Turner Contemporary new work of art

I have done my best with a picture of a Margate sunset here but am more of a snapper than a photographer, however nothing I could do could compete with the latest video work of art on their media channel at http://www.turnercontemporary.org/media-channel


I have embedded it below so you can enjoy it without waiting for their rather slow website to open.



I find that there is something humbling about great art, knowing that I have helped to contributed to funding it makes me feel. Well. I walk that little bit taller, don’t you?  

Dangerous Cliffs and Cliff Collapses in Ramsgate

Over the period of time that have been interested in The Royal Sands development on the old Pleasurama site, I have developed an interest and some understanding of the various cliff structures here.

This has reached the point where I can now identify situations where there are likely to be problems and have started reporting potentially dangerous situations to the various authorities that deal with this.

The last bit of dangerous cliff I reported was in October of last year, see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2010/10/is-thanet-district-council-prepared-to.html I reported this to the council, and they assured me that it was safe, as it didn’t look safe to me and there is a public footpath under one bit and the people building the Royal Sands development working under the other bit, I reported this to the Health and Safety Executive. That was at the beginning of the week, by the middle of the week nothing seem to have happened so I rang the HSE up, they told me that the council’s engineer had assured them that there wasn’t a problem and that they were going to take no further action. Over the following weekend a lump of masonry, big enough to kill someone underneath it, fell of it. Now it has safety fencing round the bottom of the cliff. 

This area of the cliff at the is a bit of a hot spot for cliff problems, I don’t think the guns helped, all shook up is phrase that come to mind.

The bit where Augusta Steps is collapsed in the 1960s whatever it is about this area of the cliff confused the civil engineers that repaired it as it collapsed again halfway through the repairs.

Pugin the architect had a bit of a problem with one of the Ramsgate cliffs, I don’t think anything else he designed actually collapsed.

He put this gallery into the cliff next to his house The Grange, so that he could observe the shipping and get down to the sea.

As you can see from the pictures it collapsed in 1947, I am not suggesting that he was an incompetent architect, just that our cliffs are not very predictable.

One of the few places that people have attempted to build against the cliff in Ramsgate is Pegwell, usually any building is incorporated into the cliff part of it being an arched structure, like the existing buildings on Harbour Parade, Marina Esplanade or beside the harbour.

As you can see this didn’t work out too well.

The power of these collapses can be quite astonishing, hundreds of tons of chalk and concrete goes where it wants to.

As you can see in the pictures of this collapse at The Paragon in 1958 the bent things are steel girders.

Finally the problem with the Royal Sands Development on the Pleasurama Site at the moment.

At the moment things are not looking so good there as the foundations seem to be missing and the concrete cliff wall undermined. I have been discussing this structure on and off with the council for some time.

The first time I noticed there was something odd about its foundations was in January 2008, at this time the council had just started the major repairs to the cliff and had contracted a firm of specialist engineers to supervise the £1m contract to repair the cliff.

I went onto the site and had a chat with the site engineer and a look at the foundations of the cliff wall, wasn’t happy with what I saw and wrote to their chief engineer who I had already supplied some historic photographs of the cliff to.

This is what he had to say:

“The foundations of the facade is on a mass concrete base some 2 metres thick and founded on what would appear to be good sound chalk. I shall be very surprised if there is any cause for concern. *** would not be party to the development works as his brief is to act as the Resident Engineer on behalf of Thanet District Council for the facade improvement works only, however he is employed by ****.

There is no need to underpin the facade, as the original site inspection showed that there is no evidence of subsidence. I will be on site on Thursday to carry out an overview of the works.”

The next time I went on the site and made a thorough inspection of the cliff wall was in November 2009, see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2009/11/royal-sands-development-how-dangerous.html this eventually resulted in a repair to the repair.

There have been other occasions but I won’t bore you with any more.

Now we have a situation once again where I have reported a problem with the cliff wall and am awaiting events. I expect sooner or later I shall be wrong and there won’t be a problem.

What worries me this time is that I have asked the council to close the footpath above the cliff because I think there possibility of a cliff collapse and a danger to human life, I have only asked them to this while they assess the situation as a precaution, so far I haven’t even had a reply from them.

Blogger is behaving a bit strangely at the moment, a lot of the anonymous comments are going into the spam folder and I haven’t deleted anyone’s comments recently, but if you comment and it doesn’t appear immediately, please accept my apologies.

There are so many pictures in this post that it was easiest to put them all at the end and label them up afterwards.     

