Thanet District Council and the new Conservative cabinet what went wrong? A bit of a ramble.

I suppose that so much of the comment, interest, whatever you like to call it has been focused on John Worrow, that the main long term problem for any council with no overall majority has to face, hasn’t really been mentioned.

This is how the governing group manages the independents and opposition councillors.

The new Conservative cabinet in Thanet started in an unusual position, in as much as they were poles apart from the old Conservative cabinet of Ezekiel & Co. so they inherited a situation where the previous cabinet, while theoretically on the same side and therefore difficult for them to criticise, was viewed by them as something not very good.

I think the new Conservative group viewed themselves as a group of academics, inhabiting a somewhat higher country of the mind than the geography the rest of us inhabit.

This higher country of the mind is also an area often inhabited by senior local government officers, lets face it if you can’t get job as a captain of industry and you can’t get a job as a senior civil servant in national government, you can’t get a job at county level, well I don’t suppose I have to draw a diagram.

When it comes to dealing with the problems in local government, it is having a very complex set of rules and producing intricate paperwork that fills the bill and ensures you keep your job, the maxim being. Make it long make it complicated make it up if you have to.

With the internet I have caught them out on several occasions and posted about it, they take a very complex document, that probably even they don’t understand and lift it from another council’s website, replacing the word Thanet with the name of the other council.

Now the council cabinet are supposed to represent the people of Thanet, and the officers are supposed to present the information for the decision of the cabinet in a form that ordinary people can understand.

What seems to have happened is that our new intellectual cabinet, we shall call them the collegiate after the fictional character College, the tramp; went of for a tramp through the high country of the mind with the officers. Well this was all fine and dandy, in these ebony towers it isn’t necessary understand what is going on, just that they appear to, until they had to hand out chairs to the independents.  

Well it seems one of the independents didn’t understand the rules here and visibly failed to understand what was probably incomprehensible anyway, to which the collegiate responded along the lines of, you’re just not clever enough to understand the framework.

I had a bit of this sort of nonsense over Pleasurama, I pointed out to the councillors and the officers, that the EA officer with the qualifications in costal engineering, had said that come a big tide and storm, the thousand or so people living in the new development could all be trapped inside.

I said to them, look the only expert who has pronounced on this thing says it needs pedestrian escapes and a risk assessment. I was assured that this didn’t matter as all the proper procedures had been followed, as though this would hold back the sea.

Anyway no one likes to be perceived as stupid, so after a lot of failed smoothing out, this independent voted against the Conservatives. This surprised the others as they had all agreed to vote for them, one did and the other one abstained, well you know the rest.

After this and even more amusing was that the other two Birchington Conservative councillors voted against the Conservatives and with Labour for their free parking. 

How things will go now are a bit hard to say, I think Sandy Ezekiel is up before the beak next week, so how that pans out could effect the Conservative numbers for a while.

With this following the rules thing, the latest laugh is on the sidebar of Thanet life, as I predicted in my previous post the council have put up the new cabinet posts, that they should have put up last Friday today, but as they can’t admit that they forgot to do it on time, it appeared there date stamped Friday.

I suppose the a good example of this is the current tangle over Europe, the eurocrats have built a whole continent based of the expansion of legislation and bureaucracy.   

Now pretty much everyone can see that the countries of Europe managed to rub along by having exchange rates between their currencies.

If the Germans all rushed around being productive, while the Spanish sat outside the taverna and the Spanish economy went a bit pear shaped, the value of the peseta became less so Spanish holidays became cheaper, more people went there on holiday and the Spanish economy improved.

Masses of eurocrats and members from all countries have to do something, usually something expensive, billions were spent on the single currency, and it doesn’t work.

Well the Germans are printing Marks, which seems to be the nearest anyone has come to saying it was just a mistake.

I suppose they could get rid of nearly all of the people involved and go back to a common market, throw all of the European legislation out of the window, I don’t see much chance though.

I find as Europe progressed through this grand dream I have more European friends and one thing they all seem to have in common is a dislike for the great central bureaucracy.

I wonder if there is a way to government at any level, where it common sense that prevails.

Back to the collegiate cabinet and the notion that they had drifted of into some high country of the mind where they thought the complexities of running Thanet requires superior minds and that only they were capable of running our little island.

