Ramsgate Harbour Drive Through and other Monday Morning Thoughts

 It would appear that something, possibly an amphibious vehicle, possibly aliens, has driven out of the water and onto the beach that has formed at the end of Ramsgate’s East Pier.

 You will probably have to click compulsively on the pictures to see the tyre tracks, as the man who spotted Nessie said, I only had my mobile phone with me and the camera isn’t as good as the one I usually use.

Staying with the harbour theme for a moment, some of you may have noticed work in progress on the main slipway, slipway No1, recently which means that this slipway has been out of action for a while.

As you can see from the picture, it is now back in action, with an extra large windfarm boat undergoing maintenance on it.

I will endeavour to ramble on with this post if the day’s work permits.  

I have added this picture of the prime suspect for the tracks.

     

What’s Long, Hard and Royal in Ramsgate Harbour that glows different colours in the dark? Pinch and a Punch it’s the First of the Month. Some thoughts on forms of government and a ramble.

 With The Spirit of Chartwell moored in Ramsgate Royal Harbour and what looks misuse of the system to regulate standards in public life at Thanet District Council, I thought some sort of comment would be appropriate.

First for those of you who are interested in the relative popularity of local blogs here is the link to my referral statistics for this blog http://michaelsbookshop.com/laptop912

 I guess those of you who read my press release blog will have viewed the video of Independent Councillor Bernard La Roche, if you haven’t here it is

As someone who reads more of the rather bland documents emanating from our various level of government than I would like, when it comes to our local government, it is the video footage that seems most to provide some sort of indicator that all is far from well.

The notion that we have local democracy and elect people who best represent our views and will represent local people, curbing the more bizarre excesses of career officers who live outside of the local area, doesn’t seem to work as well as one would hope.  

Apologies if all this is a bit confused, my bookshop is fairly busy today and this combined with having bought the mother of all printers, so that I can print historic maps of Thanet, means that my eye is not entirely on the ball.

Once again I find myself wondering about the benefits of the elected leader system for Thanet District Council, certainly paying for local councillors to wrangle with each other doesn’t seem to me to an appropriate use of local funds and resources.  

I wouldn’t say that I am a royalist, resorting to youtube again, this is the national anthem that most represents my nationalistic affiliations.

That said I do like a bit of showmanship and don’t think that replacing the present system of a monarch would be improved by having President Cameron, Clegg or what is the other chap’s name?

An interesting aside to local politics is that Dr Simon Moores appears to have aspirations towards becoming Dr No and appears to have bought the domain http://birchington.blogspot.no/  

Visual images of Simon battling it out on the north of the island with Sean Connery and Ursula Andress have become too much for me and I have gone to have a lie down.

As you see from the pictures, after leaving The Belgian Café yesterday evening I spent some time looking at the moon.

Thanet District Council and the Heritage Open Days, a good chance to experience vertigo.

Every year at the beginning of September some local historic buildings are open to the public for free and every year I seem to have problems with the council and the various websites promoting this.

I have tried to pre-empt the problem this year by phoning up the council officer in charge of promoting this and hopefully we will get a complete list published on the council’s tourism website.

Having given up trying to find some of the buildings I expected or knew to be taking part I phoned the council’s last remaining council run tourist information office, this is in the Droit House in Margate.

I have had strong words with council today about what happens when you dial their number, so I am hoping for a change, here is the number 01843 577577 having listened to the usual load of twaddle, you are then asked to press 1, 2, 3 and so on, where in most cases you get another series of twaddle followed by the thing hanging up on you. Pressing option one or six gets you through to a human being at the time of writing.

As an adept at using the Visit Thanet website, this is what I can find there at the moment.

·                                 Open Days at Pugin's Grange

Sat 8 Sep 2012

Heritage Open Days at St George's Church

Sat 8 Sep 2012

·                                

Heritage Open Weekend at Quex Park

Sat 8 - Sun 9 Sep 2012

·                                

Flower Festival at St Laurence Church

Sun 9 Sep 2012

·                                

Heritage Open Days at St George's Church

Sun 9 Sep 2012

·                                

        

Tue 11 Sep 2012

·                                 Open Days at Pugin's Grange

·                                  

The main opening that I know of that isn’t mentioned is Sunday 9th. September 2012 the Montefiore Synagogue and Mausoleum Open from 9.30am to 2.00pm.

No council owned buildings seem to be taking part in this international event, I guess many of the major council owned public buildings in Ramsgate are derelict and would require hard hats, this does make you wonder about the others in the rest of Thanet, Northdown House and the Tudor House spring to mind.

Next the vertigo part and what historic buildings you can visit for nothing.

At Quex Park Birchington you can visit The Round Tower, not sure if you can go far enough up this to experience vertigo.

At St Laurence Church you can go up the tower.

At The Grange you can go up the tower.

The high point though is going up the tower of St Georges Church in Ramsgate.

Here are the pictures from last year.

