New Plans for Ramsgate Slipways

This is a preview of the new plans that are being submitted to the council today, I can’t form a detailed appraisal of the project until the plans apper on the council’s planning website.

My understanding is that the intention is for slipways 2, 3 and 4 to go with slipway no 1 being retained, the new building shown above to house a restaurant.

I will add to this one later today.  

Sorry about the delay completing this post, as I said I can’t really say much until the plans are available for inspection on the council’s website.

Presumably like the previous application there will be two sets, one for some demolition on the site and one for the development above, the previous demolition plans were to demolish to the extent that slipways 2, 3 and 4 were rendered unusable, these were rejected, so I am assuming the new demolition plans will be different.

Obviously the drawing above looks in keeping and attractive, but the key to the whole business is what slipway provision the harbour needs to be a viable harbour and how this development effects that provision.  

Thanet District Council’s Facebook Mystery

When it comes to Facebook to be honest the whole thing is a bit of a mystery to me, with my own facebook site and after some difficulty, all I do is connect it to this blog so that what I post here shows there automatically.

I just don’t have time for more internet sites and have stuck with blogger as it is easy to use, particularly for people who want to comment without having to fill in some online form.

What the council do on the internet is a bit different though for a number of reasons, the most pertinent being that all of us council taxpayers contribute to the cost and so there is a sense that the councils efforts to publish information on the internet represents all of us.

As far as I can see when it comes to facebook the council have tried to do something similar to what I do with my blog posts with their press releases, the underlying problem for the council is that when it comes to IT they seem to take the approach that they know better than anyone else, and can solve problems by throwing our money at them.

At the moment the council publish their press releases like a bog with comments disallowed, see http://www.thanet.gov.uk/news/latest_press_releases.aspx and this part of the council’s website is supposed to feed to other websites, like a blog does. If the council’s feeds worked properly, every time they added a press release their facebook page would update, people who subscribe to the council’s press releases would receive a new press release and just like blogger other local internet sites would receive the feed and an updated link would go to the top of the list.

To explain this in a bit more detail, when the other local bloggers, Tony, Simon, Don, Peter and so on write a new blog post it pops up on the top of my sidebar and people like you who read the local blogs, notice this and go there to read what they have written.

The problem is though that the council’s feeds don’t work properly, now a simple solution to this would be for the council to use a blog with the comments disallowed, blogger is very versatile and you can use a a blog with all of the complicated and expensive add-ons like feeds and free image publication without it showing to the blog readers, Thanet Waves does this see http://www.thanetwaves.co.uk/

For a number of years now I have been trying to get the council to solve these problems by just embedding a blog in their website and putting their press releases with the associated images, all something that we pay for.

Over this period of time I have had various answers from the council about why their feeds don’t feed properly, the latest being that this is because of a fault with Google, obviously as the don’t feed properly to facebook either this just doesn’t make sense.

As a sort of temporary solution to this problem I have put the new council information that I can fairly easily manually extrapolate from their website and their press releases onto the internet for them. See http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/ I don’t think the council like this very much and there have been some efforts by them to make doing this difficult for me. Apart from a short period of time when they took me off of their press release email list I have done this consistently for the last two years.

So here is their facebook wall http://www.facebook.com/pages/Thanet-District-Council/83700846372?sk=wall showing a press release they published on 12.10.2011 with a link to The Thanet Anthem http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am4T7QbQm3w

This would be funny it we weren’t paying for it. 

Council owned property in Thanet

After Saturday’s post about the fire in the Pav and the fantastic weekend weather I have just got to the comments some of which are about the Thanet District Council owned properties in Ramsgate.

It is my intention to try and get some sort of update about what is happening with them from the council, but before doing this I want to make certain that my enquiry includes all of the important ones.

Any help with this one from blog readers would be appreciated, obviously I think I know about the Ramsgate ones, but am not really sure if this problem just a Ramsgate one, or if there are major council owned properties in the rest of Thanet, where things are not really going to plan.

So please if anyone knows of any others let me know, either in the comments or by email, link on the sidebar.

Starting with the largest, the Pleasurama site, this still seems to be very much behind schedule and although there is some provision for this in the various agreements with the council, the council don’t seem to have pursued the matter at all.

I am not saying that this development has gone totally wrong, just that the council and via the council us the taxpayers should be aware of the real situation.

The development’s website says that the first apartments should be ready for occupation in about two years see http://www.royalsandsramsgate.co.uk/faq.asp the agreement with the council says the work they are doing at the moment, laying foundations or ground work should have been completed by the end of August 2010 and that the structural frame for section A should have started going up in March 2011 and should be completed by February 2012, with the whole of the development finished by February 2014, see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/pda/id17.htm

There is within the agreement room for the developer to go back to the council and seek a delay of up to three years, but this doesn’t seem to have happened.

Next on the list is Westcliff Hall, last used as the motor museum, my understanding is that this is in a poor structural condition and that the council made some effort to get rid of it and the associated liability. The latest I have heard it that a voluntary group hopes to take it over.