I suppose the culmination of this was losing the confidence vote in their leader they carried the thing through to what they saw as the logical conclusion and put the same man up for election by the same people who had just voted him out.

Did they I wonder, feel that there was no other Conservative councillor that would get the votes of the independents and the Conservative councillor who had defected. After all the votes of all the other Conservative councillors would be guaranteed pretty much whichever of their number they put up for election.

Perhaps it was just because they really had no plan B, kamikaze perhaps, anyone got any ideas?

I was wondering if this has ever happened before, I mean a politician losing a vote of confidence and then being put up for election again by his party in front of the people who have just voted him down, I can’t find any incidence of this elsewhere historically, can anyone else?

I may ramble on a bit more. 

Ramsgate harbour Slipways Plans, nice railway shed shame about the waves.

This is one of those last chance to have your say things, it relates to the well known local developer, who has recently been responsible for the restoration of the Custom House and the Marina Restaurant, both very attractive and viable developments.

The Custom House is now the home to Ramsgate Town Council and because of the way this has been arranged, the subletting of the other parts of the building mean that the parts used by the council are effectively rent free.

Commercially the difficulty with the slipways partly relates to their commercial viability and partly to the commercial viability of Ramsgate Harbour without slipways.

The slipway operators take on this, being that only slipway No1 is commercially viable, this viability is partly related to the rent and rates for the site, the rent being set by TDC and the rates by the Inland Revenue.

Slipway 4 is really just a bit of sloping concrete with a trolley on it that leads into the workshops and has really been replaced by the TDC owned lifting cradle, in fact the lifting cradle means that much of the work on the smaller craft can be done without the slipways, so the cradles very existence renders the whole slipway operation less viable.

Slipway 2’s cradle (the bit that goes up and down on the rails) was condemned by TDC a couple of years ago and hasn’t been replaced.

The TDC owned lifting cradle (don't get your cradles muddled or you bring up the wrong baby) near the harbour gates has limitations, both in terms of weight and in terms of the beam (width) of the vessels that can use it.

Slipway 3 has mostly been used for the windfarms catamarans (wide twin hulled vessels) during the last couple of years. These are both to wide and too heavy for the lifting cradle.

Slipway 1 has to stay whatever happens as it is a heritage lump, a listed Victorian slipway. Slipway one is mostly used for much larger vessels, often for replating and when a vessel is on slipway one (one has been stuck on it for about the last 3 months awaiting parts) the only way to get the windfarm vessels out of the water, for repairs and maintenance is to use slipway 3.

The overall commercial viability of the harbour is a difficult one, it seems to have an income from mooring and port fees in the multimillion pound a year bracket and harbour maintenance appears to have been fairly minimal over the past few years.

I am no accountant, so I can’t extrapolate what actual income TDC receive from the harbour, but assume it is a fair amount.

Part of the problem here is that TDC haven’t yet produced their harbour master plan, so it is difficult to tell how vital the slipways are to the overall long-term commercial viability of the harbour.

Most especially this relates to the windfarm vessels, it is unclear just how vital the long term use of the slipways is to the windfarm operators, obviously it would detrimental to TDC’s income if they took their operation elsewhere.  

Another factor with the windfarm vessels is that they are new and still under warranty, so the work on them is mostly done by firms from outside the area, this means that there is very little to be derived, in the way of income, for the slipway operator for letting them use the slipways.   

Anyway what happened was that the developer bought half of the lease from the slipways operator for £90,000 and TDC issued a separate split lease to him, roughly covering the area for slipways 2 to 4.

There is an added problem here, which is did TDC issue the lease with the full knowledge that the developer wanted to use the site as a bar and restaurant complex? Meaning that if TDC try to enforce the terms of the lease i.e. that the site be used for ship repairs, could this be open to a legal dispute?

One last thing on the lease, which is that I think when it was issued officers omitted the side access to the maritime museum, which if this was just a mistake, could lead to more delays in granting the maritime museum lease.

That was the background, so now onto the planning applications, the first application was for the modern brightly coloured development in the picture.

Apart from all of the problems mentioned above, for me the main problem was the flood risk assessment presented with these plans.

