Margate Pride seems to be going as per over on the seedy north side of the island, with the hookie perfumier's banter competing nicely with the Boy Georgealikes on the sound stage. I deliberately call it 'Margate Pride' as it's a much more honest description than 'Thanet Pride'. The 'Thanet' being a recent invention to justify everyone else's council tax funding it.Call me a curmudgeon [You're a curmudgeon - Ed] but quite why I need to pay for Margate to hold a shindig every week when the basics are being neglected is beyond me. Derek Harding, who heads up Margate's Renewal Partnership, apparently commands a £60m budget. Although it's now slipped to £40m according to a story in yesterday's Gazunder about schoolkids who've come up with the slogan 'More than meets the eye' for the town. So what's all that mazooma being frittered on Derek?
Maybe the kids are right. Maybe it does require the Transformers to step in and demolish the lot in an epic battle with the evil Developons. But a more honest tagline for the town would currently be this from T S Eliot's The Wasteland:
On Margate Sands.
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
Inspired as he was sitting in the Nayland Rock shelter, which has received national publicity this week due to the campaign to list it, he wrote that in 1921. If he sat there today, gazing across the wasteland of the Arlington complex, the disused NCP and the derelict Dreamland site, I think he'd come to the same conclusion!
27 comments:
Good use of last years photo!
I think you will find that Thanet Pride is good old seaside fun, probably a bit much for old gits like yourself.
An inclusive event which I'm sure welcomes miserable millionaires from london and ramsgate.
Funnily enough some friends and I decided to take a break from the main stage (I was exhausted after jumping around to Bucks Fizz and then stalking Cheryl Baker for an hour...) and we ended up going and sitting in that shelter, My dear friend Matt informed us of TS Elliots writings while we sat in the shelter with 4 cans of lager between two of them and a diet coke for me, we felt so uper class discussing such literary works and swigging from cans...
Yeh yeh Tone. But you're an old enough git to know that good old seaside fun never used to come at the expense of getting our rubbish collected.
And the photo's from 2007 actually. The last time I felt even moderately included in this waste of my taxpayer's money.
Nah! Why would I give TDC and and Margate the pleasure of my company????
Humbug! LOL
I am pleased at anything that gets the crowds out in Margate!
Afterall it is where 'historically' the "posh came to play".
It has always been brash, loud and naughty. Still at least it is truthful about it's culture and communities unlike the sly south!!!
Fort Crescent looked a real mess yesterday - derelict houses and rubbish all over the place - sad!
I suppose sailing do's in Rammers-poo is OK tho.
You could have gone to the Minster Flower Show...
Derelict houses etc belong to a would be tory councillor, think SE protecting his stalwart here from a bit of enforcement of tidy up if my sources are correct?
Yes i was staggered to read that Derek Harding's budget was that large - must be more than has been spent on Folkestone and think of the opportunities it would bring if put to use! Think may have been £40000 not the figure the paper quoted if it was the millions then we have been badly let down?
What Tory councillor owns The Arcadian & The Fort Hill Hotel? Or is this yet more mis-information?
I lived in The Arcadian a few years ago but luckily I've blocked most of my memories of that place out...
7.38 note "would be tory councillor" - all those who automatically spring to defence of Sandy's clique!
It would be good to know who owns one of the many but in this case prominent Margate eye sores... anyone?
think tall tales of potential development etc at Fort Lodge are keeping the enforcement officers at bay - to improve the area being complained about ..oops forgot and the fact that one of the owners is a stalwart tory foot worker.(Sandy's henchmen)
Nevermind that at least two properties he owns/leases are in a terrible state! Coach House at Northdown (boarded up) and Fort lodge site. Also not to mention that he has waged a 20 year campaign reporting his neighbours over the state of their properties to TDC continually, all of which have been thoroughly investigated at taxpayers expense!
To the onlooker he seems to be immune from the wrath of TDC's enforcement dept- not yet the subject of any sanctioning due to the poor state of properties under his supposed management! ?
Name and shame the cretinous fool, people like that hold the place back, absent slum landlords are sadly to be expected for this sort of neglect but anyone involved in local politics should hang their heads in shame.
Not an absent slum landlord - often to be seen in Margate old town with clip board and following the Conservation officer around about the state of properties in the old town - talk about "the pot calling the kettle black"!
Are you all saying Mr P miles owns these blots on our Margate Landscape?
Surely some one who writes so many complaints about eye sores from his windows.... would not let his own properties look so shamefully neglected in such a prime Margate site?
Shame on Him ....If it true !
Also have you seen the museum sorry Coach house at Northdown Park all boarded up? It is rumoured that he leases that from the Council. Has anyone ever seen the exhibits on show?
You want to know who owns a lot of the eyesores in Margate? Give you one clue used to be a Tory Councillor until he thoroughly disgraced himself then they threw him out, hear he's trying to get back in. Still don't know the identity! last hint surname begins with M and ends with S
Anonymous read your bit on the "Coach House" Went after lunch to inspect, I nearly cried! How can anyone allow such a lovely building to go to rack and ruin? Who ever is in charge if this property should be hung, drawn and quartered. Disgusting that TDC have not stopped this from happening, or is this another example of TDC turning their back on a justifiable enforcement when it is owned by one of Ezekiels friends?
Do we yet again have to pay the bill for the Council's inability to run this Council legally, fairly and squarely, don't kmow about all of you bit I am fed up to the teeth with b****y Council and their corrupt dealings
Anon 4:20, if you'd read Big News Margate you'd have known about this several weeks ago. Yet more recycled "news" ECR?
Oh god, it's Chippy Tone again!
Aaaaaanyhoo, before everyone, including the Bignewsmeister, gets carried away (to the libel courts), may I just remind readers that Bertie Biggles has published the final and definitive line on the topic of this gentleman and his property dealings?
Click here to read it.
Is having the Coach house boarded up and unused and a derelict site in Margate mean that a person is beyond reproach? Is there one rule for those who are nasty enough to make threats etc and another for Jo public? seems a funny way to run a democracy?Come on ECR i thought you stood up for what should be right in Thanet not cow tow to Sandy's cronies?
Well, honestly, I couldn't give a monkey's if some slum landlord wants to waste his time and money dragging me through the libel courts. Besides, it's the commentators here that have brought this up again, not me. ('Recycled news', Chippy T? Kuh!)
All I'm saying is that there are two sides to every story, and we haven't heard his. Bertie certainly seems to have heard at least a bit of it, and decided draw a line under the story.
I would so love to be in bed with both Big Tony and Councillor Ken - two big overweight bears both of them. YUM
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