The idle foughts of an idle feller.

Frankly I have been a bit depressed since Jeremy Clarkson got the sack for the punch up because he asked for a UKIP receipt for his steak. On the local front I guess TDC selling off Staffordshire Street car park to developers and Transport Select Committee reviewing plans to turn The Isle of Thanet into one massive airport got me down a bit too.

Now I have to face the facts, there will probably never be any more Top Gear, all of Thanet will probably become one massive airport – due to popular local demand – and I am likely to get a UKIP MP who has no interest in Ramsgate.

On a brighter note today when I went into the new Labour shop and asked how much to buy a politician, after being told it was too expensive – I did discover that the intention over Staffordshire Street car park is for any development there not to reduce the number of parking places, something like the Sainsbury at WC.

I have been very busy of late, mostly buying book stock for my bookshop, which after a busier November, December and January (I haven’t added up Feb yet) is a bit depleted. So ‘pologies for the lack of blog posts here.

So what have I been up to? I will try to add to this going backwards in time – if I get time.

Yesterday, having spent most of the morning out doing book buying house calls I had a late snack lunch at The Minnis   

I did remember to get something I could eat easily while sketching

So here is the sketch.

Next comes the local shop closures, starting I suppose with No. 13 King Street, which was Tesco’s then Tesco Home and wear and then Macdonald’s, so are they closing or just cancelling the franchise and carrying on regardless. What will the closure of Primark do to Margate? I have to say I miss the BHS café there looking over the sea on a cold winter day. And of course with WC reaching its ten year anniversary, up come some of the leases there for renewal. With retail the rent has to reflect the profitability of the site and ultimately it doesn’t matter where the value of real estate climbs to, retail real estate is limited by this factor.  

You know thinking of the UKIP receipt and having spent most of yesterday lugging about boxes of books on the north side of the island, it would never occur to me to claim my lunch against expenses. Thinking back to the main MP expenses scandal locally, with Steve and the big dinners and Roger and the big TV, well it obviously isn’t over yet.    

On the Manston front the government have decided to spend their £1m on getting Price Waterhouse Coopers to investigate whether TDC should have engaged in the RiverOak cpo to turn Manston Airport in to an airfreight hub.  I wonder if any money will be spent on asking what the TDC voters want for Manston. 

Of course it was Price Waterhouse Coopers that Infratil used to dispose of the airport in the first place. 

It looks like The Royal Sands development on the Pleasurama site is back on again and I guess this is the key photo (taken last summer).

This is mostly about sand, the sand that will hold the Royal Sands in place, the problem being that it is fast washing away.

Flat Eric has found a new book to review, like so many books now 1p on Amazon – which means £2.81 including postage which means our price is £2.50. While on the subject of falling book prices, after an ex library copy of The Ramsgate Millennium Book sold on ebay for about £60 including postage, it looks like the price is going down on this title. Makes you wonder which of the libraries sold it off, or even if they did. 

On the Royal Victoria Pavillion front there is a rumour going around that now the council have agreed to Weatherspoons making it the largest pub in Europe, they are now dragging their feet over the terms of the lease so that it will remain derelict for several years.

Of course with the unanswered questions about our future MPs, the main one for me being what will they do for Ramsgate? With the council also election wise being in a state of Preparation H the question of Gold Member or Gold Members arises.

Once again the candidates seem a bit loathe to explain what they would do for Ramsgate, apart from the air freight hub and getting Thanet out of Europe, that is.    

What worries me here is the number of customers I have who work at Discovery Park or who have a job related to us being members of the EU.

Terry Thompson at The York Street Gallery in Ramsgate

Emma Lloyd at The York Street Gallery in Ramsgate

The current Exhibition  is by Ramsgate based artist Emma Lloyd. A collection of abstract works on canvas and board. The exhibition runs -    11th Mar - 18th Mar Exhibitions change weekly on Wednesdays.

A couple of Canterbury sketches and a ramble.

Lunch in Brunch today, very useful one this if you are in the middle of Canterbury, laid back atmosphere.

Anyway here is the sketch of the bank opposite, go to a medieval town and sketch a Victorian building I know, but there it was.

The view from the window.

Menu, wifi, good place to recover from Canterbury.

I did sit on a bench in the cathedral grounds and sketch a bit of cathedral, it is very difficult, if not impossible to get the right distance from the cathedral, with the light behind you to sketch it.