Pictures of the collapse at The Paragon in 1958 below

Pictures of the collapse at Pegwell in 1947 below 

Pictures of the collapse at Pugin’s gallery collapse in 1947 below 

Pictures of the Augusta Steps is collapses in the 1960s below 

The guns at Wellington Crescent 

New Pictures on The Great Wall of Ramsgate

There were several new pictures on the Great Wall when I went for my walk this morning, I took photographs of the whole lot, click on the link to look at the pictures http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/411/id7.htm


And by way of contrast here is Ed Vaizey, Minister of Culture, on the Turner Contemporary's opening

Ed Vaizey, Minister of Culture, looks forward to Turner Contemporary's opening from Turner Contemporary on Vimeo.

Sunday Ramble, reflections on why the council would risk people’s lives, some pictures and so on

Cliff

I think it is fair to say that the cliff façade behind the Pleasurama site where they have started building The Royal Sands development in Ramsgate is a dangerous structure. I don’t think I will sleep too well until they have cordoned off the part of the cliff top path above where the foundations of the cliff wall have been undermined.

I will contact the HSE on Monday, as they sent me pictures of the foundations that don’t exist only last week, I expect them to act pretty promptly. I haven’t contacted the media yet, something that is all a bit tedious if anyone else wants to, please do.

I suppose the next problem will be where does the money come from to make the cliff safe, I would think this will be in the order of tens of millions. Unfortunately Thanet District Council have gone down a road where all of the responsibility for the cliff façade structure is theirs.

I don’t think there is an easy way back to just having a cliff of the normal, don’t sit under it standard of most of the Thanet cliffs, I don’t know if they will be able to underpin it now so much chalk has been removed, as I think it would be difficult to protect the workers doing the underpinning.

Having been down at the bottom of the cliff there yesterday I can assure you it is not a pleasant experience.

At the moment the only people who have responded to me are in agreement that there are no foundations where there should be foundations and that includes Kent Fire and Rescue who say that they don’t have the power to close the footpath until the council’s engineer says that a concrete cliff façade weighing thousands of tons that has no foundation is a dangerous structure. This I presume is the same engineer that ignored my concerns about the lack of foundations when the £1m contract started and went on to sign the contract off.

If you don’t understand what I am talking about there see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2011/04/pleasurama-royal-sands-development_09.html

Pictures

Here are the links to the pages of pictures that I took today

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/netbok411/id5.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/netbok411/id6.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/netbok411/id7.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/netbok411/id8.htm

China Gateway

Here is the link to the China Gateway website http://www.cgiplc.com/  this company used to be Commercial Group Properties the link on their website to “Real Time Stocks” their share price doesn’t work. Their shares are at 10.25p at the time of writing, a long way from the price when the first started trading and bought a lot of land at Manston.

I think that the main problem they face at the moment is the environmental constraints related to the Manston site, most particularly the drainage, from what I can understand of the new documents that appeared on the councils planning website http://www.ukplanning.com/thanet  planning reference F/TH/08/0400 they have just made a start on this.

There is some information about the Manston environmental constraints here http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/drink/id13.htm  with the problem of Pfizer right on our doorstep, taking Greenfield sites and converting them to industrial sites without first using the redundant industrial land has pretty obvious disadvantages.

With the elections in the offing I wonder if the china gateway people will once again be offering donations to the political parties and taking the councillors on trips to China. At the moment there isn’t a Tesco carrier bag in site see http://eastcliffrichard.blogspot.com/search/label/%27ello%20me%20old%20china

Thanet District Council’s unfortunate enthusiasms

With China Gateway where the initial assumptions seemed to be that the council would rubber stamp the Chinese companies discharging contaminated water into our drinking water. Pleasurama where the council seem to have been right behind a development built against basic safety advice from the environment agency and seem to have been turning a blind eye to cliff safety. The airport where the council seem to have failed to enforce various environmental regulations for years. I am beginning to wonder what sort of company would want to move to Thanet. It would be nice to think that the council would come down firmly on environmental and safety issues without people pressuring them into doing so.

In Europe now I think most reputable companies would see a quality water supply and safe cliffs and basic environmental standards as the minimum requirement to moving here.



I will ramble on as the mood takes me.

China Gateway and Marina Esplanade Ramsgate two interesting new planning applications

China Gateway and Marina Esplanade Ramsgate two interesting new planning applications

You can see form the picture above this enhancement to the Victorian Granville Marina will be highly visually stimulating. Planning ref F/TH/11/0244

The China Gateway development that has been awaiting compliance with a stringent agreement mostly to do with the original plans that were for a series of individual Chinese companies with there own septic tanks, processing their own sewage and poring the results into our drinking water reservoir, has now come up with whole new raft of plans.