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/rsgct/index.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/rsgct/id3.htm

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

Ramsgate August Bank Holiday 2012 Pictures Steam, Boats and Art

If you are wondering what to do this weekend, you could do worse than go down to Ramsgate Harbour and enjoy the event on there.

If you take some old rope with you, you can like in Aladdin exchange it for new rope, the old rope will form rope sculptures that will replace Rodin’s The Kiss in the foyer of The Turner Contemporary.

While on the subject of rope, you can learn to make rope, courtesy of Chatham Dockyard, while you are there.

There is a rather unusual beam engine running there there, which I think is called a steamboat doctor pump and was used on these vessels in America to pump water, from the river to the boilers until the 1850s. 

 As someone who once owned a Reliant Regal, I never aspired to the more advanced and expensive Robin, I was rather taken by this 1919 AC trike, AC went on to produce the faster Cobra series.

It is possible to go on some of the vessels there, which particularly amused my children so is a consideration if you have children about you this weekend.

Ramsgate events are often difficult to describe, it is a case of we all enjoyed ourselves, perhaps the pictures on my camera card will help, here are the links:

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop812/id8.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop812/id9.htm

Talking to various volunteers there, I gather the event was restricted to only two days by the council who wouldn’t allow it to run for the whole three days of the bank holiday. Presumably they are wary of people in Ramsgate enjoying themselves too much.

There was also some concern as one of the café owners has threatened to sue because of smuts on their upholstery caused by the coal fires powering the various steamboats there.

This was an aspect of the compensation culture we now live in that I had never considered, perhaps we should all be careful about lighting a coal fire this Christmas.    

I may ramble on here some more. 

August Bank Holiday Weekend, what’s on in Ramsgate.

 This weekend there are two major events on in Ramsgate

 The maritime museum is holding a steam event, on Sunday 26th and Monday 27th, arranged by the Steam Museum Trust and happening at Pier Yard and the on the crosswall.  It will feature several visiting vessels, S.T. Cervia in steam, various steam engines, cars, etc and a fairground.

 The  “Summer Squall” arts festival is on all over the town, the program for this is available as a pdf file at http://ramsgatearts.org/summer_squall_2012.pdf

The pictures are of steam preparations.

I did manage to skive off work in my bookshop for a short time today and take some pictures of activities in the vicinity of the harbour today, here is the link http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop812/id7.htm

Note the carousel, it is one of the best in the UK and I believe the only one with bears, note the carved running board, the names on the gallopers will be those of the showman’s family.  

Margate, The Erotic Turner Contemporary, Toilets, Dreamland, Regeneration, Parking and Pictures.

With the heat, weather forecast, the previous post about Margate, I figured Margate would be at its busiest so I went to see the situation for myself yesterday. I guess I know Margate fairly well and understand how it functioned with Dreamland and now with The Turner Contemporary.

Back in the early 70s when I worked as an engineer at Dreamland, The Lido and Margate’s Golden Mile, I didn’t have a problem parking that I remember, but yesterday parking was the key issue.

I went to some boot fairs during the early hours, mainly because it was too hot to sleep, boot fairs now seem to be mostly made up of things that failed to sell on Ebay, I think I arrived in Margate at about 10am and parked on the Dreamland site, this is £2.50 for all day and I guess is where most of Margate’s visitors park.

I was greatly in need of the loo and made my way to The Turner Contemporary which is very convenient in this respect and thoughtfully pondered the steady stream of people entering the gallery, making for the loos and then leaving the gallery.

I wonder do these people figure in the statistics, a quick look at the erotic art exhibition by, Turner, Rodin and Emin and I was in the mood to paint, this requires a seat and a cup of tea.

The picture above was inspired by erotic aspects of The Turner Contemporary, the dark blue bit in the middle that should have been a bluey grey, was caused by shock induced by an artistic incident, I dipped my brush in my tea by mistake.

 For a cup of tea, served in a civilised fashion at a reasonable price with an excellent view I don’t think you can beat Lola and Company on the harbour arm. My wife had Coffee, which she said was very good too.

Margate beach seemed as busy as it used to be in the 70s by the time I had painted my picture and finished my tea and evidently Margate is where the government funding is going in Thanet, which raises the question of infrastructure if the results are successful. 

The area outside The Turner Contemporary already runs a continual level of parking rage, as people turn up by car to what is supposed to be a national attraction, only to find they can’t park.

By about 3pm I had had enough of crowds and returned to the car park on the dreamland site, it was completely full with hot and fairly angry people driving around in it looking for non-existent spaces, I removed my car with difficult due to the three others who were all trying to get into the empty space at the same time.

If you go to any commercially run place where there are likely to be a lot of people turning up to spend their money then parking the car is not usually a problem.

Supermarkets, boot fairs and so on have got this sorted out properly.

With The Turner Contemporary the commercial aspect isn’t a problem, Kent County Council have taken £1.6 million out of our tax contributions and given it to the gallery to pay for running expenses this year.