This flood risk assessment had various flaws the most glaring of which was that the flood risk assessor had made an error and confused Mean High Tide with Maximum High Tide.

Whatever the financial implications of the development, it was obvious that a building, inhabited parts of which would definitely flood, was a non starter, so my main objection to the first development was on the grounds that the flood risk assessment was wrong.

One of the factors with planning applications is that if they get turned down, then you have a limited time in which to reapply before you have to start all over again and pay the planning fee again, this can be several thousand pounds.  

So I think there was a bit of a rush getting this one in, when I looked at the application I soon realised that they had used the faulty flood risk assessment that had been a major factor in the council’s turning down of the previous plans.

Something important to understand with flood risk assessments and the business of building on the foreshore is that the sea has waves, so you have to make an allowance for what the Environment Agency call RIZ, they explain this in their letter to the council about the Pleasurama development, click on the link to read it http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/ea/

Usually design of this sort of development design revolves around two factors, the height of the sea defence in front of it, relative to the maximum high tide, and the distance that it is behind the sea defence to allow for wave dissipation.

Both of the applications for building on the slipways involve building part of the new development on a small pier above the sea, so there will be no wave dissipation, plus the added problem of any floating objects getting trapped below the development and being impacted into the bottom of the development by wave action.

Now the latest development the one that looks like an Edwardian railway shed, was designed by one of the senior planning officers who has just left the council, so you would have assumed that he would have known about this.

In fact I am very surprised that he has put the cart before the horse in this way, the normal approach, I would have thought, would be to do the flood risk assessment first and then design the building to be safe within the constraints of the existing environment. 

Anyway when I went to object to this development based mostly on the fact that the flood risk assessment was wrong, I spoke to the officer in charge of the application, who said that the wrong flood risk assessment had been submitted and I could delay my objection until he let me know that the right assessment had been submitted and I had had a chance to check it was ok.

I also had a chat with the developer, who said pretty much the same and that the assessment would be with the council in few days. Much more than a few days passed and so I contacted the officer in charge of the application.

He said that the new flood risk assessment still hadn’t been submitted and as time is running out on this one, I would need to object in the next few days, based on the existing, wrong assessment.

So if you want to comment on this one, you had better be quick.

The main planning reference is L/TH/11/0875 the council’s planning website is http://www.ukplanning.com/thanet

The council’s planning website is a strange place and there seems to be pretty much the same application filed under the ref F/TH/11/0874 I can’t link to the plans as unlike normal websites the web address of the page the plans are on doesn’t stay the same.

The first applications relating to the previous brightly coloured development are: The one to demolish the slipways workshops winding houses etc L/TH/10/0736 and the development F/TH/10/0737 may be helpful in trying to assess this new one.

The officer tells me that the retention of the slipways for continued viability of the harbour as a whole are a valid reason for objection too.

On a more personal note here I think there is the whole business of the expanding café culture to consider, my guess is that rather like the case in Whitstable, the background of a real working harbour is a major attraction.

On the face of it the working fishing boat environment can be fairy disruptive and sometimes rather smelly, but it is something real going on and is obviously a major factor in the very successful regeneration of Whitstable.

With the fast train, Ramsgate is now a faster and easier commute to London than Whitstable is, regeneration is now extending from the café culture into the High Street with new shops opening. 

I think there is a very real danger that the part of the harbour next to the café culture could turn into just a parking area for expensive and somewhat similar boats, not really much of an attraction.  

Thanet District Council, the red flag flies high, what next.

Last night Thursday at 20.29 the change of leadership was confirmed, you would have though that this would have been of some interest to council officers, at 8.47 they posted to their facebook wall http://www.facebook.com/pages/Thanet-District-Council/83700846372?sk=wallstrangely what they posted a press release from much earlier in the day “Newington development”

No mention of the change of leadership there even now 20 hours later, one would have though after the mess up over the promoting of the royal visit they would have sorted out their facebook wall, most teenagers seem to manage to this OK.