Oddly enough I couldn’t find the ones stating how they intend to deal with the drains, planning ref F/TH/08/0400 

Pleasurama, Royal Sands Development Ramsgate Cliff Safety, Duty and Civil Disobedience

After my communications with the contractor earlier this week there has been some investigation of the cliff façade foundations.

The pictures should all expand if you click on them, looking at this first one taken through the site gate it appeared that not only have they cut back the chalk as far as where the pillar should continue down but have actually undermined the chalk under the pillar.

This was all too much for me, so I went on to the site, you have to appreciate that there were people walking along the cliff top path at the time. I had had assurances that the foundations were there and it certainly looked as though they were not.

 The following pictures were taken close to the pillar that has been undermined.

Here are the rest of today’s pictures from the camera card http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/netbok411/id4.htm I am a bit lost for words at the moment, obviously I have alerted Kent Fire and Rescue’s USAR team.   

Hartsdown Park V Margate Football Club update

I have had a an answer from the council to my enquiry about the fenced off synthetic football pitch, shown in red, in the picture above, click on it to enlarge.

The football club have already built some fenced off five aside pitches, shown in green, in the park and obtained planning permission to add a full sized pitch to these.

Below is my written reply from the council.

“I've discussed your email with one of our senior planning officers, who
has provided the following information:


The artificial pitch was the subject of a separate planning application
and does not form part of the proposed scheme that you are being
consulted on. The amendment proposed relates to an earlier planning
application which granted permission for a new stadium and included a
hotel to the rear of one of the stands. The application proposes
amendments to that part of the original scheme and does not relate to
the proposed artificial pitch.


The club does not have a lease on the land where it proposes to build
the artificial pitch; should it apply for a lease from the Council, that
application would be the subject of public consultation to ensure that
the public have their say.


I hope this deals with your query satisfactorily.”

And here is the enquiry I sent the council.

Hi #### I am not clear about here is the situation about putting in the new and fenced off artificial pitch that seems to cut the park in half. I am asking about this as I think it was what got most peoples backs up,
I think this was the subject of yet another planning application, it’s a bit confusing on the council planning site with so many applications.


What I am getting at here is that if the council gives the impression that all is well and under control and open to public consultation and the football club cut the park in half with a fence, it won’t look to good for the council.

A few pictures and a market day ramble

This will probably be a bit fragmented as the bookshop is fairly busy today with extra people in Ramsgate for market day.

A few more pictures of the developments on Ramsgate seafront, as you can see there is progress with the Royal Sands on the Pleasurama site albeit a bit slow for a site that is so far behind schedule.

More of these shallow foundations are being dug and filled with concrete, including some near the front of the development, pretty straightforward there as this part of the site appears to be mostly beach sand as you can see.

Having dug out some of the sand they then put in a plastic mould and ready to fill with concrete.

Here are the pictures on the camera card for the last couple of days http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/411/id6.htm

The roof frame is going in as part of the ongoing restoration of 1 Granville Marina.

Pot of tea at Ramsgate Garden Centre, decent tea £1.60 per person pot, excellent slice of chocolate sponge £2.65, good open free WiFi connection.

I got my first election leaflet today, this was from Gerry O’Donnell he is standing for both district and town councillor in my ward, I will probably vote for him on both counts, mainly because I believe he was the driving force behind The Great Wall of Ramsgate art project.       

This is also partly down to can you actually name your ward councillors? Apart from Dave Green who is a district councillor in my ward art the moment also Dave and Gerry, who are town councillors in my ward at the moment, apart from them I found I couldn’t.

In terms of being a small shopkeeper in King Street Ramsgate, it’s a bit hard to know where the best deal will be in the two lowest tiers of government, there are already several small shops opening on the sites where people failed who opened this time last year.

I suppose one of the main problems is to do with the street environment and the way people flow up the street. We have once again reached the point where the road and pavement surface is pretty much worn out and despite all the government cuts it will probably get replaced soon.

Last time this happened the opportunity to change the layout so that at the very least someone with a pushchair could get up both pavements was missed, since then the no smoking ban means that pedestrians have difficulty getting past the people spilling out of the pubs onto the pavements for a smoke.

A look though the list of candidates at http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/2011/04/election-of-district-and-townparish.html combined with googling some of the names combined with the word Ramsgate hasn’t come up with much, compared say googling my own name combined with Ramsgate which at least seems to suggest I exist, see http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=michael+child+ramsgate