Friday, April 17, 2009

Strip Tease

Well if you haven't gone out and got your copy of the Isle of Thanet Gazunder yet, here's what you're missing (click on the image to enlarge):

28 comments:

Son of Eric said...

Oi that's my punchline...
http://marknottingham.blogspot.com/2009/04/from-hornpipes-to-lap-dancing.html
happy to share it in a good cause!

GedBurke said...

MEDIA WHORE!

(quietly celebrates )

GedBurke said...

Apols to Popbitch but -

IDNSH Gazunder

Planespotter said...

Not looking too good for Sandy and Wodger on the ol' poll front ECR.

Anonymous said...

Look Ecr, or whoever you are. TDC senior officers are amongst the finest in the UK and are the 'fastest improving' local council going (of course, we have to pay them a commensurate salary to work hard - otherwise they'll sit on their arses - they're that good).

So stop bitching about stuff getting closed down all the time.

Lucy Mail said...

Well of course a post like that is going to get all the usual arse-heads trying to score political points or flexing their pseudo-intellectual muscles!
Hey, WC GB, did you swallow a tampon? You do seem somewhat self absorbed!

Don Wood said...

I am with Planespotter on his observations of the poll ECR love the cartoon and a good likeness of our Sandy both in facial feature and words

Richard Eastcliff said...

Er, thanks all. I think.

Unfortunately someone subsequently suggested a rather better punchline for Sandy: 'Thanet's 'oping for business'.

Nice to see Lucy Mail back too! Looking as sexy as ever there, Luce!

Anonymous said...

Would have a slightly better ring to it if Gordon Brown hadn't all but shut down the UK economy ECR. But then what's a little detail like that to spoil the party?!

Don Wood said...

anon 1;35 I hadnt noticed its not Gordons fault he is not that different from mrs T she wasnt for turning he is not for saying sorry. Bit like sandy hE'S NOT FOR RESIGNING oops

Richard Eastcliff said...

Yes, that's right. It's Gordon Brown's fault that the public khazis are closed, the amusement parks have all been burnt down, the museums are derelict, the high streets are having the life sucked out of them and the libraries have been turned into benefits centres.

And all that happened here in Thanet during one of the biggest boom decades the UK has ever seen.

Kuh! Some people!

Anonymous said...

Hope you havent let your id slip - see on the page the caveat is all contributors must give their full name and address, would be a shame if you were subjected to any bullying and intimidation like others! Besides it wouldnt be such fun either if you turned out to be a boring normal person like the rest of us!

Anonymous said...

ECR - a boom founded more on hope than reason shown by the biggest bust in history with repercussions that are having terrible consequences for millions now and many more millions in the future.

If you are basing the decline of Thanet on the ability of district politicians then I suggest that the decline happened between 1995 and 2003 when the holiday hotels and and boarding houses of Margate fell into disrepair and became the dumping ground for every no-hoper on the planet by the labour government. And government policy is still to dump ex cons nd perverts into unsuspecting communities where properrty is cheap rather than keep them in prisons where they belong.

Nothing that happened during the labour time delivered a result for the people of Thanet. Ezekiel and his cronies may be strggling to turn it around but at least his instincts are to give wealth creators an opportunity rather than regulate them out of existence. The Veg Factory, Manston Airport, China Gateway being perfect examples.

P.S. I can always find a toilet when I need one, and if the museums had inaything in them that was worth looking at then they would be able to suppot themselves, instead of having to be subsidised by money that would be better off spent on really imortant issues, like pensions and health care.

Anonymous said...

Margate - declined, it never inclined (hm think I used a Sandy euphemism then). Margate is still stuck in the 50's. It has rapidly declined from a zero base over the past 2 or 3 years under the 'protection' of this wonderful council and its leader. Museums need subsidies and if the council were even half genuine about wanting to create jobs and investment in the area they would see tourism as something to be nurtured. Who would come to this area to do nothing but sit on a cold windy beach.

Anonymous said...

Councils are there to fix pavements and streetlights and to pick up the rubbish. These preening pillocks have convinced themselves that they are something more; that they hold the key to regeneration of an area in their grubby paws. I'm afraid that, although estate agents, carpet salesmen and airport operators have a high opinion of themselves, they aren't the primary drivers of development, merely the beneficiaries of growth. The area continues to frail because there are no primary drivers for economic growth. The types of industry that produce real economic development are those about which our Council knows nothing. They are the types of businesses which locate to the leafy business parks of the home counties, rather than the windswept plains offered by TDC. We desperately need the attract good businesses to the area, but the idiots running our Council wouldn't know a good business if they saw it. After years of wasting taxpayers' money and failing to deliver anything, it's time that economic development was handed over to a properly funded and staffed development agency. The Council could then get back to fixing pavements, streetlights and cleaqring our streets of rubbish. These are things for which they ARE qualified.

