An innocuous blog post about nothing much

My bookshop was much busier that I expected with today’s inclement weather and apart from deleting the odd comment that could possibly have been libellous and spamming those intent on selling dubious services, I haven’t had any time to blog.

Not far above the inexact business of drawing in beer while in a dimly lit bar is the process of sketching with watercolour and pen under the same circumstances, in this case it was the eyes that didn’t have it, or perhaps had too much of it.

The photo shows you that apart from flashing the people in the Belgian Café last night, something that I don’t think would have gone down that well, what you see is what you get.   

I both did and didn’t do better with pen alone, certainly a doodle to consider, the brains propensity to make faces never fails to amaze me.

I am still trying to work out how best to follow through the business of the broken exhibits at The Turner Contemporary, but am taking a break from it today.

If anyone has missed it the business of putting The Sunbeam Collection online is proceeding, see http://www.seasphotography.org.uk/archives/tag/thanet I am not sure how this site works as clicking on the same link seems to bring up different images, I am sure someone will explain.

I have a great pile of unanswered emails, apologies if yours is in it, most of them are local history queries along the lines of granny lived at X address in 1935, do you have any pictures of it then.

I don’t think there is any Local news not covered elsewhere, I guess the news that Richborough tip isn’t to close is an easy one to grapple with, whereas whether the prospective legislation on press regulation will impact on blogging is about the most difficult.    

I may ramble on here 

Turner Contemporary Margate Broken Again

Today I visited the JWM Turner, Carl Andre and Rosa Barba exhibition running concurrently at the Turner Contemporary Margate for the fifth time, whereas on the three previous visits two of the exhibits were out of order, today three were.

As my previous two blog posts have been about this problem and my dialogue with some of our county councillors about it, I made a special effort to go and check on the situation in the gallery again today.

I have to admit to being a bit lost for words on this one, photography is banned in the upper galleries where the broken exhibits are, so I was reduced to the quick sketch above to illustrate the problems.

I may put a few more pictures, my lunch or something and add a bit of text later.

 We had lunch in The Greedy Cow which was very good.

 The Turner Contemporary are erecting an exhibit outside the gallery, this is the first time I have seen this medium being used for art. I am a bit curious as to whether the artist constructs it themselves or just phones a glazier.

 The new sea defences are pretty much complete

 There were a larger proportion of the black headed gulls than usual.

Answers from our Kent County Councillors and candidates and a lot of confusion about having no map.

How anyone in Kent is supposed to work out which county councillor represents them and which electoral division they live in is more difficult and complicated you would expect.

There is no straightforward map on the KCC website, instead there is a link to a map on the OS website that you can put layers on here it is http://www.election-maps.co.uk/electmaps.jsf because of the zoom limitations and the size of the bit you can see, this isn’t an easy thing to use, like looking at a very large map through a very small hole. If anyone can find an ordinary map of Thanet with the electoral divisions marked on, please let me know.

The is also a list of county councillors on the KCC website https://democracy.kent.gov.uk/mgMemberIndex.aspx?bcr=1 perhaps it is just me but I found the whole thing very difficult to use.

Anyway here is the list of the Thanet KCC councillors I emailed the Turner Contemporary open letter to yesterday Robert Bayford, Bill Hayton, Michael Jarvis, Chris Wells, Robert Burgess, Elizabeth Green, John Kirby, Charles Hibberd.

I think this a complete list of the KCC councillors representing Thanet, please let me know if I have missed anyone.

I have just taken a book of the shelf and taken some pictures of the pictures in it to illustrate the post, lost in Kent if you like. I will try to make the next bit easy to follow by using coloured text.

Putting the councillors replies in red. Please remember that a lot of this is not so much about the problem but about if anyone is in i.e. do you get a reply from them? 

 Michael Jarvis

Hi Michael

I see you are keeping busy with your paintings and blog writing. I think you asked whether Councillors use any form of social media to keep in touch with their constituents. Well, while I do not have a specific blog for that, I do have two other blogs for people to see, one is my full CV detailing my work and councillor experience http://michaeljarviscv.blogspot.com, and the other one is my poetry blog: http://poetryinflight.blogspot.com, and yes I do use twitter as well @Cllr_MikeJarvis where I comment on council things and other matters.

Back to your questions - see my answers below.

Best Regards

Michael

 

1 do you consider this to be a KCC issue?

No, the gallery is the responsibility of the management team, however, there is the problem of reputation risk for KCC to consider if displays continue to be below par.