This is what it says on the council’s website “Ongoing discussions are taking place about granting an option to a local group who are interested in developing the building. It is important that the interested community group should understand the costs of alterations and maintenance of the building.”

And more recently. “WESTCLIFF HALL, RAMSGATE

This is subject to a further Cabinet report at the 22nd September meeting to seek

approval to grant an option to the Local Carbon Community Ramsgate (now Project

MotorHouse Ltd).”

Next Albion House, I think that the town council wanted to take over this one but couldn’t come to an agreement with TDC, at the moment TDC seem to be just letting it fall apart.

Next The Maritime Museum, I think negotiations about this are ongoing with Preston Steam Trust, the charity that want to run it as a museum. I believe that these negotiations have been going on for about five years now, with the council periodically moving the goal posts.

Next the heritage pontoons, with the question why isn’t there a reasonable display of heritage vessels there? Up until recently the council were even deriving income from the display of vessels there.

Next the café on the end of the East Pier.

Next the old tourist information offices.

On to the council owned assets that have tenants.

The harbour slipways, after plans to build a bar complex on most of them were turned down, activity as a working slipways there seems to be gradually diminishing. This raises the questions. Can the harbour be viable without working slipways? Are the slipways in the wrong place? The council condemned the cradle on one of the slipways some time ago, two of the others are used some of the time but very little in terms activity seems to have occurred there in the last few months.

I suspect that much of the problem here relates to the viability of boat repair business and the proximity to European competition.

The Royal Victoria Pavilion, obviously we don’t want the council to become embroiled in some expensive legal action with The Rank Organisation who are the tenants. It’s very easy to criticise with hindsight, but it does seem to be about time that some action is taken over this building. As far as I have been able to discover Saturday’s fire didn’t cause any structural damage. Obviously the building’s security isn’t up to much, which surprises me for a building that housed a casino, I would have expected it to have at least an operational alarm system.   

I suppose the fundamental problem here is that because so many on the main council owned properties in Ramsgate are not being used in a way that makes sense, either in commercial or social terms, people become less inclined to believe that the council is managing them properly.

Added to this are the time scales and the unfortunate ends to other major council owned facilities in the town like the building that housed Neros or the swimming pool and associated buildings.

Fire at The Royal Victoria Pavillion Ramsgate Today

This is endemic of the council owned iconic sites in Ramsgate, years of neglect, in this case a failure to implement the terms of the lease, meaning that what should be a major tourist attraction is just boarded up and derelict. 

The dreadful condition of the inside of the pavillion or pavilion – don’t know which is right – The Pav, is beyond anything I could describe so I took some pictures last November, see
http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/pav2010/index.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/pav2010/id3.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/pav2010/id4.htm

Ramsgate Shelter Restoration, vote for funding

To vote for this funding from NatWest, first go to https://communityforce.natwest.com/user/register/ and register, you then get an email confirming registration and need to click on the link in it to confirm your registration, then click the log in link on the page that opens and log in, then you need to go to http://communityforce.natwest.com/project/862 tick the box accepting their terms and click on vote, this is a fairly slow and cranky website that doesn’t always seem to work, so you may need some patience. 

You can repeat the process using however many email addresses you have.

Dover Castle Pictures 9th October 2011

The weather forecast yesterday wasn’t encouraging and the old question of what you do, when you have children, a wet weather forecast and you want a day out in this area raised its ugly head, like the square root of minus one. 

The idea being that everyone, adults as well as children wind up feeling as though they have had some sort of weekend break, so Dover Castle was elect. The idea being to do the parts of it that we don’t usually do, church, roman lighthouse, and the tunnels that are just open, requiring no guides or safety elf.

As it was it didn’t rain, so we spent a fair bit of the time outside. I used my large digital camera that has virtually no delay between pressing the button and taking the picture, so there are a lot of photographs, about 500 I think.

The problem was lunch, English Heritage for the most part have greatly improved their cafés and although the price is high the quality is usually ok, they also normally have a range of sandwiches that children will eat.

This means ham without mustard, cheese without an exciting spicy chutney and so on, yesterday they only had the dreaded “adult” sandwiches at around £4 a go, or something that looked like expensive school dinners. The children at the next table were exclaiming about the worst ever lunch and trying to remove the offending ingredients from their sandwiches. Mine opted for a bag of crisps each at 95p a go. I tried the pie and it was reminiscent of school dinners.

What seems to have happened is the healthy option degenerated into something institutional and the only institutional food that children will eat, sos – buger and chips has gone.

Next time we will take our own sandwiches and just drink their tea which while expensive is palatable, as are their jam, cream and scones. 

With so many pictures I am bound to get some flack: Why don’t I edit them? Why do I publish the bad ones? Why do I put 100 on a page? So my recommendation is to avoid looking at them altogether.

