely impacted by contaminants associated with the main sources of contamination on site (pls see attached map highlighting Environment Agency Source Protection Zones in relation to the Boundary Rd Gas Holder Facility). The Quantitative HHRA indicates that the USEPA Model (Tier 2 Assessment) has identified concentrations of Polyaromatic Hydrocarbons in groundwater beneath the site exceeding contemporary Screening Levels. However, it maintains that due to the depth of groundwater (~16mbgl) it is unlikely that there is a significant health [risk] via groundwater volatilization to indoor air which could impact Off-site Residents. As previously stated, should the site be redeveloped, then extensive remediation would be required to restore the site to standards required to support a vulnerable end use. To answer your question though, given that the general public does not have access to this site, there is not anticipated to be any current significant risk of harm to human health via available exposure pathways.”

I really hope this is a typo or some other sort of error because if it isn’t then it is taking the most appalling risk with peoples lives.

I will add a bit more to this as the morning progresses.

Albion House Ramsgate a royal residence up for sale.

As some of you will have noticed on Mark Nottingham’s blog see http://marknottingham.blogspot.com/2009/11/albion-house-to-be-sold-off-ramsgate.html Thanet District Council appear to be selling Albion house off.

I wonder what the new owner would do with the listed status of the ground floor, the mayor is in his parlour and all that, I wonder if the mayor is protected in all this, a stately ornament to Ramsgate, his office or something of that type.

But it does bring sharply into focus what we voted to pay extra for a town council for, was it to have a largely ceremonial function based around an historic building that we couldn’t afford to maintain, something we already had, or was it to have a more accessible elected body to represent the interests of Ramsgate to a district council more focused on Margate?

Would we be perhaps be better off with our town council based in a shop building in the town centre, where they would be much more readily accessible to local people, perhaps sharing a building with the tourist information office, now situated where a tourist would be unlikely to find it.

Window displays featuring major projects that are of concern to local people spring to mind, with information one would expect in this modern climate of open government.

Artists impressions of the new Pleasurama project, samples of the building materials on display, information about progress with the new ferry service, information about the councils support for the maritime museum and Cervia restoration project are examples of the sort of thing I mean.

There is a time and a place for grand buildings and ceremonial and to my mind that comes when local government can say it has achieved something.

Don’t misunderstand me I am not being critical of the town council here it’s too new to have achievements, good or bad, these are just thoughts on the sorts of direction it could consider going in.

Ramsgate town council agenda Monday 2 November 2009

I have just been sent this and related documents I couldn’t find it at a glance on the councils website so have published it and them on the internet click on the link to view http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/blogpicts11/id17.htm

The rest are all on the council's website see http://www.ramsgatetc.kentparishes.gov.uk/default.cfm?pid=minutes

Prom diddly om pom pom gone

I don’t think Ramsgate Town Council mentioned this one.

I don’t think Thanet District Council mentioned it either.

I thought there was going to be some sort of public consultation about this one, beach access parking type of thingy.

Ramsgate Town Council website up and running.

Click on the link for the new Ramsgate town Council website http://www.ramsgatetc.kentparishes.gov.uk/ I appreciate that this is early days so I will try not to be too critical.

The main two problems that I can see in basic structure is that there are no feeds and no search facility, as this is a package offered by Kent County Council to lots of parish councils the criticism must I think be directed at them.

What this means for us, that is until it’s sorted out, is you can’t tell when anything new is posted and you can’t find specific things on it easily.

The mayor is in the monkey house shifting all the chairs. TV media in Ramsgate today.

Seaside SOS are filming at Ramsgate’s westcliff boating pool today.

MAYOR OF RAMSGATE’S
SUMMER PARTY
Friday 21st August 2009
4 p.m. to 7 p.m.
In association with the TV programme ‘Seaside SOS’
to celebrate the re-launch of the Westcliff Leisure Park

In the company of Duncan Bannatyne (of Dragons’ Den fame)
and other celebrity guests

Live music and entertainment throughout the afternoon.

Click here for the pictures taken this morning.

Pretty major stuff this even the boating pool has been cleaned out.

Watch Ramsgate’s new Town Council in Action RTCTV

Videos from Your Thanet

Do you feel empowered by your government?

I suppose this is a bit of a waste of time as the picture says it all really, click on it to enlarge it, but the recent elections have made me think about how I felt I related to the various levels of government that we are all paying for at considerable expense.

I am pretty sure that the democratic process is supposed to make me feel empowered, that to some lesser or greater extent I have some sort of say in the running of the town, country or even Europe.

I will start at the top and work down.