 

2 do you consider the gallery to be a key player in the local economy?

Yes, however, we require to see the development of Dreamland to add more value to the local economy. 

 

3 would you see ensuring its proper running as part of your remit as a councillor?

We would not directly get involved in the proper running of the gallery. However, if we were receiving continue complaints from the public then the matter would be taken up with the Cabinet Member accordingly.

 

4 would you see the extent of your remit to request and pass on to me officer advice?

Yes

 

5 would you see your remit to actively pursue the issue and ensure its proper resolution?

Yes

 

6 do you see it as part of your remit as a councillor to keep an eye on KCC funded activities in Thanet?

Of course, we have a duty of care to ensure KCC funded activities are properly managed across Thanet. So if we are giving grants to organisations, we expect to see details of that spending and the expected results from that project we are supporting. 

7 have you visited this exhibition?    

Yes on the opening night and things were working OK 

 

 Elizabeth Green,

Hi Michael
Thanks for raising these issues
On my way to meeting and more than happy to respond in detail shortly (below)
Best wishes
Liz

1 do you consider this to be a KCC issue?   Yes, as you are one of my residents and I am a KCC Cllr for Ramsgate.  I have previously taken other issues and concerns to the Director of the Gallery and will immediately take forward the points you have raised.     

 

2 do you consider the gallery to be a key player in the local economy?  Yes. It is acting as a catalyst for bringing new investment, new residents and visitors into Thanet.     

 

3 would you see ensuring its proper running as part of your remit as a councillor?  There are professionals running the gallery. I would however expect KCC officers to closely monitor and ensure the KCC funding to the Turner is spent wisely.  If any concerns arise then I would see this as part of my remit.  

 

4 would you see the extent of your remit to request and pass on to me officer advice?  Yes, I do take forward residents requests and inform them of any officer response.  

 

5 would you see your remit to actively pursue the issue and ensure its proper resolution?  I do have a reputation for my tenacity!  I never like to give up on any issue until I have taken it as far as possible to achieve a satisfactory outcome.   

 

6 do you see it as part of your remit as a councillor to keep an eye on KCC funded activities in Thanet?  I see it as my remit to keep an eye on all KCC activities in Thanet.    

 

7 have you visited this exhibition?  Not yet. My intended visit will be brought forward to check out the problems!      

 

Chris Wells

 1 do you consider this to be a KCC issue?

1.   No this is not a KCC issue, it is an issue for the management of the gallery itself.  I could think of little less appealing to anyone than a gallery run by political diktat, and I suspect it would get many fewer visitors.  You should contact the management of the Turner and then read their reply.

 

2 do you consider the gallery to be a key player in the local economy? 

2. Factually, the gallery is a key player in the local economy.In the years of planning all of us who believed in the gallery were often mocked for anticipating 156,000 visitors in the first year; criticised for not having a car park next to the gallery; and saw politically motivated untruthful campaigns regarding the 'destruction of the view' from the gallery siting. 500,000 visitors in its first year (including The Queen); all of whom had to park or arrive elsewhere in the town and walk through, giving opportunities to attract trade; and a still superb view from the bench point above the site demonstrate the believers were right all along.

 

3 would you see ensuring its proper running as part of your remit as a councillor?

3. KCC have carefully placed the running of the gallery in independent hands, with experts and art lovers controlling what happens, as it should do. I can talk to the management there, who know me quite well, but should not have undue influence in their operational independence.

 

4 would you see the extent of your remit to request and pass on to me officer advice?

4. No, because it is not KCC officer advice, the gallery has its own management structure and operation, to whom you should address your concerns.

 

5 would you see your remit to actively pursue the issue and ensure its proper resolution? 

5. In exactly the same way I would/will pursue residents complaints about other bodies outside my direct control, no more no less.

 

6 do you see it as part of your remit as a councillor to keep an eye on KCC funded activities in Thanet? 

6.  Yes, of course, but within the structures in place, not by going around them to suit the demands of one particular resident, who appears to have not used the proper channels for complaint first.

 

7 have you visited this exhibition? 

7.  No, not this one, although I am in and out of the Turner for various reasons frequently, and often see exhibitions I had not planned to see in bits and pieces.

 

Comment:

 

I have answered your questions as I usually try and do with all enquiries. However, it is pretty clear these, as are many enquiries, heavily slanted to the questioners personal view of life, and lack objective perspective in their scope and direction. For example, questions 4, 5, and 6 effectively ask the same thing from 3 different directions, seeking assurance that you wil be treated differently than others. So, in the spirit of your questions, here's a few for you, bearing in mind your comments in the run up to these questions on your blog.

