Thanet Blog Wars 2010 - Big Guns Go In!

The 2010 Thanet Blog Wars appear to be hotting up nicely with the news that London libel specialists Carter-Ruck are now representing Labour councillor/blogger Mark Nottingham in his ongoing legal tussle with Tory councillor/blogger Simon Moores.

My spies tell me that Cllr Moores has received a letter from the firm that Private Eye frequently refers to as 'Carter-Fuck', due to its controversial involvement in a number of high profile cases. Er, I'm going to stop there and refer you to their Wikpedia entry, where it says that they offer some of their services, including libel actions, on a 'no win, no fee' basis.

Dr/Cllr Moores has alleged that Cllr Nottingham libelled him on his blog. Strange, though, that none of the local rags have reported any of this, isn't it?

Blog Wars 2010 - First Shots Fired!

Just when you thought the island's blogosphere might go an entire year without a skirmish, the chap who brought you Thanet Blog Wars 2006-2008* has, rather predictably, launched the first salvo in Thanet Blog Wars 2010!

Yes, I can exclusively reveal that Tory Dr/Cllr Moores, proprietor of Thanet Life, has apparently told everyone within earshot that he's suing Labour Sherriff/Cllr Nottingham for something the latter wrote on his From One End of Kent blog. Of course, I'm not at liberty to repeat the alleged libel as that could also be construed as libellous. And, to be perfectly frank, I'm relieved it's not me staring down the barrel of Simes' trusty Lee Enfield for once!

I'm told letters have been sent, so it's not just a case of Dr Biggles having a word in the ear of one of the local hacks, who then repeats his allegations verbatim in the paper without going to the bother and nuisance of checking any of the facts. Which, if you recall, was what happened last time. Although quite why anyone should willingly volunteer to buy another Bentley for m'learned friends over something as inconsequential as a blog is beyond me.

But hey-ho. I can only assume that Simes' ego has been well and truly pricked, and that he must have made a bob or two banner-tugging recently!

*The 2009 Thanet Blog Wars having been initiated, by way of a change, by Tony Flaig of Bignews Margate.

The Things They Say...

We've had the worries of lead-painted toys from China and you may have heard that many Chinese health remedies are equally contaminated. Now its the turn of clothes, with news that cheap clothes made in China have been found to contain high levels of Formaldehyde to protect clothes that have to be shipped great distances against mildew.

Long-term exposure to the chemical in high levels can be harmful, causing problems ranging from minor skin rashes to some types of cancer.

Let's be frank though. Given the way the Chinese treat their own population and pollute their environment, does anyone really believe that in the pursuit of "Golden grease", factory owners are really going to pay too much attention to our European health and safety laws? I rather think not.

Thanet Council Cabinet Member Simon Moores, 21/8/2007

9/10/2008 - Thanet Council grant planning permission for China Gateway
29/8/2009 - Thanet Council close Margate old town without notice to schmooze Chinese officials

Biggles Knocks One Out

I guess it wasn't going to be long before Daily Mail Man started flexing his, er, blog muscle and started firing both barrels in the latest Thanet Blog War. In today's post he returns to his broken record of attacking anonymous bloggers as 'cranks', 'paranoid', 'disturbed' and 'graffiti merchants'. As well as cranking out the same old, same old 'defamatory language' and 'personal abuse'.

We heard it all before in the Thanet Blog War of 2006, the Thanet Blog War of 2007 and the Thanet Blog War of 2008. Now he's trotting it out again in the Thanet Blog War of 2009, aided and abetted it seems by his new and presumably useful (for the time being) but nonetheless strange bedfellow, Bignews Tony. I'm surprised he hasn't rolled out 'welfare sponger with a political axe to grind' but it's early days yet, I suppose.

As part of his diatribe, he characterises Thanet's blogs as little read and little cared about, and given greater emphasis than they deserve by local papers 'desperate for stories; any stories, true or false, given their own limited and shrinking resources.' What the good doctor has conveniently forgotten, however, (something he's quite good at) is that without these blogs, and just off the top of my head, we would never have heard of:

- Inconvenient truths about Tory councillors' academic qualifications
- Mad Pleasurama plans that embed people's heads in concrete
- Jollies-for-planning-permission trips to China by Thanet Tories
- Secret Tory plans for a Thanet blogging protocol
- Tory councillors who prefer to spend all their time in Panama
- Pollution of our water table by local companies
- Proposals to fly 747s over Ramsgate all night
- On/off/on/off again fast ferry services to Boulogne
- Council planning department disasters

To name but a few. But he wouldn't want to remember those, would he, as they all involve his corrupt and incompetent administration.