A scout around the local blogs took me to Cllr Simon Moores Thanet Life blog where Simon posted about the change of leadership, see http://birchington.blogspot.com/2011/12/hard-left-turn-for-thanet.html

Interestingly on the Thanet Life sidebar is a bit called MY BLOG LIST and one of the blogs on Simon’s list is the council’s very own news called “Thanet District Council news feed” don’t worry it won’t eat you, the feed bit is just computer jargon leaking out.

This hungry thing is time stamped, and goodness me the officers must have been watching The Scry at Night in their crystal balls, sorry about that, I meant watching their members through a wormhole in time, it seems they announced the demise of Bob Bayford two hours before it happened.

I have been trying to find out where we go from here, by this I mean, do the Conservatives table a vote of no confidence in Clive Hart at the next council meeting, perhaps the conservative group have a plan B which involves spiking the Labour groups drinks with laxatives before the next council meeting.

Perhaps the Conservatives have another candidate in mind, one who the independents would get on better with, one whom other Conservative would get along better with, perhaps they will revisit the elected leader idea, all a bit hard to say really.

Me I’m only trying to trade in one of the Thanet towns, customers battle up the narrow pavements (the council didn’t finish off the pedestrianisation to the publicly consulted plans of “Impact, Labour or conservative I can’t remember, I think Impact was a Conservative initiative, so probably Labour) through the groups of unemployable yelling obscenities, moved here by the social engineering initiative (possibly down to the London boroughs, or anyone who complained about them in Newington or Millmead, I think I am blaming the Conservatives for this one, Boris’s social cleansing plan) oh yes, along the broken uneven pavements (probably down to KCC that would be a Conservative problem) around the groups of smoking inebriates outside the pubs (definitely down to Labour, that one)   

It is beginning to look as though the council staff have gone home for the weekend without posting the details of the new cabinet posts, so here they are

Cllr. Alan Poole is the council’s new Deputy Leader. The other members of Cabinet are as follows:

Cabinet Member (Labour)	Portfolio
Cllr. Clive Hart	Economic Development and Regeneration (which also includes the Port ofRamsgate, harbours, strategic planning and Dreamland)
Cllr. Iris Johnston	Community Services (which includes housing need and homelessness, private sector housing, housing intervention, the Margate Task Force, licensing and land charges, community safety, parking, sport, art, museums, the Thanet Coast Project, indoor and outdoor leisure, play services and events)
Cllr. Alan Poole	Environmental Services (which includes waste and recycling, street cleaning, public toilets, environmental health, coastal protection, parks, allotments, building control, general estate management, crematorium and cemeteries, asset management, planning applications, planning enforcement and conservation)
Cllr. Rick Everitt	Performance (which includes financial services, governance and risk, legal services, democratic services, contract management and corporate information and communications)
Cllr. Michelle Fenner	Partnerships and Tourism (which includes shared services, such as East Kent Housing, human resources, East Kent Audit, customer services, revenues and benefits and IT services)

Perhaps they will appear soon predated to the time they should have done it, presumably before I posted them.

I suppose the problem for the Labour group now is securing some support from the independents, my guess is that Jack Cohen is more anti Bob Bayford than pro Labour.

It is a pity that the dealings with the independents go down the road of handing out lucrative seats, I suppose the council mindset is framed around what councillors get from their posts.

I may continue this one.    

Bob Bayford is voted out by a 28/26 vote

I believe the candidates for leader are Bob Bayford and Clive Hart.

This suggests a sort of confused arrogance on the part of the local Conservative group, to put up the same man for leadership candidate who has just been voted out as leader.

Clive Hart is now the new leader of the council.  

I am hoping that at the very least we will get some sort of continuity for a while.


It would have been 28/27 if Simon Moores had been there, councillor Tom King obstained. 

Not really sure what difference having a Labour council will make, perhaps an end to night flights, possibly some sort of cabinet representation for Ramsgate.

One thing I can say in Clive Hart’s favour is that he does respond to my emails.

I am not really sure what sort of a leader Bob was, my personal opinion was a bit on the lazy side, or I would have had more from him in the way of replies.

What amazes my is the ineptitude of the Conservative group in putting him up as candidate immediately after him losing a confidence vote, it suggests a complete lack of aptitude for managing a council with no overall majority.

Unless I suppose they were so certain that they were going to lose that they didn’t bother putting anyone else up.

