China Gateway Update

I have had another reply from the environment agency relating to the questions I asked Doug Brown earlier this month, I have published it and the related correspondence for those of you that wish to read it click here to do so

As you can see the developer is still pushing for septic tanks that drain into our drinking water supply and other nasties.

Property Business Recession

I was going to do a reflections from the book trade post and as a lot of this comes from talking to customers when I should be working, not gossiping.

The bookshop is doing much better at the moment which I put down the worsening economic climate, people who a month ago were happy to go to Westwood Cross and pay £30 for a large format illustrated book are now making the extra effort to come here, where they know it will be considerably cheaper.

One customer a landscape gardener told me that his customers, who for the most part are extremely wealthy, are cutting back on the work they are having done, many have lost large sums as the value of their shares has fallen others don’t have confidence in their economic future.

Another customer who is a contractor to the building trade said that many of the building firms are weatherproofing and securing partly finished developments with the intention of leaving them until the situation improves.

The big “real estate” problem is although lots of people have made a considerable amount of money out of property one way and another, mostly benefiting from the huge increase in prices, however for most ordinary working people this means that too large a proportion of the money they have made from producing goods and services goes into paying for their home, we are effectively engaged in buying our own country. For us in the retail trade, it means that because the values of the buildings we trade in have increased considerably, increasing rents absorbs a very large proportion of profit; this situation is particularly bad in Thanet at the moment where most shop’s sales have been reduced by the effect of Westwood Cross.

Click here for more pictures of Ramsgate shops in 1904

Interblog

There is always a lot of talk of ip addresses and weblogs when things get tough on the blogs, frankly they are something I seldom look at, I put a counter on this blog some time ago and readers increase slowly at the moment there are a bit over 1,000 counts registering a week. I can’t tell how this compares with the other local blogs as they don’t have counters on them, however curiosity being what it is I am always interested I one statistic that I do get and that is how many people come to my blog by clicking on the link on another blog. The odd men out here are Strife as there is no link on the sidebar so the 28 comes from links in posts and Bignews that hasn’t had a link for very long.

All traffic sources sent 3,002 visits via 51 sources and mediums

30.58% Direct traffic

53.10% Referring sites

16.32% Search engines

Eastcliff Richard 787

Thanet Bloglist 132

Thanet Strife 28

Village Voices 21

Bignews Margate 16

Margate Architecture 6

Villeviews 5

Ramsgaterants 2

Thanet Star 2

Ramsgate Mitch 1

I don’t know what these statistics really mean they don’t relate to what the counter says nor the fact that I have often used the link on all of these sites to get back to my own, perhaps they only count one ip address once.

However I suspect the roughly relate to the popularity of the various local blogs.

Teddy Bears Picnic

Ramsgate is Stepping Back in Time this summer with the Ramsgate Historical Festival 26th July— 3rd August 2008 we just managed to fit in part of today’s most important event, the teddy bears picnic in Albion Gardens.

Click here for the pictures

Click here for the Ramsgate Historical Festival website

Ramsgate Carnival 2008

I have published a few pages of pictures of this years carnival click here to look at them as always I will eventually get around to deleting the worst ones.

The Crack in the Eastcliff

The picture shows the part of the cliff façade that remains unrepaired and on and off I have tried to find out how the work is going, as it was supposed to be all finished by now I expect it is something fairly serious and may wind costing us all a fair amount of money.

The survey that was undertaken in 2005 mentions horizontal movement both at the level of the crack and at the base in this part of the cliff façade so I imagine this bit will either need rebuilt or anchored to the chalk behind.

I have also noticed that they seem reluctant to expose the foundations, probably because the only place where they have exposed them they appear to be no existent.
So if anyone knows what’s going on please let me know?

Ramsgate Carnival

Just a reminder that Ramsgate carnival is this Sunday

The video is Ramsgate carnival in 1969

Click here for pictures of Ramsgate carnival in 1968

Click here for pictures of last year’s carnival sorry the web pages go sideways on these I had an eliterate moment.

Vacant Lot

The developer of the Pleasurama site has announced that work will not begin on the site until the end of the summer holidays, on the 15th of this month I emailed the most likely councillors asking if we could have the site used for some sort of leisure purpose or even a car park for the summer season. Something I have done every year since the plans were passed to build on it.

Only once out of all the years the site has been empty have I been successful, due mainly to the cooperation of David Green and Roger Latchford, which shows that when the party differences that are pretty much pointless at a local level are dropped real benefits for Thanet can be achieved.

I also wrote to the chief executive on the 11th of this month saying.

“It would also be highly beneficial to the town and the councils credibility here if the site was used for a leisure purpose or even a car park until work begins, as the developer appears to have engaged in none of the promised consultation here in Ramsgate, we are all unaware of what the timescale is likely to be, have you any ideas on this one?”

None of them has actually replied to me so of course I can’t tell if these are diligent people beavering away for our benefit or if I’m just being ignored. As is so often the case with TDC they seem to have very poor PR and communications.

Once again it’s a case of Ramsgate asking for a small slice of the cake, however this year with so many people holidaying in British resorts, for Ramsgate’s main leisure site to be a deserted building site instead of a leisure site is appalling.

The pictures are from two stages of the Pleasurama plans and show the architects attempts to fit a five story building into a space only large enough for a four story building. Rather like the ugly sisters trying to fit Cinderella’s glass slipper on by cutting of their toes, in the first picture you will see that lowering the ceiling has resulted in the top of the lorry being shown ghosting through the concrete. In the second picture the architect has resolved this issue by using a shorter lorry, yep the same architects being used for China Gateway, the same mentality that digs the toilet near the well? Click here to enlarge the pictures