Thanet District Council Snub Wantsum Jazz Festival, Red Arrows, Lark in the Park and Ramsgate week but push Monster Bass

Lots happening in Ramsgate this weekend, first the free jazz festival, nothing on the internet about this and certainly nothing on the council’s website, or at least nothing I could find apart from some bits in the monster bass program when the jazz festival is performing on the main stage. Anyway I have done what I can from available material see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/Wantsum2010/ for program and pictures, any more material, just send it to me and I will stick it up on the web too.

Monster Bass loads on the council’s website about this http://www.thanet.gov.uk/news/latest_press_releases/monster_bass_preview.aspx and http://www.thanet.gov.uk/leisure__culture/monster_bass.aspx oh and the program here http://www.thanet.gov.uk/leisure---culture/monster-bass/programme.aspx

The Red Arrows are at Manston too and I just got some pictures of them over Ramsgate click on the link to see when they will be flying over http://www.raf.mod.uk/reds/teamnews/index.cfm?storyid=6000DA52-5056-A318-A8D6D0657E3BEC1F nothing on the council website about this either.

Sorry the pictures of the Reds are a bit fuzzy, I didn’t have the right lens for plane spotting with me and I suppose I wouldn’t have had time to put it on the camera if I had, click on the link for today’s lunch break pictures http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/810/id7.htm

Here are a few thoughts on them, from the top:

Ramsgate town centre was too busy to take pictures.

Tourist information centre another council owned asset empty, no rental income, carbuncle on the town, no apparent advertising of it as available.

Harbour Parade closed to traffic and a fun fair going up.

No sign of the Maritime Museum opening for the events this weekend.

Red Arrows over Ramsgate.

A large area of the beach has been fenced off and I think we are in for a bit of a blow this weekend so that should be interesting.


Ramsgate Week starts Monday and no mention of this on the council’s homepage either.

Click on the link for the Ramsgate Week website http://www.rtyc.com/ramsgateweek.htm

Lark in the Park is in full swing at Government Acre click on the link for their website http://www.larkinthepark.com/Groups/74716/Lark_in_the/Ramsgate_Lark_in/Ramsgate_Lark_in.aspx

I know that I am rubbing this one in a bit, but this is what the council are promoting on their homepage see http://www.thanet.gov.uk/ today, the links are copied from there.

Monster Bass comes to Ramsgate

Millmead Childrens Centre Surestart Summer Fete

An evening with World Tree Music

Lions Fete at Victoria Gardens

National Blood Service - Birchington Village Centre Association

An evening with World Tree Music

Quiz Night24th Annual Model Ships Rally

Coast along for Water Aid Saturday 11 September 2010

Walk On The Wildside

Murderers Magicians Madmen & Monarchs

Margates Big Event

There is nothing wrong with the events, but only one of these events is on this weekend and two have already happened.

The Gardens at Quex Park

On to the gardens, I really did need to walk off my excellent lunch and these are my favourite gardens, the first lot of pictures are at http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop810b/id5.htm I will try to something about them.

One of my ancestors was a gardener, unfortunately one of my parents generation, all of whom are now dead leaving me in the rather exposed position as the eldest survivor. I now wish I had listened more to what he had to say when he was alive.

Apart from the first few pictures taken waling across the lawn, the rest here are in the walled garden.

Having looked at the pictures there really isn’t a lot I can think of to say.

Here is next page http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop810b/id6.htm and where as I could have had a go at describing my lunch and why I liked it, even the art there and why I like that, this garden and why I like it is is definitely beyond me. It needs Wordsworth – not the Graham Greene character, the poet – no actually I am not that keen on him perhaps Blake, I really am out of my depth here.

Here is the next page of pictures http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop810b/id7.htm still of the garden, ah yes there were some very big leaves, I tried to give some idea of the size by putting my hand in the picture. Idiot that I am I then realised that no one would know what size my hand is so I used a pound coin.

This next page is back in the main garden http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop810b/id8.htm sorry two pictures are in their sides, it’s the first time that I have seen them too.