So obsessed is the man with getting some dirt on troublesome anonymous bloggers that during the last blog war he went to the extraordinary lengths of sourcing a photograph of one such 'annoyance', and running it past possible acquaintances for confirmation that he'd 'got his man'. If that's not the actions of an 'unhappy', 'paranoid' and 'disturbed individual' expressing 'the darker and more unpleasant side of human nature', I'm buggered if I know what is!

Click here for more guff from the Master of Convenient Political Truths

Update: At the suggestion of one of the few remaining Thanet bloggers I still actually have any respect for, I've hidden the comments on this post. I don't give a whatsit what people call me, it's water off a duck's proverbial, but I draw the line at anonymous name callers using my blog to insinuate named bloggers are paedos, even if they're the sort of bluggers I wouldn't ordinarily stop to relieve myself over if they were on fire. I've said this before, and I'll keep on saying it until you (and you know who you are) have got the message.

More Council Hunks In Trunks

Ding-a-ling! Flicking through flickr earlier I came across a rather revealing shot of our very own flying doctor! It's not so much Dr Moores as Dr Phwoars! That's one Thanet councillor who's presumably in favour of letting it all hang out on Bottomy Bay!

Click here to reveal all! Well, almost all.

Update: Dr Phwoars! has now removed the offending item from public view, although personally I thought it was quite flattering. In the absence of the real deal, you're going to have to make do with the uncannily accurate artist's impression below.

Biggles Takes It Rough

Mad, Bad and Sad

Yet again Thanet politics is giving off more heat than light, as the row between true blue Dr/Cllr Biggles and Labour new boy Cllr Nottingham intensifies into something akin to the mud wrestling that Westgate Pavilion will be putting on in the not too distant future. Or the, er, cockfighting scene between Oliver Reed and Alan Bates in Ken Russell's Women in Love.

Having said that, it's more a case of the red corner slinging all the mud and the blue corner not letting it stick at the moment. While Cllr Nottingham carries on like a proverbial pork chop that has overdone it on the Collis Browne mixture, Biggles is flying way above it in clear air, not rising to the bait. Which probably means he knows whatever it is Notters knows, but is trying his hardest to steer clear of the storm clouds for as long as he can. God help us if it's something to do with his doctorate, which, as long-termers in the Thanet blogosphere will know, is a very touchy subject for Our Simes.

So that's the mad and bad, but what about the sad? Enter absentee Cllr Stephen Broadhurst, the Panama-based right blue member for Dane Valley. Steve rarely paddles his canoe back from the central American state to attend anything so demeaning as a council meeting or a surgery with his constituents, it appears, and now Chippy Tone has caught someone signing into the council chamber on his behalf so that he can collect his £5K in expenses for passing 'go'. Tut tut! Could it have been Steve's security firm underling, Arfur Mullard lookalike and Margate Mayor Ted Watt-Ruffell? It seems unlikely, but I think we should be told!

Meanwhile expect one or either or all three to emulate the late, great, lovely Oliver Reed's party piece by getting up on the bar and whipping their kecks down at a pub near you in the not too distant future, uttering the immortal line: 'Now has anybody seen a cock as big as that? No, I rather think you haven't.'

Don't Call Me Shirley

Lorks! What with Councillor/Doctor Biggles' recent obsession with Romans and gladiators, and his ongoing interest in flying, I'm beginning to wonder whether he's not positioning himself for the part of Captain Clarence Oveur in some putative remake of Airplane!

Update: Our Simes now appears to have a bee in his helmet about something in today's Gazunder, and is threatening to do a tug over the paper's offices if they don't print the truth. Hold the inside middle page!

