Brian Homewood art exhibition at The York Street Gallery in Ramsgate

‘fraid this wasn’t completely hung when I got there so I probably didn’t get as good pictures of the pictures as I would have done. I will try and get back sometime in the next week while the exhibition is still on and not just to get better shots but because I think I justifies another look.   

Midweek ramble

On and off today, in-between customers and grappling with online forms and the other delights of being small businessman and I have been watching the latest council meeting webcast. Here is the link http://thanet.gov.uk/the-thanet-magazine/council-meeting-webcast/

There is a small amount about Pleasurama at around 43 mins, nothing conclusive and I doubt there will be until the development agreement deadline in February of next year.

I suppose as a member of the public my main concern is that the council won’t repeat the 2009 error and grant the developer another extension, I get the feeling that a lot of the councillors still think that this fundamentally a good development and the best solution would be to get it built by SFP to the existing plans.

The other aspect of the webcast that interested me – from what I have seen so far – is the business relating to the public’s perception of the council and the independent members of the standards committee. The is a bit of mention of this at around 38 mins and an interminable amount of it starting around 125 mins.

The Conservative group seem to be saying a mixture of we will change our spots and they didn’t need changing anyway, the Labour group seem to be focussing on the past councillors criminal activity. I think the basis of the argument here is that since none of the current group have been convicted of a criminal offence there is no reason for the public to have a bad perception of the council. Taken to its logical conclusion of anyone who hasn’t been convicted of a crime makes a good councillor, doesn’t really get to heart of the issue.

I guess the main problem is the actual video itself, you can’t embed it in a website, the councillors are barely identifiable and it appeared about then days after the meeting, which doesn’t seem to say the council is trying to engage with the public. Added to this is the fact that the council haven’t put the written draft minutes on their website yet, once again the clear message that engaging with the public doesn’t have a high priority.  

I have also had a bit of a go at reading the newly published Airports Commission: Interim Report, in the hope of trying to decide how this will impact on Manston, see https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/266668/airports-commission-interim-report.pdf this turned out to be a bit of a waste of time as I don’t think it actually mentions Manston, if it does I missed it. 

I guess with Manston and Ramsgate being at the end of the runway, the main thing I would like is some sort of predictable future for it. I am now wondering if the new owners bought it in the hope that it would be  major feature in the report and will now want to sell it. 

I may ramble on here later although there doesn't seem to be much that one could say really qualifies a local news at the moment. 

European Elections survey update, ramble

First the results of last week’s survey.

HOW WILL YOU VOTE IN THE 2014 EUROPEAN ELECTIONS ON MAY 22?

Conservative 45 (35%)

Labour 13 (10%)

UKIP 56 (43%)

Other 4 (3%)

I won’t bother to vote 10 (7%)

There were 128 votes, as I didn’t know what to expect I don’t know what to say about the numbers who voted, I didn’t myself as I haven’t really got much of a clue.

Next are the results of the previous election, I didn’t bother with the parties that got less than 1%

European Parliamentary Electoral Region: South East Region Thanet District Council Area - Thursday, 4th June, 2009

 Election results by party

 Party name                 Votes   % of votes

 Conservative Party    9716            30%

 UKIP                          7804    24%

 The Labour Party    4478            14%

 The Green Party    3001            9%

 Liberal Democrats            2482            8%

 British National Party            1762            5%

 English Democrats:            879            3%

 No2EU: Yes to Democracy            529            2%

 Christian Party            490            2%

 Socialist Labour Party            333            1%

Turnout:                        35%

I do hope this table is right I got it from TDC’s website at http://democracy.thanet.gov.uk/mgElectionResults.aspx?ID=25&RPID=6086652 and it has a link to Southampton City Council on the page, I assume the TDC offers had difficulty writing the page so took the election results page from Southampton council’s website and modified it.

The MEPs who actually got elected are

Daniel Hannan

Nigel Farage

Richard Ashworth

Sharon Bowles

Keith Taylor

Njri Deva

Marta Andreasen

James Elles

Peter Skinner

Catherine Bearder

   

Excuse me publishing this well before I have finished the post, blogger don’t like tables and I wanted to know how they appear before writing anything else. 