I have done some blog posts and put up some pictures, linked to the posts, of Quex before so if you want more of this sort of thing here is the link http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/search/label/Quex%20Park

My Little Pony, but not for lunch, at Quex Barn

More of my day off, lunch at Quex Barn, I had the two course £10 special, it was so good that I had eaten the first course, rump steak with trimmings, before I remembered to photograph it.

The picture is of mi afters, bread pud, I don’t aspire to being a foodie, but I know what I like and I like the food, atmosphere and good WiFi connection at Quex Barn.

They had an art exhibition on the walls there too, another good place to display artists work. I liked some of the pictures too, but after various comments I have made about the Turner Contemporary I think I would only get into trouble if I let my aspirations as an art critic run amuck.

Oh and I did give a sugar lump to the pony, he was rather friendly and rumbled at me in an equine sort of way,

Link to the pictures, the pony was right in front of the window that was in front of our table http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop810b/id4.htm

Westgate on Sea in Thanet, Saint Saviours Church, pictures

It is my day off today and went to some places in Thanet, the pictures are publishing now. This is the first stop I noticed an art exhibition was on in Saint Saviours Church Westgate on Sea. Interesting to me as it gave me a chance to look as one of our churches that I hadn’t been inside before.

Click on the link for the pictures http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop810b/id3.htm

Westgate on Sea has some marvellous Victorian and Edwardian seaside architecture, development of Westgate on Sea started in 1865 the church was consecrated in 1873, I won’t indulge in historical detail here but will mention a few things in the pictures.

As you see this is a very good place to hold an art exhibition.

Does anyone know what the holes in shelves on the backs of the pews are for?

Also a good place to hold a local history exhibition.

The 93 free on the end of the pew meant that it was free, I think a fifth of all pews had to be free to sit in, the remainder in the late 1800s would have cost about 10/- per year to rent, this money, 50p as I direct conversion, would have gone to pay the “incumbents stipend” (vicars wages) of course 50p was worth a lot more in those days.

I will stop rabbiting on and publish this post up.

A Few Ramsgate Pictures and thoughts

Here are the pictures on the camera card these taken on Monday http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/810/id5.htm a few thoughts on them.

The new Cornish Pasty Co is open.

Ramsgate Town Partnership another deserted TDC asset not on the list of council to let see http://www.thanet.gov.uk/business/regeneration/commercial_premises_list.aspx as you see the list hasn’t been updated like much of the council website, so who knows just how much they have vacant that isn’t returning any rent.

Then the historic vessel pontoon still empty.

The Maritime Museum still closed.

Vista now open and it seemed fairly busy.

The Tug Portwey see http://www.stportwey.co.uk/ on no1 slipway.

Work is getting underway on the pavilion.

The hanging gardens of the Pleasurama cliff are now a fairly prominent feature.

Next today’s photographs http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/810/id6.htm

There was a dog swimming around in the outer basin, seemed quite happy and obviously unaware of the ban on dogs being there.

The security guards were there with their beach hut.

A blue sticker has appeared on the water quality sign, which seems to roughly translate as not such good water quality after heavy rain.

Then I heard a lot of banging about on the Pleasurama site, this transpired to be coming from an impromptu skate park that seems to be developing there instead of the development, good to see the site being put to some use.

Then something that amused me come one o’clock the security guards with the beach hut on the east pier seem to both knock off for lunch at the same time, so we go from the expensive protection to none at all.

Vista didn’t seem to be busy at all today, the rest of the places in the café culture that are usually busy seemed as busy as ever, I don’t know if this is significant of anything,

Finally back to King Street where the pavements and road surface is taking on a bit of a third world look.

Blue Flags Summer Sand and Sewage

This relates to the post “Surfers Against Sewage are calling for 5 Thanet beaches to be stripped of their Blue Flag status” click on the link to read it http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2010/08/surfers-against-sewage-are-calling-for.html

This is a high profile news story that is potentially damaging to our economy and to the Blue Flag status of our beaches.

Unfortunately this article coincided with a sewage pollution incident in Ramsgate last month, frankly looking at the history of sewage pollution for the last 13 years – the statistics about this are available on the environment agency’s website – this sort of incident happens occasionally at a great many of our beaches and I would think on a great many beaches worldwide.