Politics And Bad Eggs

The news that racist scumbag Nick Griffin, the British Nazi Party leader, was pelted with eggs outside parliament today warmed the old Eastcliff cockles. However, I see Dr Biggles has leapt to his defence over on his 'Popular But Beseiged™' blog Thanet Life. Comparing the incident to the Roman Empire or something, Cllr Moores writes:

Nick Griffin should be allowed to speak unhindered by egg-throwing and placard wielding demonstrators from the UAF. After all, he will argue that we allow other small extremist groups to march unhindered through our streets, calling for the murder of our own soldiers or Holocaust Denial. By preventing his democratic rights as an elected MEP - no matter our own personal thoughts - we risk provoking the growth of the very extremism that politicians of all parties and their supporters should be working tirelessly to avoid.

Well excuse me, Dr M, but we're talking here about the Nick Griffin who, at his 1998 trial for inciting racial hatred, uttered this in his defence:

I am well aware that the orthodox opinion is that six million Jews were gassed and cremated and turned into lampshades. Orthodox opinion also once held that the world is flat ... I have reached the conclusion that the 'extermination' tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie, and latter witch-hysteria.

So I really think he does deserve to be called names and have eggs thrown at him at every opportunity. And, y'know, when John Prescott had an egg hurled at him during the 2001 election campaign, I'm willing to bet the good Tory doctor didn't start banging on about 'Roman Tribunes' and 'democratic rights'! No, he probably had a jolly good laugh like the rest of us. Oh the hypocrisy!

Local councillor defends BNP's 'democratic rights'
John Prescott gets egg on face

He's Back!

Holy biplanes! The 'popular but beseiged™' Thanet Life blog run by Westgate Blue Rinser Councillor/Doctor Moores has lurched back into life! The Tories must be preparing to drop some pretty stinky bombs on us if they've cranked up their favourite propaganda machine again! Run for your lives!!!!!

Airport For Sale - One Careful Owner

Unfortunately not a plan to sell off Manston and turn it into a wind farm. Although that would probably be for the best, given last night's experience.

No, this is Maypole Airfield, just off the Thanet Way between St Nicholas-at-Wade and Hernia Bay. It also happens to be where our local doctor/councillor tugs many a banner from. And where some of the local residents object to the aforementioned banner tugging.

It's on the market for £1.25m, and for that you get 56 acres, 'five spacious hangars', a toilet block with two WCs, a club house, equestrian facilities, and a three bedroom bungalow. Lovely. I suggest the Doc gets down there quick with a wad of folding, before the locals club together and, er, queer his pitch.

Click here for details of sale at Browns Country Property
Click here for Maypole Airfield website

yourthanetlifeblogger

Waiting to get the old barnet trimmed down at Sweeney Todd's (next to the pie shop) yesterday, I idled away the time casting the Eastcliff mincers over this week's issue of yourthanet, one of the 1,200 local freesheets. But I must say I almost choked on my Murray Mint when I came across yet another yourthanetblogger item featuring His Councillorship from the north of the Ile.

He's been there every week for the past month. Now he's even got his photo on it. It's enough to give you the pip! And how can he be a blogger, when he's not blogging on his blinking blog? Oh yes, I forgot, he's billed as 'author of the popular but beseiged (sic) Thanet Life weblog'.

Well, considering he suspended it himself, I'd hardly call it a 'seige'. I mean, it's not quite Leningrad, is it?

Thanet Death

In Memoriam
Thanet Life
Popular Tory Blog

So, Farewell
Then Thanet
Life.

'Thanet's alternative
Newspaper',
That was
Your catchphrase.
'The Isle of Thanet
With a blue tint',
That was
Another.

Still, just like
Arnie,
I expect you'll be
Back.

After all, that ruddy-faced Governor of Kent can't go on forever.

E.C. Richard (29)

Biggles Makes A Splash

As you know, I don't normally sully my hands with the red tops, but turning to page 19 of yesterday's Thanet Times I almost choked on my G&T. There was our local blue rinse, blue sky doctor/councillor staring back at me, becapped and beshaded, small as life, hand on hip, standing in front of his teeny-tiny plane looking for all the world like the ghost of the lovely, dearly-departed John Inman!

For some reason the Times had devoted an entire page to the Doc's banner tugging business. I couldn't imagine that it merited that much newsprint in its own right, but the words 'advertising feature' were C by their A. Could it be that, in a small fit of pique at receiving very little attention for his Christmas charity tug, the flying doctor pestered the Times hacks into granting him wall-to-wall, no questions asked coverage? I think we should be told!

Merry Christmas!