I should point out that at the time of writing this I haven’t even seen the pictures, the computer is processing them while I am writing, the camera was supposed to rotate some of them automatically, something it doesn’t always do and I will look at them when I get time, just like anyone else who wants to.

Here are the links to the pages of pictures

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/dover1011

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/dover1011/id3.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/dover1011/id4.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/dover1011/id5.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/dover1011/id6.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/dover1011/id7.htm

Kiss me quick, I can’t find my little Willie, a ramble about Rodin’s second Kiss now at the Turner Contemporary.

I went to Margate to see the sculpture “The Kiss” by Auguste Rodin (a note here on pispronunciation Rodin is normally pronounced Rodan, the best I have heard so far being Odin, I assume they were going on the R being almost silent in French, who say something like rODan) anyway this isn’t so much bout Norse mythology as Greek.

I wandered into the Turner Contemporary, took a few pictures, mostly trying to get a lot of reflections of The Kiss in Dainel Buren’s mirrors and then sat down to look at people looking at The Kiss. The sequence of events in today’s technological world was pretty much the same, walk towards sculpture, fumble about for mobile phone, camera or other small black technological item, take pictures of sculpture, retreat.

Eventually a chap appeared adorned with enough expensive camera equipment to stock a photography shop and started snapping away like a pro, at this point one of the gallery staff came and told him that photography of The Kiss wasn’t allowed.

This is all rather strange, my understanding was that The Turner Contemporary had banned photography in the galleries upstairs as a lot of the exhibits are still in copyright and with so many artists work on show, sorting out the copyright position would have been pretty much impossible.

Rodin died in 1917 94 years ago and copyright lasts until 70 years after the artist’s death , so what is going on there I didn’t really understand, particularly as you can photograph it when it is in its normal home The Tate Gallery.

At this point I got my sketch book out and put my camera away, I haven’t yet been ticked off for sketching in an art gallery, so this seemed a fairly safe option.

The Kiss on display in the gallery is the one I always think of as the second kiss, the first one that Rodin did was commissioned by the French government in 1888 and is now in The Rodin Museum, this one was a copy done by Rodin for a private commission. So when some sculptor says something about revealing the shape that was already there in the stone, in this case several tons of marble, you may wonder what they are blathering on about.

The history of this second kiss is rather amusing, it was commissioned by the American collector Edward Perry Warren, Edward Perry Warren was gay and apparently saw Rodin as the modern inheritor of the classical Greek tradition.

Anyway he wrote to Rodin asking that the man’s genitals be clearly sculpted in the Greek tradition, rather than modestly hidden. Warren paid 20,000 franks a lot of money in about 1900 and when the sculpture turned up things on that front were a bit disappointing.

Warren put the sculpture in his stables where it stayed for ten years, in 1952 The Tate organised an appeal for public donations and bought it for the nation for a knockdown price of £7,500.

We now have a situation where the standard Tate loan agreement says no photography so lots gallery staff time is wasted telling people not to photograph the thing, I will endeavour to sort it with the Tate for the Turner.

A point here about copyright and galleries, when a gallery says that a photograph of an exhibit they have where the a artist has been dead for over 70 years is copyright, the copyright they are referring to is that of the photographer who took the picture of the work of art, not the work of art. 

The picture above is of the Kiss etching by Marcel Duchamp, with the repositioned hand that I mentioned in a previous post.

I have been trying out a compact camera, but the delay on it is too long, so I will have to find something else, pity because the picture quality is OK, anyway here are the pictures I took in Margate yesterday http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/1011/id5.htm not many because I lost patience with the camera.

Update, the Tate have agreed to relax the photography restrictions on The Kiss and as the Turner Contemporary have removed the note that photography of The Kiss is not allowed from their website, it would appear that the situation is resolved.  

Turner’s paintings at The Turner Contemporary

JMW-Turner-View-of-Minster,-Isle-of-Thanet-1784

 The gallery have just published pictures on their website, of some of the Turners in the Turner Contemporary that are on display at the moment.

JMW-Turner-A-Street-in-Margate,-Looking-Down-to-the-Harbour-1784_compressed

 This part of their website seems to owe much to the nitrousoxide school of web publishing in as much as the pictures come and go as you are looking at them, so I have copied them to this blog and also on a conventional webpage here http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/1011/id4.htm

JMW-Turner--Crossing-the-Brook-1815-courtesy-Tate,-London-2011-Oil-on-canvas

 I have put them up in different sizes as that is the way the gallery has published them, four of them are particularly important to local people as they are pictures of Thanet.

JMW-Turner-Minster-Church,-Isle-of-Thanet--1784_compressed

With the watercolours of Thanet I reckon the palate is, Indian ink, sepia ink, yellow ochre, rose madder, cobalt blue and a pencil.

JMW-Turner-Self-Portrait-circa-1790-watercolour-on-paper-Image-courtesy-National-Portrait-Gallery

JMW-Turner-St-John's-Church,-Margate,--1784-Pen-and-ink-and-watercolour-on-paper