A similar incident happened in Margate, July last year, there is an interactive map on the environment agency website and by dragging the map around and clicking on the appropriate place, you can view details of any major beach in the country, click on link for it http://maps.environment-agency.gov.uk/wiyby/wiybyController?value=CT11+8NY&submit=Search%09&lang=_e&ep=map&topic=coastalwaters&layerGroups=default&scale=4&textonly=off

Anyway yesterday I contacted Thanet District Council to see what they had to say about the pollution incident and publicity about the Blue Flag status of our beaches, I was only able to get their response to the media coverage of the “Surfers Against Sewage” article, click on the link to read it http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/810/id3.htm

OK this is where it gets a bit complicated, as far as water quality goes the Blue Flag status is based on testing carried out by the EA over a number of years, click on the link for the Ramsgate main Sands tests http://maps.environment-agency.gov.uk/wiyby/wiybyController?latest=true&topic=coastalwaters&ep=query&lang=_e&x=638683.9583333334&y=164857.83333333334&scale=4&layerGroups=1&queryWindowWidth=25&queryWindowHeight=25 this is a reasonable scientific approach for this purpose.

The problem however is that one criteria for Blue Flag status (criterion 28 click on the link for the whole thing http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/810/id4.htm ) says that if there is a pollution incident, then the blue flag comes down and warnings go up.

Now the EA tests happen on a Monday and the results take eight days to reach the council on Tuesday week, this means that using this method any sewage spill will have probably gone away by the time the council gets the results.

One way around this would be local processing of test samples but even this wouldn’t help that much as the bacteria takes 24 hours to grow, so once again you probably wouldn’t really know until it was too late.

So now we come to the problem of where the sewage comes from, working on the principle of whoever put it in the sea would be likely to know that they had done so.

If you look at the picture above you can see that the discharge (red stripe) near to the main sands was a large one compared to anything that happened recently during the summer months which is when these tests are done.

The only source that I can think of that would cause these levels of Faecal coliform bacteria is the emergency discharge outfall pipe opposite Granville Marina (about where Nero’s used to be)

What this does is to discharge what is in the sewer there when we have a particularly heavy rainfall and the sewer can’t cope, I don’t think records of daily rainfall here are available on the internet, click on the link for the monthly ones http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/stationdata/manstondata.txt although these haven’t been made up to July yet.

During this period I was somewhat involved in concerns about the drains in Harbour Parade and believe I would have noticed any particularly heavy rainfall, we would be looking at one of the biggest summer storms in about ten years going on the previous records and I am sure this didn’t happen.

This then leaves us with some sort of accidental discharge, probably from the outfall pipe, my understanding here is that alarms should have been going off at Southern Water and that there should be some sort of procedure in place where they tell the council and the council put up signs at the beach.

Now the problem here is that if we don’t find a way here of alerting the council to serious sewage discharges and get them to implement the proper emergency plan, then we will lose our blue flag status.

I have tried contacting both the council and Southern Water about this, despite promises from both of them to contact me about this they haven’t.

Let me be clear about this, I don’t think this problem is peculiar to Thanet District Council, there are discharge outlets all around our coastline and the coastline of every densely populated part of the world.

What comes out of these pipes is regulated and controlled to a lesser or greater degree, this is dependent on a number of factors not the least of which is self regulation in industry.

It would be my guess that the situation in the UK is better controlled and documented than many countries.

Despite all of the legislation and apparent conformity to rules and regulations, we still appear to have a situation where it is possible to go to a blue flag beach, where nothing is apparently wrong and yet everyone is swimming around in sewage.

In Ramsgate I am conscious that this happened adjacent to where it is planned to build a major development without basic safety precautions strongly recommended by the environment agency.

In this case this can happen because the council have obeyed the letter of the law, the problem in this case and with the sewage leak is that these are safety issues, box ticking while ignoring public safety isn’t a viable solution.

