Discharged from the QEQM and back home here at the old cliff top mansion, I've been overwhelmed by all the flowers I've received. Thanks to everyone who took the time to pull them out of the council flowerbeds and chuck them over my hedge.I see the BBC News website is currently trumpeting the success of Locate in Kent, one of those pointless quangos that uses our money to, er.... Hmm. Well, apparently they've created 2,891 jobs in the last financial year, up 33% on the year before. Hurrah! A quick squiz at their website elicits the news (in several places) that there are 67 golf courses in Kent, clearly a priority for all those fat businessmen in disastrous casualwear they're trying to tempt here.
More seriously, it also appears that lying out of their arses has helped attract all these lovely new jobs. Under the section 'Areas of Kent', they describe our little tip in the usual terms - regeneration, blah, transformational, blah, development, blah blah blah. The description is topped off with this little gem: 'Kent International Airport, attracting six million passengers a year, is leading regeneration in Thanet.' Six million passengers a year? Six million passengers a year? Chas 'n' Dave International would be lucky to be doing a hundredth of that!
Meanwhile, the agency's delightfully named chief executive Paul Wookey said: 'Aoacworcwo rarcwo cahkaoro-cwohowowh rrooanww oaoohurccwoc ahwh orwowhao' Han Solo was unavailable for comment.
Read all about it
Locate in Kent (if you believe them)
Translate Wookie
Update: Locate in Kent have now changed this bollix to read: 'Kent International Airport and the commercial development which is likely to occur around the airport will play a major role in regeneration in Thanet' after the excellent Yourthanet followed up my story. The actual number of passengers Chas 'n' Dave International carried in 2008 was 11,657.
Click here to read full story in yourfannitinnit
4 comments:
Matt Clarke "Without an increase in traffic, Manston will close".
6,000,000 passengers - pure fantasy
Give Paul Wookey credit where credit is due. He is a board member of Kent TV presumably appointed by KCC. But then KCC is a Locate in Kent backer. You may ask how much KCC gives Locate in Kent in time and money? Now the credit is due because Paul turns up at the board meetings, unlike Half of thr board members. I trust that his support is not biased in any way.
The problem with quangos is that they are unaccountable. Someone should be getting a written warning (at least) for lying on an official press release. But who's going to give them the warning? It's understandable. Any quango has to justify its own existence to keep the fat-cats running it in their fat tax-payer funded salaries.
There's a tw*t called Don who posts on a site called Promote Thanet. He says that the site is to show what a beautiful place Thanet is but he then goes on to espouse the virtues of low-flying aircraft. My mate says that Thanet was the last place the Romans left and so, they were eating from lead plates for longer than everyone else. I think Don is living proof.
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