Politically I am very much a floating voter, so I can assure readers that a TDC labour administration will get just as hard a time from me as the Conservative ones have.


I suppose the main question is, will this be better or worse for Thanet? The other question is will the Labour group be better at getting the wishes of local people pressed above the wishes of the senior council officers, most of whom live outside Thanet.

Thanet District Council, no confidence in the leader and Ramsgate Maritime Museum; tomorrows meeting.

There is a good chance that the that at tomorrows council meeting the leader Bob Bayford won’t be able to get enough votes to remain leader, if this is a case the rules are that the council will then have to elect a new leader immediately. I would say once again there is a good chance that the new leader will be Clive Hart.

The question of course, whatever the result is, what next? However the vote goes it leaves us in the same predicament, a council with an unstable leadership, likely to be turned over at the next meeting.

Essentially the problems revolve around there being no councillor charismatic enough to be a leader who would take all of the councillors with them and sort out some of the serious problems that Thanet has.

I don’t think either the Labour or the Conservative group have grasped the fundamentals of working within a situation where they have no overall majority. I think most councillors see the resolutions in terms of personal gain, handing out posts to independents that carry a good allowance, rather than in terms of actually trying resolve Thanet’s problems.

I think what I would do, if I was in the position of leading either group, would be to start with a list of objectives for the term of the current administration, put those objectives in the public domain, with a challenge to the independents to support them. 

What of course won’t go away is the way the councillors and officers handled the elected leader consultation. Politically the councillors really haven’t got a leg to stand on as both of their parties seem to be supportive of letting the people decide which system of local government they want and both parties at national level seem to be broadly in favour of the elected leader model. From the officer point of view, I would say that the way the consultation was handled falls into the bracket of being so bad that its legality is questionable.

On to the Ramsgate Maritime museum and the question due to be raised at tomorrow’s meeting.

Failure to produce a workable lease has meant that the museum has been mostly closed for the last few years, something that is damaging to Ramsgate’s economy, particularly the café culture near the museum.

I am only trying to guess what is going on here and detect the two underlying stances.

A charitable trust, that wants to take over the museum and I would say they see what they are offering as something highly beneficial both to Ramsgate and TDC.

The council, I think would rather go for an unsustainable quick fix, like the one that Margate Museum has, that would both get local people off their backs and keep their options open should they ever want the building for something else.

I would say that this is partly because of the uncertainties relating to rest of the council owned property nearby; Royal Sands, slipways and Casino (pavillion) building, which could make the clock tower both desirable and valuable and partly because the council have no real plan for the harbour. The main issue here being that the council own all of the harbour and may wish to let the whole thing out to an outside management company, that in tern may fancy this iconic building for themselves, perhaps as offices.

This all means that the council benefits from any delays in assigning the lease to the charitable trust, and because of commercial confidentiality any unreasonableness in the negotiations are hidden, so while all the delays go on and the council don’t appear that good, but they don’t appear that bad either.

Another problem here is that trust that want to take over the museum are very experienced, this of course means that they have come up against pitfalls before, both in terms of grant and event funding, so they will insist on a workable lease, both in terms of what the charity commissioners will accept, what sponsors will accept and what is viable in terms of onsite funding.  

Anyone who has been to The Preston Steam Rally, an event managed by this trust, will understand that they will not settle for something unworkable and very small scale; that will ultimately fail.

There is a sense where councils prefer to work with organisations that are amateur, this always gives the council the upper hand.

My investigations lead me to believe that we have once again reached a point where the differences between what the council are prepared to grant in terms of a lease and what the charitable trust are prepared to accept are very close indeed.

By this I mean that lease agreements could be signed in weeks rather than months or years. However as I said I believe that the council would rather delay things at least until they have published their master plan for the harbour.

Will the question at tomorrow’s council meeting force the council’s hand into taking some positive stance?

"A steady stream of people come to Ramsgate to visit the Maritime Museum and are disappointed to find that it is closed.  What reassurances can Councillor Bayford give the people of Ramsgate that this unacceptable situation is being addressed with any urgency?”

By this I mean, will the council risk losing the contents of the museum, The Sundowner and the Cervia, in order to keep their options open and the plates spinning. They certainly seem to prefer Ramsgate’s public buildings to be both vacant and closed, pretty much all of the ones they own in Ramsgate are. I would imagine this an easier and safer option for the council than seeing them put to some use.