Europe I suppose all those years ago when we voted to be part of a greater economic community it made some sort of sense, now it just seems to be some gargantuan set-up making up masses of legislation much of which doesn’t suit the British character, for the most part we doggedly obey them and it seems the Mediterranean countries pay lip service to them but mostly ignore them. Do I feel part of some brave new world of countries with common ambition? I wish I did.

The House of Lords obviously supposed to be the highest regulator in the land, beyond reproach above the elected house most of the members chosen for some great service to the country, a matter of great honour, unfortunately recent events show these people can be bought. Evidently this house has become corrupt, how much I am not in a position to say. Do I feel awed and inspired by this great symbol of British governance? Not any more.

House of Commons, supposed to be made up of people who have chosen to serve their country elected by us to empower us, turns out these people are in it for personal gain. I had suspicions that all was not right there for some time, then the man we voted for took us to war on a lie and I was not entirely convinced that had we voted for the other man he wouldn’t have done the same. Do I trust these people and can I see an alternative with brilliant ideas to turn this back into a great country once again? I wish I could.

Kent County Council, bit closer to home now quite a few of the people involved use the shop and I know them to a lesser or greater degree, talking to them I get the felling that all is far from well there. I think the nub of the problem here is pet projects have taken precedence over essential services, there are expensive luxuries like Kent TV but the one that seems to cause the most angst is the Turner Contemporary, it seems that no matter how little the return on this project unlimited funds will always be found for it. The fact that the basic infrastructure roads pavements etc here in Ramsgate seems to be falling apart doesn’t seem to tally well with the huge funds directed at these pet projects. My only close dealings with them have been over the Pleasurama access road and have been most unsatisfactory; do I feel they have the interests of where I live at heart? Not really.

Thanet District Council, a lot closer to home and I know many of the people involved, this replaced the old Ramsgate district council, which had some faults but did have benefiting Ramsgate at heart. I suppose the benchmark here is how the Thanet towns have fared compared to similar seaside towns in the area governed by other administrations, Deal and Herne Bay are the closest I can get on this: do I feel that our district council has come up with good solutions for our towns in comparison to those towns? Not really.

Ramsgate parish council, here what happened was the people of Ramsgate voted to pay extra money on their council tax for an elected group to be a voice for Ramsgate, time will tell on this one, but at less than £1 a week on my council tax bill it has to worth a try.

Thoughts on the election

One of the great failings of the first past the post system is when the electorate use an election to send a message to one level of government, by voting in another level of government election in a particular way, it can have unfortunate consequences.

It does seem to me that a system where local governments seem to be selected to a great degree by dissatisfaction with the national government of the day, is not a particularly good one.

Here in Kent it is fairly obvious that it wasn’t the electorate’s intention to give the Conservatives a resounding mandate, which is what happened.

I don’t expect even most hard-line conservatives really want to operate with just one opposition councillor, from Thanet and 10 from the whole of Kent the previous situation with 27 opposition candidates was probably healthier for both debate and scrutiny

Here in Ramsgate I believe a rather peculiar thing happened due to the parish council elections occurring at the same time and will run the idea past you to see if you agree.

I believe that many of the Ramsgate voters when faced with only a choice of labour or Conservative candidates, didn’t want either party in overall control and voted for one of each.

Once having got this idea because of the limited choice of parish council candidates I think they may have carried the idea over when they voted in the county elections.

Certainly the result of the parish elections means that the two independent candidates won’t be marginalised and I am hoping that Ramsgate will benefit from this.

As a method of registering a protest against government in general while still exercising ones democratic right and duty to vote, voting for one of each parties candidates is certainly a method for future consideration.

Election day thoughts

Talking to people I know to day it would seem that many of them have or are going to register protest votes, this of course means that many of us have voted for political parties that we don’t know much about, I wonder if we will rue this day because of it.

It could be doubly dangerous because so many of us are pretty vague about what the European Parliament actually does, for example I didn’t vote for the Green Party as I am pretty sure they want to let the north Wantsum sea defences go and their attitude to nuclear power would be catastrophic for climate change.

I picked up this Times article from a comment on ECRs blog, which explains the situation better than I ever could.

The European Parliament has become so very powerful in terms of legislation restricting what we can do in this country and this makes me increasingly concerned about our remaining part of Europe, so I had little in the way of qualms about voting for UKIP today something I wouldn’t have done were it not for the expenses scandal.

For me the main problem with this business over the expenses is not that our MPs took money that they shouldn’t have done, as in terms of a governments budget it doesn’t amount to a great deal of money.

My real concern here is that as these people were happy to abuse the expenses system in this way so it follows that some of them may have been prepared to take bribes to change policy.

I am very concerned by the way our human environment, particularly our town centres and in town leisure facilities, is changing for the worse, it is obvious that the large companies that provide out of town shopping and leisure and benefit from this are powerful lobbyists and that many of our MPs are far less honest than we thought.