Well, did you see it? Just a few minutes ago, the flying doctor did a double circuit of Ramsgate's trendy East Cliff, on his charity tug with the banner paid for by Bignews Tony, and, of course, me and all you lovely readers here on the island's premier blog site. Proceeds will be going to the NSPCC.

Right, I've got the biggest bird I've ever had waiting to be stuffed in the kitchen, I'm off to smother some breasts in butter. Happy Christmas to you all. Unless you're a bigot, Oasis Hong Kong Airlines or That Bloody Awful Noel. In which case, I'll wish you a Crappy Mizmas!

Charity Bid's A Winner

Hurrah! The ECR/Bignews Margate axis has won the flying doctor's charity eBay auction to get our very own banner tugged around the island. Well, er, it wasn't that difficult as we were the only people to bid. What a load of skinflints you Thanetians are!

More news closer to the day (Christmas Eve), but we're hoping the banner will read MERRY XMAS FROM THANET BLOGGERS, and that the proceeds will go to the NSPCC. Tony and I are going half each on the £150, but one or two of my readers offered to chuck in the odd fiver, so I'll make my contribution the full ton. Hopefully, if Tony does the same, we'll have raised 200 nicker for a good cause.

And as it's Christmas, I suppose I ought to thank the Doc for contributing his time, plane, fuel and er oh gawd I think I'm going to throw up.

Update: As Tony is over the weight limit (85kg) for the passenger seat, and I'm a purely fictional persona, Dr Moores has asked us if he could auction the spare seat off for more charity wonga via local radio. Which is a nice idea, so listen out for that.

Update update: Er, he's now taking sealed bids via email for the spare dicky, so send your offers to simon_moores@hotmail.com

Run It Up The Flaigpole

Burger loving Margate burgher Bignews Tony Flaig (scourge of the Freemasons, police and Kent County Council) has rung to accept my offer of going 50/50 on the flying doctor's charity Christmas tug.

If you recall, the Doc has so far failed to get any bids for his eBay offer which starts at £150. The deal is that Tone and I will chuck in 75 sovs each, but if any other Thanet bloggers want to make a contribution for a banner that will, we hope, read MERRY XMAS FROM THANET BLOGGERS then there'll be more for charity. Unless the charity is the Oasis Pilots' Benevolent Fund, in which case you can count me out!

Neither Tony nor I will be going in the doctor/councillor's cockpit (Tony's too fat and I'm too anonymous) so who knows, this could be your chance to join the mile high club with your favourite Blue Rinser! Just append your comment with the size of your donation to this post, and we'll work out the details later. Happy tugging!

Click here for the Doc's relisted eBay offer, currently showing our £150 bid

Time Running Out For Doctor Banner Bid

There's only an hour or so left if you want to get your very own banner tugged by our local doctor/councillor, who's making the Christmas charity offer on eBay. Bidding started at £150, and so far it's up to, er, £150 since nobody's yet made a bid.

As Marvel Comics fans will remember, Dr. Banner was the Incredible Hulk's real name. Let's hope our chap doesn't turn green and split his shirt open if the sponds aren't forthcoming!

Click here if you want your banner tugged

Update: Bidding has now closed with the grand total of 0, zero, none, nada, no bids.

Towing The Party Line?

Holy joysticks! Footling around on eBay just now, I came across this offer from our favourite Blue Rinser. Yes, the flying doctor/Tory councillor is giving us the once-in-a-lifetime chance to see a banner of our choice tugged around behind his teeny-tiny plane on Christmas Eve!

Bids start at £150, and proceeds go to chariddee. You also get the opportunity to go in the Doctor's cockpit, as long as you weigh less than 185kg (that rules out Santa and most Margatonians then).

With only three days of the auction left, the Doc has yet to be made an offer, but I'm sorely tempted. Seeing him tug TORIES OUT OF THANET or EASTCLIFF RICHARD IS THE BIZ around the Ile would be the Christmas present to end all Christmas presents. Although I'd be a bit ginger about joining him on the flight. You never know, he might develop finger trouble with the ejector button!

Click here if you want your banner tugged

Found In MySpace

Our Greatest Living Thanetian is getting all stressed out, I see, over a Guardian report that there's only one member of MySpace, the popular networking site, in Thanet.

So I took the liberty of doing a bit of research, and, well, I think I may have got to the root of the problem.

Thanet's only MySpace member.