 

1. Why do you make no mention of three years frozen council tax by KCC, especially when challenged recently at the proposal (since withdrawn) of a 2% rise in council tax at TDC, promoted by your favoured politicians, Ian Driver and child mayor Will Scobie, was explained away as 'taxes will rise'?

 

2. Which District has received the largest share of KCC capital spending in each of those 'frozen' tax years?

 

3. Support for Turner revenue costs, your special interest, accounts for less than 1% of KCC's budget, have you no interest in education, adult social care, children's services, regeneration, East Kent access road completion, or the current successful marketing of East Kent around the Discovery Park?

 

4. Have you ever attended a Local Board to acquaint yourself with KCC's local members and their activities?

 

 

Regards

Chris Wells

Kent County Council, The Turner Contemporary, Kent County Councillors and the election.

On the whole I don’t do stuff about the county council or county councillors, I guess mainly because I don’t know much about it, here in Ramsgate I don’t see much evidence of the county council doing any more than the bare minimum, they could get away with.

I also get the feeling that the county council has mostly councillors from West Kent in the powerful positions and I have a perception that the council is focussed there. I have tried putting a few issues to the county council and to county councillors before without much result.

Mostly this has been to do with the state of the drains, road and pavement in the part of Ramsgate where I trade. The roads and pavements have been replaced several times in the 25 years I have been here and I have tried to persuade them that if they are going to spend the money anyway it would be a good idea to change the layout which relates to when this was the main through road in Ramsgate and not the one way street that only leads to a car park that it is now. 

Anyway with the county elections coming I reckon I have some responsibility to blog readers to try and find something about the names we will find on the ballot papers.

The one bit of extra that I am aware of that KCC fund in Thanet is the Turner contemporary, so I have started by emailing all of the KCC Councillors representing Thanet.

I was surprised at my ignorance here, so a few questions for blog readers.

1 Do you now how many KCC Councillors represent Thanet?

2 Can you name any of them?

3 Do you know what the political balance is both among Thanet KCC councillors and in the whole of KCC?

4 Do you know how many of the KCC councillors are also TDC councillors?

5 Do you know how much they get paid for being a councillor?

6 Do you know if any of the KCC Councillors representing Thanet hold positions of responsibility within KCC?

I could name 2 reliably plus some vague ideas and had no idea about the answers to the rest.

Anyway here is the email I sent today, to all of the KCC Councillors representing Thanet, I will publish any responses I get tomorrow.     

I am writing to you as a KCC Thanet KCC councillor about the current exhibitions at The Turner Contemporary, these are the first floor exhibitions of JWM Turner, Carl Andre and Rosa Barba running concurrently at the moment.

Please note that this isn’t an overt criticism of modern or contemporary art or the content of the three exhibitions but is a criticism of the way the exhibits are displayed managed and maintained.

I have visited this exhibition on four occasions now, Sunday February 3^rd Sunday February 10^th Thursday February 28^th and Thursday 7^th March and have become increasingly concerned about the way it must be impacting on visitors to Thanet.

When I first visited Sunday February 3^rd I believe all of the exhibits were working properly however the Rosa Barba exhibition is very noisy and there are no doors separating it from JWM Turner and Carl Andre exhibitions, both of which need some degree of tranquillity to be properly appreciated, I was disappointed about the way the exhibition was presented because of the intrusive impact of  the noise from this exhibition on the other two.

I discussed this with the gallery attendants who said that reducing the volume had been discussed by the gallery staff and would probably occur, so I returned on Sunday February 10^th and although the volume had been reduced it was still intrusive, but I considered much less so and so I decided not to pursue the issue.

However two of the exhibits in the Rosa Barba exhibition had broken down and as they were out of order I felt I hadn’t managed to see the three combined exhibits at their best so I decided to return again.

This I did on Thursday February 28^th only to discover that two of the exhibits were out of order, one that which was broken on my previous visit and a different one, I put this down to being an unfortunate coincidence and decided to come back again.      

This I did on Thursday 7^th March only to discover that once again two of the exhibits were out of order, one that was the one broken on my previous visits and a different, different one.

So as you see despite visiting this exhibition on four occasions I am yet to see it at its best and am becoming increasingly concerned that visitors to Thanet who have come mainly because of the gallery are having the same unsatisfactory experience.

Obviously as The Turner Contemporary running costs are heavily funded by KCC I see Thanet’s KCC councillors as having some potential for resolving issues there.