Anonymous said...

I'm afraid a lot of the problems are also down to low calibre council staff too! (i am not defending SANDY HERE THOUGH!)
Rent demands first reminder forms sent out before the actual rent demands being sent out later in the week, (i thought i hadnt had a demand when the first reminder came but thought i might have mislaid it!) was one thing to happen to us this week!
They also sacked the only good officer who spoke sense in the rating department, the officer sent out to follow up on the rating department felt embarrassed at how useless the rest of his team were, that is in business rate collection - trying to get money in! goodness knows what the payment out to benefit claimants is like! Doesnt bode well!
We wont even mention the planning and regeneration dept!

Anonymous said...

Very amused that Rebecca Smith is brave enough to publish your cartoons ECR!
What is the election purdah Sandy is under and why doesnt it apply to Laura, thought it was only KCC elections not TDC anyway!

Anonymous said...

Hmmm. 5 people have voted to keep the leadership. Are we assuming that Ezekiel and Latchford have voted more than once? Or is there anybody else who wants to keep them?

Maybe it's someone from outside Thanet. That must be it; someone who doesn't know them or the area; someone who saw their pictures and thought they had nice honest faces.

Just goes to show, you can't fool all of the people all of the time, but...

Anonymous said...

Anon 1023

Check out Cllr Dr Charles Macavoy ?

Check out Panorama 1975 (dumping of ex mental hospital patients homeless into Margate)

Check out the Yorkshire TV Grannie business expose's of the early 80s featuring Thanet change of use hotels into allagedly sub standard care homes.

And you will perhaps conclude that your contribution to ECR's thread amounts to utter bollix.

Anonymous said...

Rocky. To drag that stuff up when we are talking current personalities shows what bollix you are talking.

Ezekiel may have given the irish woman the bums rush but nobody believes that anyone on the labour side have anything to offer. They are not even in the same league. There top guns - Nicolson, Hart, Harrison, Green, Johnson haven't even got a single job between them, let alone ever had one that qualifies them to run a council and talk to anyone who might want to come here. Would you seriously invest big money in the area with any of them in charge?

Not bloomin likely. I wouldn't trust them with my weekly beer money let alone the future of my grandchildren.

Anonymous said...

What are you suggesting then 4.54? We obviously have no-one anywhere of any calibre? ECR for an elected mayor?

Anonymous said...

I'm surprised someone here thinks that Thanet's decline can only be pinpointed to the late 90s and early noiughties!

Thanet's decline has been going on for donkey's years, I'm afraid. Not helped by a previous Conservative administration throughout much of the 1970sd involving Cyril Hoser and his gang of cronies. Hoser went to jail in the end for a series of crimes in 1982 - including forgery.

The aforementioned Panorama programme in 1975 about mental health patients being dumped in Margate rightly caused a furore at the time too - and hit the tourist trade very hard for ages afterwards. The homes these poor people were being shipped into were largely operated by Margaret Mortlock and her son, Bill Leadbeater (?) both leading councillors of the day.

If you think the magic carpet salesman of Northdown Road is sailing close to the edge of the right side of the law etc, you should have met these people - they made nine bob notes look worth having!

They certainly made a lot of money and had a great deal of influence at TDC. I think other parts of the same family were - and may still be running - children's nurseries around the isle these days.

Anonymous said...

Thanet went downhill very quickly due to its geographical position in 1939. Even into the early 1970s I remember Camden Square in Ramsgate being full of boarded up houses, this being one area very heavily bombed. There were many areas like this and we didn't get over that war in this area for a long time. The holiday trade briefly resurrected itself in the 1950s but declined again in the late 1960s as overseas travel became popular. By the 1990s we were in receipt of all kinds of problematic people being sent to the area by local authorities from around the country. The area would benefit from a holiday park such as Haven offer, we just need some land freed up.....now where?

Anonymous said...

It's no good banging on about the decline of the UK holiday trade. Resorts such as Bournemouth have thrived because they took bold decisions (e.g. building a conference centre). When the Turner Centre fails (as it will) has it been designed such that it could be converted? Bet your life it hasn't.

Anonymous said...

Decline of holiday trade = less holiday makers. This area has relied on that more than most resorts which have other industries backing it up, look at Brighton where there are a number of credit card companies and insurance companies based. I don't believe a conference centre would save us, I do believe the Turner Centre is a good addition.

Anonymous said...

Yes the Turner Centre is a very good start and brilliant for that end of town, but it wont be big enough to heal a broken Margate, that will be down to what is done on the Dreamland site, and as that is currently held by a visionary, exciting, go-getting, entrepreneur of the caliber of Mr Godden we are all ok, open the fizz!

Iain Aitch said...

Great strip. Spot on as well.

Richard Eastcliff said...

Thanks Aitchie! How about a link from your blog? Or are you Bignews Margate biased!