There are some complex issues with this election In total, 72 Members of the European Parliament were elected from the United Kingdom using proportional representation. (This figure would have been 73 if the Lisbon Treaty had entered into force by June 2009.) England, Scotland and Wales used the D'Hondt method of PR, whilstNorthern Ireland used Single Transferable Vote (STV). Owing to the expansion of the European Union, the number of members elected for the United Kingdom was fewer than in 2004. This is because the total number of MEPs increased temporarily with the accession of Bulgaria andRomania in 2007, but was subsequently reduced again in accordance with the Treaty of Nice. The number of members elected from each region was modified by the Boundary Commission and Electoral Commission, based on the size of the electorate in each region.

I think this means that your vote isn’t wasted if you say vote for Labour or the Lib Dems although there doesn’t seem much chance of any of their representatives standing in Thanet getting in one of each of their members in the southeast got in/will probably get in. it� a n @A� � s tial; background-repeat: initial initial;">Boundary Commission and Electoral Commission, based on the size of the electorate in each region.

Goodness knows what happened there I guess that will teach me not to paste directly from Wikipedia.

There is, I think an issue with PR is that if you want to get a representative from your area, in this case someone who lives in Thanet then you would probably do best to vote for a local candidate who is most likely to get elected.

Is this right? Well it may be, perhaps someone will say.  

With the whole Europe business, you know the in out thing, where it looks as though there will – eventually – some day be a referendum I do wish they would get on with it.

I am not entirely sure if I want to get out of the EU the EEC seemed like a good idea at the time, but well I suppose you know how it is, or perhaps you don’t, I thought the Conservatives promised there would be a referendum if they got elected, before the last parliamentary elections. Now they seem to be saying the same thing again, or are they?    

On to the ramble now.

Sorry I haven’t posted since Saturday, there didn’t seem to be much going on and therefore not much to say. Comment on the last post descended into lots of anonymous spam comments, which I spammed and as I was busy with the Bookshop and keeping up with the demand for Christmas presents I turned anonymous comments off.

I have removed the tunnels map from this post and from sale at the request of a member of the tunnels group.  

I would think that anonymous comment will probably go off pretty soon as there has already been one about terrorism and one about 0% since I started writing this post.

I guess the individuals involve couldn’t understand the content of the post so thought spamming their boring repetitive agendas here would be easier that trying to relate to what I or anyone else was saying.

Where was I, oh the interruption seems to have given me a senior moment, what on earth was I writing about?

Large scale maps of Ramsgate local history Christmas presents for the longer stocking.

I have just finished the 1872 map of Ramsgate and now have it tubed and for sale in two sizes 36 X 39½ inches selling at £9.99 and 42 X 48 inches selling at £14.99, this is definitely a present for the longer stocking as the shortest of the tubes is three feet long, a yard of map.

The local history books that I publish are selling well this Christmas both directly from my bookshop and from my website http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/ although I am afraid to say I haven’t resolved the problems related to posting the maps, so if you want any of these you will have to come directly to the shop.

Eventually I will order some postal cardboard tubes and work something out, with the 1822 map selling for £6.99 and the 1849 one for £9.99 and the dimensions making the cost of posting them very expensive I don’t really have the answer at the moment as the p&p cost is around £6.50.

The sizes of the other maps are the 1822 map 36 X 30 inches and the 1849 map 36 X 31 inches.

Arlington House Tesco High Court Challenge Fails.

Here is the story in The Gazette http://www.thanetgazette.co.uk/Arlington-House-Tesco-gets-ahead/story-20315373-detail/story.html

The pictures are the only artist’s impressions I know of and may not be exactly what will be built.

I have mixed feelings about this one as I had hoped that as the most iconic piece of modern architecture apart from perhaps the Turner Contemporary Arlington house would be protected and Tesco or any other developer would have to build in the same Brutalist style as the rest of the structure.

Andy Johnson art exhibition at The York Street Gallery in Ramsgate

This is another one not to be missed.

The next elections in about five months.

So how will you vote in the European elections, do you care about them enough to vote and all that type of thing? I have put one of those voting things on the sidebar, not really sure if anyone will bother to vote, vote loads of times or what will happen. Nor am I sure what if anything the  results would mean.