You may be aware that I write a local blog and having mentioned these issues there and the county council elections, particularly in terms of the way councillors and potential councillors handle or intend to handle local issues related to KCC.  

So it is my intention to send a series of open letters to Thanet’s KCC councillors and any potential candidates I can contact, asking them what approach they would have to various KCC related issues.

This letter is intended for publication along with any replies. To help with this I will now list a series of specific questions, you may wish to reply to these or to send a more general reply.

1 do you consider this to be a KCC issue?

2 do you consider the gallery to be a key player in the local economy?

3 would you see ensuring its proper running as part of your remit as a councillor?

4 would you see the extent of your remit to request and pass on to me officer advice?

5 would you see your remit to actively pursue the issue and ensure its proper resolution?

6 do you see it as part of your remit as a councillor to keep an eye on KCC funded activities in Thanet?

7 have you visited this exhibition?    

Best regards Michael. 

Sunday Ramble, Ian Driver stands for KCC, Margate in the Telegraph’s Girls Guide and anything else that comes up.

The internet is a dangerous place, a friend of mine recently clicked on a link in phishing email and gave away his internet service provider password, not like giving away a bank password, but it did result in everyone who had ever emailed him getting an email saying he had had to rush abroad because his sister was taken ill and his credit card wouldn’t work, please sent money to a foreign bank account.

The only way I could think of get my children to understand this was by getting them to send each other a phishing email.

Ian Driver has started his Kent County Council election campaign with a blog, tweets and FaceBook, I suggested to one of our Labour candidates that it was likely that I would vote for Ian Driver, I don’t think this has made me flavour of the month, but I was interested what the reaction would be.

I think one of the election difficulties for councillors is that most of us tend to think of the council as just that “the council” I guess at the polling station or filling in the postal voting form there are a lot of people who don’t differentiate between the town council, the district council and the county council.

My guess is that this time there will be the Conservative Candidates, the Labour Candidates, probably UKIP candidates, Lib Dem candidates and some independents.

I would say most of the names on the ballot paper if not all of them won’t mean anything much to most people and a lot of the votes will be based on how people feel about national politics rather than any grasp of the effects of this on the county council.

The obvious question rises in our minds, do we feel like voting for any of the main parties at the moment?         

Another issue for me is KCC issues, what are they and would any one councillor do any more about resolving them than any other.

I am pretty sure they are responsible for the yellow lines and a prime example of this in Ramsgate is the yellow lines on the min seafront, for anyone who doesn’t know this is a dead end road with no traffic flow, well what KCC has done there looks like an act of vengeance.

Perhaps the idea is that having invested so much in The Turner Contemporary in Margate they don’t want anyone to come to Ramsgate, perhaps it is a case of a county Conservative administration taking out on a town with predominantly Labour councillors.

Perhaps it is something else I have taken it up with some of the county councillors with no result and no answer. Does anyone know? Perhaps county hopefuls will have an answer, I may try a few open emails to candidates, what do people think?

Of course there is the business with the damaged floors and more recently the “out of order” exhibits at The Turner Contemporary, as KCC spend at least £1m per year on running the gallery, perhaps some of the prospective candidates may something to say about fixing these issues. 

Anyway laying aside the various KCC issues I will take up with candidates for a mo, I am wondering how the voting tactics will pan out with the KCC elections.

I would guess there will be a fair amount of protest voting in this election and I guess it is very difficult to nail under which situation Thanet would be better off.

I always get the feeling that Thanet’s is a small voice at county and that county considers Thanet rather as the end of the road.

But I have to admit that while I have take some interest in TDC I have never even grasped the basics of KCC.  

I am cooking roast dinner at the moment and will add to this post during the bits where there isn’t anything much to do.

Granville House Ramsgate, update on the proposed development

There does seem to be some flexibility on this issue with the architects prepared to enter into a dialogue with objectors and residents of the existing building, so first this letter.

My own take on this being that once redevelopment of the bits of the Pugin and Pugin like original that was all built in Victorian gothic style have been recently rebuilt also in Victorian gothic style, then the remaining part that was demolished should now be rebuilt in Victorian gothic style.

Here are a few pictures of the recent rebuilding of the front part of the Granville.     

As you can see it is possible to build a modern building in this style using a mixture of traditional and modern construction techniques, the pictures should expand when clicked on compulsively.  

Front view of Granville House Ramsgate in response to comment. The new bit is the part on the left with the extra floor.