North and South Thanet constituency boundary changes

The map above shows the constituency boundaries at the last general election.
The map above shows the new constituency boundaries that will be used for the forthcoming general election.

Sorry the maps are a bit fuzzy they were the best I could find, if anyone comes across anything clearer could they send them to me and I will replace these ones.

I know this is a bit of an odd post, but as one of the youf of today asked me what the boundary changes were and I realised that I didn’t know I thought others could be in the same boat.

A major point with these boundary changes is that had they happened before the last general election, and had people voted the same way as they did then, both Thanet constituencies would have returned Conservatives.

As far as thoughts on the general election go having heard most of the major players warning us that if their opposition is elected we are in for an economic disaster I have to say this is an occasion where I find myself beginning to believe politicians.

None of them really seem to have much to say about what worries so many of us which is that our towns are becoming much more unpleasant to live in, from dangerous dogs to groups of rowdy drunks.

At the moment all of the latest polls are predicting a Conservative majority over Labour but none are predicting an outright majority see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8609989.stm

Here is the link to this mornings pictures of Ramsgate http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/410/id10.htm

Cliff collapse at Pegwell and a few other pictures and thoughts

Back at work in the bookshop this morning after a day off that was actually warm and sunny, I haven’t had much time for blogging or even answering my emails over the last couple of days, so apologies to anyone waiting for a reply.

Mixture of things really seem to have caused this, mostly the school holidays and keeping on top of the local books and local history questions.

I now have 130 local books in print so maintaining a fairly minimal stock of 20 copies of each means keeping on top of 2,600 books and even with that many one can run out of a title in less that a week or not sell as ingle copy of another title for months.

Anyway here are the various links to the pictures since my last post.

Thursday morning in Ramsgate http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/410/id6.htm nothing particularly special about them.

Next Thursday afternoon starting on the westcliff lots of cars parked up there and quite a lot of people about. I walked along the chalk – exposed at low tide – towards Pegwell as you can see there has been a fairly substantial cliff fall leaving some mobile homes a bit close to the edge for comfort. I finally wound up at the hotel if you want to know more about this building I publish a book about it and its surroundings see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/id131.htm

As you can see the boating pool was busy for the time of year, I think this may be at least partly due to the children’s play area there now being free.

Here is the link to the pictures http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/410/id7.htm

Next this morning before I opened the shop I walked up the east pier, some parts of it are looking a bit dilapidated and the café on the end is still closed, despite all of this as you can see the views are well worth walking up the pier for.

Here is the link to the pictures http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/410/id8.htm

Next a question for those of you that enjoy the pictures about the way I publish them up on the internet at the moment most of the pictures I put up are 1200 pixels wide and on my internet confection they take about a second each to load, the most I put on one page is about 150 meaning that the longest a page takes to load is 150 seconds. I believe this means that page loads faster than anyone could reasonably take to view the pictures.

Do you think that I am getting this about right? Do you want fewer pictures on a page? Would you like higher definition pictures? This page has three pictures of fish in the Belgian Café, that were caught by Ramsgate fishermen http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/410/id9.htm I have put one up the size I normally do one up medium size and one fairly large, so what do you prefer?


Finally many thanks to TDC for removing their misleading video, after I pointed out to them that they could be reported to trading standards under the misrepresentation of goods act, I was quite surprised not to receive a reply from them, perhaps it got lost in TDCIT.

Some pictures of Ramsgate and Walmer Castle and a few thoughts.

For an Easter weekend it seemed a bit strange to have no events going on in Ramsgate, as you can see from the pictures the council have made a very neat job of boarding up the tourist information office.

I should point out that there will be some sort of tourist information office in the custom house, at least this is somewhere that tourists will find it.

Yes the plane really was that low, again, no special lens, just point and shoot.

With no family event in Ramsgate and having been to Quex Park recently, I looked on the English Heritage website and decided that Walmer Castle was the place to take them.