A few pictures of Broadstairs Folk Week

This was a visit primarily for children to look in the tents selling the amazing things that appeal to them and going to Morelli's for an ice cream, with the numbers of people and keeping an eye on the children photography wasn’t easy so there are not that many pictures and they could be better.

Here is the link http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop810a/id6.htm I will try to get over and take some more this week.

Sunday ramble about Thanet District Council’s website.

This is a long old ramble and not much recommended as it is rather depressing, as soon as I can I will get some folk week pictures up on the top of the blog, just a case of it needs saying and I hope that the council will take some notice of it.

This is about the shortcomings of the councils, something I would far rather not be spending my time on, I much prefer the local history and frankly would rather be spending time on that.

The problem with the council is that it is only the bits I see as citizen that I can judge what they are doing from, for all I know the bits that I can’t see may be functioning perfectly ok, however from some of the bits that I do see it is obvious that a lot of our money is going into something and what is coming out is just poor.

Something that I see all to often is their website and frankly despite trying very hard to get them to mend the some of the most basic broken bits it still seems to be something that doesn’t get fixed.

I am still trying on the absolute front end of this, getting them to get the homepage reasonably functional, much of the problem is I think that they just don’t seem to understand what is wrong.

There homepage is http://www.thanet.gov.uk/ I am not going to take it all apart here but just a bit starting at the top.

The search box, you have to try this to believe it, the first time I did I thought it was some sort of temporary glitch, I am sorry to say that it isn’t.

Here are some search words to try in this search box: “Ramsgate” “Margate” “Broadstairs” “Thanet” All these words return the following result: Sorry, no pages found containing your search terms.

Quite simply this most basic website function just doesn’t work and hasn’t worked properly for over a year see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2009/05/search-thanet-district-council-website.html

Back in May of last year I pointed this out to the council, found and sent them the script for a search facility that does work, engaged in a long and time consuming dialogue with them and at the same time added the facility to search their website to the sidebar of this blog. This facility returns 370 results for the search term “Ramsgate” from the council’s website.

I do wonder though just how much of our money has been pumped into the councils attempts to write a better web search script than Google can, which from the correspondence I received from them seemed to be the way they have been going for the last year.

Next we come to their Adobe Flash Player header banner, this is promoting some major Thanet events but not the main one this week, once again this is something I tried to sort out with the council last year.

I have tried a slightly different approach this year, this started with my blog post http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2010/08/thanet-district-council-snub.html I am afraid that I deliberately couched this in terms that the council wouldn’t like hoping to attract some anonymous comment a member of the council. For one reason on or another they don’t usually comment under their own names about this sort of thing, certainly there is very little blogging on councillors own blogs recently.

This was mainly because I knew that if I approached the councillors directly or made some sort of official complaint one way they would use to avoid this issue would be to misunderstand what I was talking about. I would say to most people of reasonable intelligence promoting one major local event on their website while ignoring another is an indefensible position.

Well I did this and got what I needed and sent off the complaint on Friday, here is a link to what I sent http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop810a/id5.htm needless to say they didn’t actually do anything about the problem.

What I did get was an email telling me that I would receive a response within ten working days from customer services and nothing from the cabinet members who I had copied it to.

Coming down the council’s homepage we now come to, news, as I publish the Thanet press releases blog http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/ this interests me, since I started communications with the council about this some aspects of this part of their website have improved.

The solution that I suggested was that the council’s IT department set up a way that the council’s press officers could publish the press releases and associated pictures directly to the internet.

Many of the problems that have occurred during period (over a year now) that I have taken an interest in their press release publication, have been because the IT officer publishing the press release hasn’t written it and doesn’t understand properly what it relates to. These problems are often compounded because of the time they take to put right, that is if they are ever put right.

One way that I suggested that they could resolve this issue was to embed a blog into the council’s website and make all of the officers team members, I really don’t think that they liked this idea as it would have cost absolutely nothing from an IT point of view. Free solutions to otherwise expensive problems seem to be very difficult for councils to comprehend, with the current economic situation, somehow they are going to have to grasp this nettle.

I think the problem here is that it took some time for local government to catch up with the internet, and regulation of what internet facilities they can use seems to have started at some totally random point. As far as I can see the council use Youtube and Twitter but draw the line at Google and Blogger, hence the search facility.