Thanet District Council, Her Majesty The Queen, the publicity and the complaint.

Despite assumptions to the contrary I very seldom make complaints or foi requests to the council. The council’s failure to publicise the recent royal visit was an exception and I think a valid one, as one of the great benefits of this visit was the extra money that would be spent in Margate by visitors from outside the area.

With the onset of winter and having visited Margate yesterday, I genuinely think that this potential extra trade could have been make or break for some businesses. 

When it comes to the internet the council have taken the top spaces for “whats on in Thanet” searches, having used their resources to put their sites at the top of the list, then they have an obligation to bring home the goods.

I did what I could to get them to publicise the visit, even did a blog post about the problem see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2011/11/council-website-misplaces-royal-visit.html and in the end I submitted an official complaint to them, in the hope that they will do something about the dreadful way they handle their web publicity.

So below my compliant to them in blue, their response in red, my reply to their response in blue.  

Subject: official complaint 71111

Date: 07/11/2011 09:43:45 GMT Standard Time

From: MichaelChild@aol.com

Reply To: 

To: customer.services@thanet.gov.uk

I wish to make an official complaint about the web publicity relating to the royal visit on 11^th November.

Some details of this were posted on the council’s website homepage this week and on Friday the council issued a press with a more detailed itinerary, this press release wasn’t embargoed.

At some point on Friday the existing details of the visit were removed from the councils website homepage leaving no details of the visit on the council’s websites whatsoever.

The three council funded events/tourism sites http://www.warmingwords.org.uk/ http://www.visitthanet.co.uk/ andhttp://communityportal.thanet.gov.uk/home/ don’t mention the event at all. Visit Thanet has two conflicting events listed:

“Fri 11 Nov 2011            Margate Old Town      History Walkers MargateMargate Visitor Information Centre, The Droit House, Stone Pier, Margate, Kent            12:00   01843 223300 Fri 11 Nov 2011            Margate's Historic Shops   History Walkers Margate Margate Visitor Information Centre, The Droit House, Stone Pier, Margate, Kent            11:00   01843 223300”

The councils Facebook wall hasn’t mentioned the event http://www.facebook.com/pages/Thanet-District-Council/83700846372?sk=wall the councils Twitter account is silent about the issue, see http://twitter.com/#!/ThanetCouncil

The details of the itinerary publisher in the press release on Friday also appeared on the royal website on Friday, so this can’t be a security issue.

I should point out that the cost to the local economy, in terms of lost visitors due to the council’s failure to publicise this event, will be considerable.   

Best regards Michael

In a message dated 02/12/2011 17:02:43 GMT Standard Time, ****@Thanet.gov.uk writes:

Dear Mr Child

Customer Feedback Reference:31999/1908116

Thank you for your communication which was received on 07/11/2011. I do apologise for the time it has taken to respond to you.

The Queen's visit was publicised on the TDC website as soon as we were given permission by the Buckingham Palace press office to do so. Prior to this permission the information was strictly confidential.

The information was posted on thanet.gov initially to publicise the visit and was then updated to give full details of the visit. There was a short period of time between taking down the first post and posting the more detailed post which was unavoidable.

The event wasn't publicised on the Warming Words website as this is aimed specifically at literacy themed events. The details were not posted on Visit Thanet. However, it was promoted via the Visitor Information Centres.  The event was not publicised on the Community Portal as this is a portal that only the local community use. TDC provide the portal but do not post on it.

The Visit Thanet website could have posted something but this site is controlled by Tourism and not the Communication team. As a result of your enquiry I will encourage closer working between the two departments should similar high profile events occur.

The Queen's visit was successfully promoted via Twitter, Facebook, national, regional and local press. We also arranged for national, regional and local press to be present on the day and received extremely positive press from all. The visit was a great success and we have received positive feedback from the Palace staff.

We hope that this resolves the matter to your satisfaction.

If you are not happy with our response, you may write to us with your reasons within the next ten working days, requesting a further review. 

In order for us to respond as efficiently as possible, please ensure that you quote the above reference number and address your communication to ******** - Business Support Officer, Business Services.