Large amounts of government funding will be made available for the Regeneration of Dreamland and presumably a great many people will turn up there, but the parking issue needs solving, otherwise they will drive around in circles, until they are very angry and then go elsewhere. I doubt that there will be parking problems at any of the competing theme parks.  

here is the link to the pictures straight from my camera card of yesterdays visit to Margate http://michaelsbookshop.com/laptop812/id6.htm 

I will ramble on here.      

Thanet Council’s Dream of Dreamland

Unless you have missed all of the local news you will be aware that Thanet District Council have won their case to compulsorily purchase Dreamland. Like The Turner Contemporary this is a further move to regenerate Margate using public finance.

I am now going to speculate about the funding, this is not area where I have much expertise, so corrective comment would be helpful.

The money the council will use to change the derelict site into a heritage theme park, about £10m comes from a £3m lottery grant, a £3.7m sea change grant and about £4m from Thanet District Council.

The other part, where I am a bit more mystified about is the money to pay for the compulsory purchase, what is the site worth?

I suppose the answer to this one depends on what the site can be used for, for instance if it were agricultural land and the owner was only allowed to grow crops on it, then the site value would be less than £1m.

At the other end of the scale, if it were prime building land one would expect the site value to be something very much higher.

When the site was operated as an amusement park, like any business the site value related to the profits generated by that business. Of course the value of the site in terms of selling it as part of a business wouldn’t be separated out in that way. In a purely hypothetical situation, it would be possible to buy an amusement park as a going concern for perhaps £5m mostly based on the profits made by the amusement park, say £0.5m per year. It could be possible to secure grant funding to improve the site, say £3m and then sell the best rides for a couple of million. I guess the net result of selling the best rides would mean that the amusement park failed but wouldn’t have cost anything, so it would then be reasonable to say that as the amusement park had failed the site would be better suited to something else, I guess the highest value land would be land with permission to build housing on.

Anyway all this muddled and hypothetical reasoning leads to the question, how much money will the council have to find to purchase the land, will it be related to the site’s value as housing land, which I guess would be over £20m or will it be related to the site’s value as an amusement park.

There is another side to this coin, which it doesn’t actually take a lot of time to set up a fun fair on the Dreamland site, the links below take you to pictures of the fun fair there last year.

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/Dreamland2511/id4.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/Dreamland2511/id3.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/Dreamland2511/index.htm

I think this funfair took about a day to set up.

In a general sense I don’t think most heritage rides take more than about four hours to put up, this is an area where I do have some expertise as I worked, as an engineer, for want of a better word, for Jimmy Chipperfied’s fairs in the 1960s. We moved the fair every week and got paid for the week when all the rides were up and running properly.

Thanet history book sale, phoning the council, phoning the police and other Friday ramblings.

 I have just changed the local books window display and made up a sale of sun faded books from it, I have added various proofing copies, shop soiled local books and local books that probably have something or another wrong with them. Publishing and printing about 150 books about this part of Kent I get quite a few of these.

 I have been going round in the circles of phoning the council in order to find out what happened at last night’s overview and scrutiny meeting relating to the call in of The Royal Sands development agreement decision made by the council cabinet.

 Why the council don’t put this sort of information on their website, first thing in the morning on the day after the meeting, god alone knows, chasing around for an officer who was at the meeting for everyone who phones up to find out must be a considerable waste of resources.

 Anyway I now have an answer, which is scrutiny have asked for an external review of the financial side of the deal.

 For me the problem here is more the secrecy and not so much the council getting good value for the site. An example of what I mean here is the previous development agreement, I think it fair to say that aspects of this where not as well written as they could have been, the most problematic thing being that there is really no hard and fast time limit in it. As far as I can tell the developer could sit on the site for another five years blaming market conditions and not really doing anything.

 However back several years to when the development agreement came before cabinet, it was a secret document, so no one could say. “Look here chaps, you could drive a coach-and-four through this agreement.

 Of course after about a year of foi requesting I got the agreement but by then it was too late.     

 Part of the reason for the shop window change was a cracked pane of glass, I am afraid window dressing isn’t a vocation I have a calling for, so the windows don’t get changed very often.

Just looked at the picture above, the later one below shows the potential pitfall of building in front of the cliff.

 When I first opened the bookshop here in Ramsgate, the shop had very large plate glass windows and when one got broken, in the middle of the night, I would call the police who would turn up during the boarding up process.

 This is a situation that moved on the point where one would get woken up say at one in the morning, be boarded by about two and then woken up again by the police at about three. This then moved on to two police officers arriving the next day and asking me if I would like victim counselling and support, so in the interests of crime reduction I no longer report broken shop windows.

 A manifold improvement in crime statistics, being woken up in the night and great savings in counselling, though no so good for the glass companies, because as the big sheets were broken, I have had the made into smaller sheets.

 I will ramble on here, perhaps.