Their approach seems to be putting money into trying to produce in house solutions, instead of using free facilities that already exist, they have got some way with this.

Feeds, these are the mysteries internet codes that allow updated content to be noticed, simply a way of letting people know when something new has appeared on a website, most of us use this on blogger almost without thinking about it as it is built in. the most common use of this is the recent posts on other blogs thingy on most of the local blogs sidebars. This is something that they have now mastered for part of their website, when they put up something new on that part of their website it now appears on the sidebar of this blog. Unfortunately this doesn’t happen when they put up a new document, like the notice of a meeting or some major planning application that effects a lot of local people. This does happen for the press releases though.

The next thing is pictures, sometimes they manage to get one of their very good pictures up with their press release see http://www.thanet.gov.uk/news/latest-press-releases/rainham-school-visit.aspx as an example, for the most part though they only manage a thumbnail that you can’t expand, that is if the photo ever sees the light of day.

This raises the obvious question about the cost i.e. why are we paying for photographs that don’t ever seem to reach the light of day?

Another problem is the amount of time press releases take to appear, on occasions a press release promoting some local event has actually take so long to appear that when it does the event is over. On the whole they seem to be getting better at this although still some of the press releases that I put on my press release blog take ages to appear on the council’s website, the latest one http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/2010/08/changes-made-to-asset-disposal-plans.html appears to fall into this bracket.

There is also of course the business of actually attempting to communicate with local people, by this I mean some sort of moderated comments, the only place the council do this is on their planning site, there they have chosen to set the site so that any public comments are not visible to the public.

What comes next, well there are all their links down the left side and I may get to some of them if I get time, on to the right side of the page is “do it online” I will have a go at this some other time as it seems to be about paying things and joining things, something that would make it difficult, the first link precludes my participation as I don’t owe the council any money.

Have your say is something I have had a go at before and I will endeavour to have a go now.

The first link is called “asset management consultation update” it takes you to a page that starts:

“Cabinet meeting
Decisions on the future of 11 sites proposed for disposal as part of the 2010-11 asset management process will be made at a meeting of the Cabinet on Thursday 5 August at 7.00pm.”

It would seem that the update needs updating.

What I can’t find is the results of the consultation, by this I mean what the people who took part in it said, I will try the next links just don’t apply to me so I can’t really test them.

I don’t live in community housing, am not young, couldn’t get to the big event and so on.

Then we come to a section called events, this one is truly bizarre, partly because they already have the visit Thanet site that I believe lists these already and partly because each of these links to events takes you to part of the councils main website where the information is just odd.

Here we go:

1 Millmead Childrens Centre Surestart Summer Fete - 17 August 2010
17 August 2010 Tuesday 17th Aug 11-3

2 Lions Fete at Victoria Gardens 29 August 2010 Fete, stalls selling craft, bric a brac etc Also games such as coconut shy & trap the rat. Refreshments.

I won’t go on from here as you see the second event tells you where it is but not what time, you can follow the rest of these through if you like, why the council should be using their homepage to promote what are mostly relatively minor events arrange in some sort of random time scale, some are not even in this month, while at the same time ignoring this weeks main event, is just beyond me.

Back to the middle and focus on Thanet:

The first link is called “Great events for young people” this takes you to a page that has a graphic on it saying “Why not do something less boring instead read more” I immediately clicked on, read more. This takes you to an error page explaining that the page it points at doesn’t exist. It wasn’t that bad as there was another link on the page that worked.
Next is a link about next years census, I will look at that next year.

The next one seems to be the one about social housing.

Then there is one about council procurement from local businesses, the council used to buy local history books from me for their tourist information offices, this stopped when it became to difficult for the people working in them.

Then there is shop local first, I haven’t got involved in this one as it involves giving discounts, I decided long ago that I would aim to have the best and most keenly priced book stock in the area and a simple problem then comes up which is if you are going to take money off you have to put it on in the first place.

Next is Margate’s Big Event, this is promoting an event held in June it even had a video of the 2009 event, not this years.