Remember to vote tomorrow.

With so many of the party faithful of all three major parties so disenchanted with politics at the moment I am reminding people that they have a duty to vote, even if you register protest votes it is better than making no vote at all.

It is only in the last few years that I have had much to do with government and much of this has been the result of my concerns about various local issues mostly to do with public safety.

Frankly I can’t say that I am happy with many aspects of government that I have dealt with at every level and I am hoping that the expenses scandal will produce major reforms.

With the European Parliament, House of Lords, House of Commons, Kent County Council, Thanet District Council and Ramsgate Parish Council, we have a great many levels of government pay for.

For the most part this seems to be a great horde of highly paid people pushing bits of paper around and much of this paper is of dubious worth.

Obviously there must be a point where the scales tip and the private sector can no longer support this extravagance, it seems likely we have passed this point some time ago, I am wondering if there is any way back to a level we can afford.

Watching question time today with £9,000 Kitchen Brown and £5,857.63 Decorating Clegg and £680 Wisteria Cameron I was much more reminded of an unruly classroom than a seat of government, it is clear that we need some sort of different system.

Looking at our MPs most seem to have a set of priorities which is, self, then party, then country and talking to people in the bookshop this week it is also apparent that many MPs have completely lost touch with ordinary people.

Most people’s main concern is that this country is that it is rapidly becoming unpleasant to live in, especially for ordinary working people, we need a real workable plan to deal with antisocial behaviour.

With years of Labour government nationally and Conservative government locally a walk round the commercial hubs of Margate and Cliftonville should be enough to show politicians of both main parties that they need to change their ideas.

With prospective candidates probably hanging around polling stations tomorrow you may wish to ask them where they stand on the main local issues like. Turner Contemporary, Dreamland, Pleasurama, the drinking water aquifer particularly with regard to the way KCC abused Water Resources Act 1991 draining roads into very sensitive parts of the aquifer, China Gateway, airport expansion, the contraction of our town centres, Westwood Cross, museums, Thanet Gateway, KCCIT, Kent TV, Icelandic investment, policing, schools, tourism, antisocial behaviour, etc.

I am wondering if for instance, here in Ramsgate, a candidate that wants us to be at the end of a runway of a rapidly expanding airport with inadequate environmental controls, is going to attract a lot of votes.

MPs expenses the forthcoming elections and protest voting

I find I am still looking at my postal ballot papers in a state of indecision, it is an awful admission but always in the past I have been a floating voter, voting either voting Labour or Conservative essentially trying to chose the lesser of two evils.

A long period of Labour government nationally and Conservative government at County and District level have left both my town and my country considerably more unpleasant places to live.

As far as European elections go it’s all a bit of a mystery to me, but looks like another great expenses and allowance jamboree, with MEPs doing very little to represent my interests which are essentially curbing the masses of daft legislation produced by the army of Brussels bureaucrats.

So the bottom line here is there any vote that would contribute to making anything better, at County level for instance would Labour do better, here in Ramsgate much of the infrastructure that KCC is responsible for is falling apart, roads, pavements and cliff façades in particular.

My two KCC councillors at the moment are both Labour, good conscientious people who respond to problems and try to resolve them, the main difficulty for me though is Labour at county level want to do away with grammar schools, and Ramsgate’s grammar schools are two of the very few publicly funded facilities that haven’t been closed.

The problem with voting for the main parties at the moment is that one feels that one is condoning what our MPs have done, for me most especially Gordon Brown refused his grace and favour flat when he was chancellor, and then did a house swap so he could claim large second home expenses on his house in Scotland.

If he had resigned as prime minister and been replaced with a prime minister that hadn’t abused the system I wouldn’t be so annoyed.

I believe talking to people I meet every day that much of the voting public is as stunned and confused as I am, we had a system of government that we called a democracy and everyone told that this was a good thing, but now it looks as though our system of government turns out to be a bad thing hiding behind a good name.

What is most abundantly clear is that the government should present options for reform and put these options to the people in a referendum.

Council mess up over ballot papers

I just received my postal vote ballot papers, on opening them I discovered that the ones for Ramsgate parish council were missing, so phoned TDC, not easy as their help line was chock a bloc.

I was told that all of the Ramsgate parish council ballot papers will be sent out separately, that is first class post both ways paid for by us the taxpayer.

List of candidates for the Ramsgate parish council elections.

Update click here for the list of candidates

According to the council this list was published yesterday, I asked the returning officer for the list twice yesterday and once again today, I still haven’t received the list.

Click on the link for the correspondence which I am adding to as it appears. http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/blogpicts2/id101.htm