As no local blog post is complete without some reference to Manston Airport, here is today’s rumour: which is something along the lines of Cllr Dave G told Cllr John W that acting chief executive Madeline H would put TDC into special measures if any administration decided to go with the RiverOak cpo.

Cllr John W, now says he is prepared to take a lie detector test, are lie detector tests available for local politicians? It would seem unlikely.  

Can the chief exec put the council into special measures? I don’t think so I think this only happens if a council fails to process a run of significant planning applications. Could the elected administration force the officers to proceed with a cpo partner that had failed to pass the council’s financial tests? I think this falls in the bracket of could an elected administration force a council to anything outside of the rules governing councils and is probably not.    

Lee Bates & Sonia Bussey at The York Street Gallery in Ramsgate

The current Exhibition  is by Two Broadstairs Ladies Lee Bates & Sonia Bussey. A collection of various media by Sonia and Oil Paintings by Lee. The exhibition runs -    4th Mar - 11th Mar Exhibitions change weekly on Wednesdays.

Sketch of Kingsgate Castle from lunch at the Captain Digby

Eating lunch and doing the sketch, I now chose food I can eat with one hand, took about an hour.

Lunch which was very good cost about £10 per head including drink, last page of the menu for those who want a light bite, which is always us at lunchtime.

Ramsgate and the UKIP phenomena

Earlier today I found myself trying to explain to a European journalist why Nigel Feragae is standing as a parliamentary candidate in Thanet South, where Ramsgate is the main town. Trying to answer questions like: Are people here more anti Europe than in most parts of the UK? Did we have more of an immigration problem than the rest to the UK? Were European immigrants taking away the majority of jobs in the area?

Perhaps the key to this is in the first line of the post “trying to explain to a European journalist” what do I mean here? Do I see the people who live in the European landmass as Europeans in a way that I don’t see myself, or an English journalist as being European? Is there a sense in which I see myself as being part of Europe and more closely related to the other European countries than America or Australia? Frankly I guess the answer has to be no.

To be honest I feel much more united by a common language than relative distance. But all of these things are not peculiar to Thanet South.

I guess politically Thanet South was a marginal, but since the boundary changes would normally be seen as much closer to a Conservative safe seat, so I assume that most of the reasoning that UKIP have a chance of taking Thanet South must be based on the KCC elections where they did so well in Thanet http://democracy.thanet.gov.uk/mgElectionResults.aspx?ID=60&RPID=8510421 there is a sense on paper at least that all of these seats were taken from the Conservatives, here are the previous results http://democracy.thanet.gov.uk/mgElectionResults.aspx?ID=26&RPID=8510428

Of course in practice this isn’t exactly what happened inasmuch as the existing Labour seat was lost, and the new Labour seat was taken from the Conservatives, the Scobie effect?      

Perhaps the UKIP chance business is in some way related to expired seaside holiday towns, unemployment, large retired population, large population on benefits, but then wouldn’t the greatest increase in benefits and pensions come from Labour?

I may well add to this post as I think of possible answers.

I am also trying taking comment moderation off while leaving registered user on, frankly having anon comments on leads to so many spam comments as to be unmanageable. Whereas spam comments from registered users are less common.   

Trying to approach this from a different angle I suppose a question is: Is there an elephant in the UKIP room? Perhaps it is the question, what would UKIP do for Ramsgate?  

Bloggers block and a few sketches of authors and other stuff from my sketchbook.

Sorry about the lack of posts at the moment, they don’t seem to be coming out in the usual way, this is partly a matter of inclination and partly due to being busy.

 Here are the author sketches, based on the photos at http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/ for any aspiring art critics. The sheets are A4 and part of my trying to get likenesses into small faces when I am out sketching this summer.

Not really sure if this is going to work, I think the main issue is about extending memory of faces that one isn’t familiar with related to the problems produced because people move.  

 This one was in The Churchill Tavern Ramsgate the other evening.

 And this one in Vinyl Head Ramsgate on Sunday

I guess no Thanet blog post is complete without reference to the latest airport news so here is the link http://www.riveroakinvestments.co.uk/riveroak-investments-save-manston-airport-manston-present-reliever-airport-case-prime-minister/#more-904

I have switched the blog to registered users only because of the amount of spam comments recently. 

I guess the main local news that interested me this week is that The Marlowe Academy having only had a new intake of 32 new pupils and the total number of pupils there now under 700 is to merge with Ellington and Hereson School.