We have family membership for English Heritage, something I would recommend if you have a family as they are much more geared to entertaining children than they used to be.

I didn’t take many pictures inside as it was just too busy, so I am afraid there are rather a lot of pictures of trees, oh well no one is forcing you to look at them.

Click on the link for the pictures http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/410/id5.htm

A few pictures of Ramsgate Harbour and an Easter rabbit.

Walking around the harbour this morning it occurred to me that one of the main blights on the harbour is the number of empty, disused, misused and or ill maintained council properties.

I can’t help wondering if something hasn’t gone badly wrong in the council’s estates department, coincidentally two important organisations seem to be likely to leave the harbour because the council won’t give them security of tenure.

In the case of Marlec Marine see http://eastcliffrichard.blogspot.com/2010/03/council-tries-to-ruin-local-business.html this seems to be a case of the councils estates department playing a silly game of waving the rulebook, instead of supporting an important local business.

Security of tenure also seems to be the problem with the maritime museum.

It makes one wonder what the situation is with The Eagle Café and some of the other empty buildings and badly used land around the harbour.

One of the largest council owned structures there is the arches something that by its very nature it is difficult to determine how many of them are disused of in a bad state of repair.

Here is the link to the pictures http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/410/id4.htm

A quick glance at the local news feeds revealed that The Monster Raving Loony Party is looking for candidates to stand as candidates in both of the Thanet constituencies see http://www.yourthanet.co.uk/kent-news/Are-you-loony-enough-for-Thanet--newsinkent34537.aspx?news=local I had thought that I might stand in Thanet South, however as there seems to a possibility of getting elected I don’t think I will.

Ramsgate food for thought

A busy day in the bookshop today, once again Ramsgate is becoming a destination for Londoners and this seems to be to do with the diversity and quality of the Restaurants and the new café culture. Virtually every week there is something in the national press, this is the most recent I could find from Country Life http://www.countrylife.co.uk/blogs/article/448999/Town-mouse-on-Ramsgate-London.html for the most part these Londoners seem to come down, as they have since about 1800, to recover from life in the capital and most of them seem to enjoy what they find here.

The secondhand book world is inclined to bring up peculiar historical anomalies, the book pictured above, was published in 1942 while we were fighting a war and it does indeed seem to explain in great detail how anyone can make explosives out of common ingredients.

It says inside “FOR THE FORCES. Leave this book at a Post Office when you have read it so that the men and women in the Services may enjoy it too.”

One is reminded that we are fighting a war at the moment and building a whole new set of historical anomalies.

Delving through news about Kent on the internet I noticed that much is being made of the differences in reporting a sex attack in Aylesford with some speculation that the BBC is taking an extreme slant towards multiculturalism, here is the BBC article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/8600907.stm and here same thing as reported by the Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1262984/Teenage-Afghan-asylum-seekers-pool-sex-attack-girl-13.html various other media sources are reporting it with slight variations. The Daly Mail article was the most detailed I could find.

Both of these anomalies made me wonder if we are a somewhat gullible people and if we are how I feel about the idea.

Another bit of local news is that John Kampfner http://www.jkampfner.net/index.html is the new head of the Turner Contemporary, I have great hopes that he will improve the situation there.

Oh and Katherine Kerswell has been confirmed as the new chief of KCC on four thousand pounds a week see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2010/03/female-4k-for-kent-county-council.html nice work if you can get it.

I will may ramble on depending on how busy the shop is.

Good Friday Ramble and a few pictures.

I managed to get out for a bit yesterday and this morning, click on the link for the pictures http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/410/id3.htm the pretty stiff cold wind on both occasions means that there are not that many of them.

Although theoretically Good Friday is a bank holiday I pretty much always feel obliged to open my bookshop for at least the middle part of the day, people now expect shops to be open then.