This post has really come up because of the comments about local politics on Friday’s post http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/ramsgate-tidal-surge-pictures.html

I guess a lot of this comes down to whether you think the lack of a working majority both at parliamentary level and at district level makes thing better or worse.

I have been getting a certain amount of flack for saying that there is some progress with some of the long term issues, particularly the Ramsgate ones at TDC and that this may be partly to do with the lack of a working majority. 

One aspect that did interest me is the European election Conservative candidate Julie Marson was selected before Laura Sandys announced she wouldn’t be standing in the parliamentary elections and I wonder does this mean that Julie Marson is likely to be selected for the parliamentary election if she fails to win the European elections.

I wonder if the ongoing saga of TDC perceived as not fit for purpose and my guess is perceived as not fit for purpose under both Conservative and Labour administrations has any effect on how people vote in either the European or the Parliamentary elections.

It’s pretty obvious if the national government is unpopular and the usually are then this is likely to cause a swing towards the other major party at local level, but does it work the other way round? By this I mean does just having a majority at TDC make people more likely to vote the other way?

I know when Mark McGregor stood and lost the Thanet South Conservatives held the then Conservative administration at TDC at least partly responsible. 

I will ramble on here.

Marxist Margate and the EEC a Sunday Ramble.

Perusing the local blogs I see Simon Moores author of Marxist Margate http://about.me/marxistmargate and Ian Driver who featured in the Marist Bulletin http://www.bolshevik.org/mb/2democracy.htm have just condemned the increasingly right wing administration at TDC for refusing to discuss the EEC while on the other hand Marx’s statue in Kiev has been toppled http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25290959 even David Green on his new blog named in Boswellian style “Eastcliff, Ramsgate, Thanet Diary” moved against the party line and published his views on the independent standard members http://eastclifframsgatethanetdiary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/independent-members-standards-report.html I guess he was hoping to engage some of the locals in debate but instead attracted one of those rambling comment about firing ranges and the IRA from one of the Thanet blog spammers.

Meanwhile Barry has a dream http://promote-ramsgate.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/ramsgate-vision.html that someday Ramsgate may have a plan.

I have to admit to wondering exactly what the council could possibly say about the in out business with the EEC that would effect anyone or anything, to be honest I haven’t go a clue if we would be better of in or out. I do quite a bit of overseas trade in books, but mostly to English speaking countries or to be precise countries where either English is the main language or the main language for academic study, which precludes most of Europe.

The whole business of UKIP certainly seems to be stirring up the local Tories http://birchington.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/shut-that-door.html they seem to be very concerned about Will Scobie the only Thanet candidate to beat UKIP in the county elections. I guess as Will did his masters in European politics he is unlikely to side with getting out just in case he doesn’t win the parliamentary election.

I have started Christmas shopping, frankly not an easy one, new book wise about the only type that people don’t seem try to get rid of after Christmas as unwanted presents are the local history books, none of the ones I publish http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/ ever seem to be included with the heaps of offerings from celebrity chefs, and coffee tablature that has been replaced by the internet.

Last year, the children 15 nephews and nieces + my own were using various mobile electronic game devices, this year they are all playing games on their smartphones, which include the once popular, walkman (no cassettes needed), mp3 player (no CDs needed), camera (no film needed), torch (no batteries needed) same with my own children. Anyone for socks?

In the peculiar world of secondhand books, the Ebay effect (basically secondhand items make much more acceptable presents than they used to) we are noticing increased Christmas sales. I had some of the nephews over the weekend which does involve some discussion of books they want. The Kindle which may have caught on with whatever replaced the YUPPIE doesn’t seem to have caught on with the youf of today.

The rest of my immediate family are playing Monopoly at the moment so life isn’t all technology.

Pleasurama and the cliff are still looking pretty bad the council still haven't done the work from the last inspection    

Market day in King Street Ramsgate was once again made very difficult by the rubbish and recycling collected at 11 am which is the earliest yet.

 |One mitigating factor is that there were far fewer shoppers, not sure if this is cased by the rubbish, or if it was just a quiet morning.