Yours sincerely

******
Business Information & Improvement Manager

**** I will post the complaint up on the blog with your response, but without your name as I posted the complaint when I made it so some people will be looking out for the response.

As I have said before there are some serious problems with the way the council is handling publicity and press releases, much relates to faults in their basic handling of IT, as an example the councils notification of Wednesdays strike appeared on their facebook wall yesterday, Friday.

Obviously I won’t put this forward for review as it serves no purpose and only increases officer workload.

Best regards Michael

What to me in all this is the pits is that the council have now started backdating their feeds, so that although the information appears as though it was posted on the right day, it doesn’t actually appear until after the event.

The picture above is a screen shot taken just now, the red boxes around the councils feed and today’s date on my computer, as you see they actually posted the notification of their strike late, after the event.

If however you look on their facebook wall, see http://www.facebook.com/pages/Thanet-District-Council/83700846372?sk=wall you will see that the post is dated 23^rd November.

A further look at their facebook posts and you will notice something really odd, the dates of the posts are not sequential. 

Now I am fairly adept with ITC and I could do this and I am sure all the geeks who read this blog could explain how it was done, and may well do so.

But two questions here;

Could you do it?

If you could do it, would you continue to do it consistently after it had been pointed out to you?

As it was, with the coverage of the royal visi,t which only appeared, predated after the event and after my complaint.  

A History of Ramsgate Harbour, local history book, just published.

This book by Michael Hunt, sometime curator of Ramsgate maritime Museum, was first published in 2007. It was available in the museum before it closed. The book is about 100 A4 size pages of text and B&W pictures.

I think it is the most comprehensive work about the harbour, so if you are interested in the history of the harbour, you will probably want a copy.

The price is £9.99, if you can’t stretch to that, you may be able to persuade someone to give it to you for Christmas, my promise to send our local books out post free, wrapped up in Christmas wrapping paper, with a message from you on them, to your friends and family still holds good.

Here is the link to buy it online http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/a_history_of_ramsgate_harbour_and_guide_to_its_existing_features.htm

Contents are as follows:

 Chapter 1            A Haven for Fishermen, pre-1749                p.1

              2            Brave Hopes & False Starts, 1749-1756    p.4

              3            Resumption of Work, 1760-1774                   p.12

              4            John Smeaton, 1774-1792                               p.14

              5            Samuel Wyatt, 1793-1807                            p.20

              6            John Rennie, 1807-1821                            p.23

              7            Sir John Rennie, 1821-1850                               p.26

              8            Called to Account, 1851-1861                   p.34

              9            A Change of Hands, 1862-1939                p.38

            10            Naval Base to Marina, 1939-1999                p.45

            11            Ramsgate the Ferry Port                              p.48

            12            The Dry Dock                                                         p.52

            13            The Pier Yard & Clock House                p.57

APPENDICES

                        Ramsgate Harbour Masters since 1751

                        Ramsgate Harbour Engineers 1750-1920

                        Ramsgate Harbour Steam Tugs 1843-1938

                        Ramsgate Harbour dredgers and excavators

                        Observations on working practice & labour relations at

                        Ramsgate Harbour, September 1760 to December 1763

                        Ramsgate and the Cinque Ports.

                        The Ramsgate Meridian Line.

It really is very good and I am reading it at the moment so I will probably add to this post. 

A stamp on the toe for being so slow, the popularity of blog writers in Thanet

Sorry about this it was my day off on the first of this month and I was going to this my most boring post of the month yesterday, but what with all of the interest in the no confidence in jolly old, they don’t know they are born Bob, motion, I put it to one side.

So who is Thanet’s most popular blog writer, here are the stats http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/1211/ an yes Tony Bignews Margate beats the flying doc into, oh my goodness what am I saying here………

I tried to draw a toe, but am not as bendy as I used to be so thought I would use my hand as a model, idiot that I am, I used the one I was using to do the drawing, and you guessed it, the old artists complaint, it kept moving.

For anyone interested. Mapping pen dipped into brown madder watercolour and then painted in with the same paint, think the blue is cerulean and the yellow chrome.

Perhaps a bit more when I have opened my bookshop.