Anyway a few thoughts on the pictures. The winding house for the two smaller slipways seems to have got into a bit of a state, never an attractive building – I think it was put up during the war and that the slipways were built to service MTBs and other relatively small naval craft, but will have to check my fact on that one – I am not sure if it is made of corrugated ferro sheets or asbestos, so there may be an elf and safety issue too.

I have noticed that these two slipways have hardly been used recently and I suppose it must be difficult for Ramsgate’s rather dated outdoor slipway facilities to compete with more modern indoor facilities, many of which are on the coast of continental Europe and not very far to take a boat.

With the maritime museum closed followed by this, the other buildings there and the pavilion then the Pleasurama site then the Marina Restaurant, what should be an attractive part of the town isn’t.

With the business with Marlec Marine Ltd see http://eastcliffrichard.blogspot.com/2010/03/council-tries-to-ruin-local-business.html and today’s Isle of Thanet Gazette and the failure of the council to grant security of tenure for the maritime museum, one does wonder if TDC are trying to finish the town and harbour off.

Yesterday was a particularly low tide and at least the dredging work still seems to be going on, lets hope they do all of it including the inner basin.

Two council vehicles can be seen parked right on the cliff edge immediately above where problems with the cliff façade foundations have recently been excavated, see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2010/03/pleasurama-cliff-facade-finally.html this really is a very strange way of behaving.

The large newly rebuilt shop near to Waitrose in Queen Street has notices on it saying that they are applying for a licence to sell alcohol to be consumed off the premises, it looks as though another convenience food shop.

The increase in the number of food retail outlets in Ramsgate town centre recently is considerable and I am wondering how the very large out of town supermarkets will counter this. It is interesting that many food outlets Tesco, M&S and – what was the one where Argos is – Fine Fare? Left the town and now Cost Cutter next to me Eddie Gilberts wet fish shop, the new greengrocer, the new Polish – is it one in Queen Street, plus quite a few specialist food shops.

The Restaurant thing is peculiar too this weeks addition being a new pizza one in King Street.

Finally Cooke & Co that closed in King Street about 6 months ago has reopened in Queen Street.

Thanet District Council’s website and the Easter events

I hate to be drawing attention to TDCIT messing things up again, but here we go, yawn, is it worth bothering to contact them.

The two main events this Easter are April 2-5 http://www.quexpark.co.uk/default/quex-events/quex-park-events/museum-events/restaurant-and-friends-of-quex-events.aspx and April 2-3 Thanet Easter Beer Festival

Here are the Easter events lifted from EASTCLIFF RICHARD’s sidebar
April

1-13 Thanet Gang Show

2-5 Insect World@Marine Studios

2-5 Victorian Easter@Quex Park

2-3 Thanet Easter Beer Festival

3 Adventures at Tom Thumb

3 Choir concer at Broadstairs

3 Quadrophenia at Carlton Cinema



Here are the events listed on Thanet district Council’s website’s homepage.

Stainer's Crucifixion
Margate Old Town Easter Market
St. Laurence Church Coffee Morning (April)
Dance - Birchington Village Centre Association
St Pancras, Canary Wharf, and Friends.Comedy Playhouse
OPENING of SEASON - Ramsgate Bowling Club
Beach Safety Training
National Blood Service - Birchington Village Centre Association
The Zeal of the Spirit

Pinch and a punch it’s the first of the month

Once again the statistics for the people who clicked on a link on another website in order to get here, this is the nearest I can get to a popularity count of the other local blogs, click on the link to view the statistics http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop5/id10.htm

As it is my day off today I am doing this from my mobile notebook so apologies for any typos.

The new thing of interest that that I spotted straight away is that this is the first month that Simon Moores Thanet Life blog has had a link comparable to the ones on the other main Thanet blogs.

As you see his blog seems to be marginally more popular the main Labour councillor’s blog Mark Nottingham’s From One End of Kent, I wonder if this is in any significant of political feeling at the moment.

It is interesting to see where my Thanet press blog comes in all this, it only gats about 1,500 visits a month from about 900 different people.