Ramsgate Off The Rails?

Cripes! I see there's yet more froth in the local rags this week about a putative 'Manston Parkway' station, and the upgrade of HS1 for the whisking of Londoners thereto.

Quite why Manston needs a 'Parkway', when there's already a perfectly good station just up the road at Ramsgate, lord alone knows. But supporters like Thanet North MP Sir Roger Wind guff on about it deliriously, as if it's the perfect panacea for our lacklustre landing strip.

A bunch of developers are now trumpeting it as 'the key to cutting journey times to and from London - making it (their development) more attractive to investors'. Cogent Land, who are proposing 800 homes on a 112 acre site east of the airport that they've dubbed 'Manston Green', say locating the station within their development would provide an 'important transport link to Westwood Cross, Manston Business Park and Discovery Park'.

This all might be a bit of a surprise to Ruddy-Faced Man and his cohorts at Kent County Council, who have proselytised a Cliffsend location for the 'Parkway'. A recent FOI request brought forth this curt response from the mandarins at Maidstone:

'Kent County Council (KCC) has not had contact with Cogent Land LLP regarding Thanet Parkway Station. The current stage of the development plan for the station is that the business case is being refreshed for the site that KCC originally identified for the station to the west of Cliffs End, while a watching brief is being kept over the Manston Green proposals.

In the event that a new station demonstrates a robust business case then KCC will follow the correct planning procedures in pursuing a planning application. To date, KCC Planning Applications Group has not been involved in this matter.'

Mind you, that's from the people who built you a whole load of traffic calming measures in Cliffsend, then unbuilt them a year later. So I suppose anything is possible.

Meanwhile a reader emails to say that the high speed trains are being discounted to 'all sorts of locations, including Margate and Broadstairs, but not Ramsgate'. She continues: 'Ramsgate has beautiful sandy beaches, a gorgeous Smeaton harbour, fabulous Georgian architecture and is 1hr 15mins from London. It knocks the socks off Whitstable and Deal in terms of beauty. How could anyone screw this up? Well 'they' have. And they continue to do so. We are now 3 places ahead of Margate on the deprivation index. How long before we are top? We need to fight.'

Looks like KCC and the Moonshine Band are already preparing us for the closure of Ramsgate Station, if you ask me!

Finally, talking of letting the train take the strain, reader Mike has emailed me a photo of what must certainly be the winning answer to putting off all those pesky trick-or-treaters on Halloween.

KCC's Box Of Bollocks

Yet more proof, if it were needed, that the Ruddy-Faced Man at Kent County Council doesn't give a proverbial about poor old Ramsgate.

If you recall, last month the Office for National Statistics came out with a report demonstrating that Ramsgate was now officially more deprived than Margate, thus proving what I've suspected for years, namely that all the public dosh is being spent on chi-chifying the Arsonists' Playground, to the detriment of us here on the sunny south side.

One of my lovely readers was so incensed that he wrote to KCC boss Paul Carter (aka Ruddy-Faced Man), demanding an explanation. Here's R-FM's response:

Dear ---------------,

Thank you for your email, regarding levels of deprivation in Ramsgate and Margate.

I read the report that you refer to from the Office of (It's 'for' - Ed.) National Statistics with interest. The report is an analysis of the 2010 Index of Multiple Deprivation, therefore, the data on which it is based is now several years old. Nevertheless, I am very much aware of the levels of disadvantage that persist in Ramsgate and in many of our other coastal towns and tackling this is a crucial priority.

So what are we doing about it?

Firstly, we are working hard to attract new jobs and new investment into Thanet. We have secured £35 million in interest-free loan support to businesses looking to grow and expand in East Kent – with over £17 million already allocated and starting to create jobs.

Secondly, we are improving the transport network to make Thanet better connected. We have invested over £180 million in the East Kent Access road network, providing a better link to Ramsgate and Discovery Park. This year, we secured an additional £5 million to improve line speeds between Ashford and Ramsgate to cut journey times – with work starting next year.

Thirdly, we’re investing in local communities, with our No Use Empty programme already restoring over 2,000 empty properties to use. Many of which will be in Margate and Thanet.

Of course, we need to do more, and continued emphasis on coastal regeneration is vital in Ramsgate, Margate and the rest of Thanet.  But there is great potential in East Kent, despite its challenges and we are unlocking real growth opportunities – and new suggestions are always welcome.

I hope you find this response helpful.

Yours sincerely,

Paul Carter
Leader of Kent County Council

To paraphrase the late, great Sir Winnie: Never in the public sector have so many mealy-mouthed platitudes meant so little. It's as if R-FM has just taken the Thanet section out of his ruddy big red book and sprinkled a few Ramsgates in there for seasoning.

Meanwhile, KCC have today said they're applying to build a ruddy big new hotel on a Thanet seafront! Hurrah! At long last, something is being done about that hideous Pleasurama eyesore! Er, no, wait a minute, it's going to be on the old Rendezvous site round the back of the Turnip in - you guessed it - Margate!

UKIP's Trembly Finger On The Button

If you're sending a rude email about someone to a colleague, who would be the last person you'd want to copy in? Yes, that's right, the person who you are being rude about.

So North Thanet Constituency Labour Party Chairman Malcolm Bailey was not a little surprised when he opened his inbox this morning to see an email from Herne Bay Ukipper Brian MacDowall to his colleague Nicholas Bond, describing him as a 'socialist agitator'.

Malcolm had been trying to raise awareness of the potential closure of a children's centre in Herne Bay, and had been in correspondence with the UKIP Kent County Councillors over the matter. After one or two 'fobbing-off ' emails, he was then copied in on this:

Nick,

at the meeting yesterday roger drew my attention to this guy.

he is a socialist agitator who has, it seems, little else to do but constantly stir up trouble by getting into protracted correspondence with whoever he wants to annoy

Zena W says she wont deal with him

believe he lives in Thanet not sure; you can either ignore him or draw his attention to your previous reply and say unless you are one of my constituents( don't think he supplied an address) I cannot help you.

Brian

'Roger' there being Sir Roger Latchford OBE, Boer War hero, former Conservative deputy leader of Thanet Duffer Council, supporter of disgraced and jailed TDC leader Sandy Ezekiel, and now ship-jumping Lord Admiral of the newly-elected UKIP opposition at KCC.

In addition to using language that almost certainly hasn't been in vogue since the Spanish Civil War ('socialist agitator'), it seems Brian MacDowall can't even get the name of one of his UKIP councillor colleagues right (it's Zita Wiltshire, Brian, not Zena).

Still, as most of Thanet voted for this shower of See You Next Tuesdays, I can only opine that you get what you pay for!

Five Years To Spend A Penny

Nope, nothing to do with the closure of public conveniences. But, I suppose, you could characterise it as an extreme case of civic constipation.

This sorry saga relates to the inability of Kent County Council to make a minor alteration to a confusing road sign that has been responsible for causing thousands of pounds worth of damage over the last few years. I'll let reader Samantha take up the tale...

I see Kent Highways have finally altered a sign on Victoria Promenade in Ramsgate that I have been complaining about for five years now, with responses ranging from indolence and indifference, to the downright insulting. At one point I was told changing the sign was unfeasible as they would have to commission an entirely new sign at a cost of thousands of pounds! 

But miraculously, here's how the sign looked when I popped out to the shops today:

And here's how it looked during the previous five years I was complaining about it:

To the untutored eye, there's not a lot of change. But the addition of approximately a penny's worth of gaffer tape to the bottom of the arrow directing traffic to London, Canterbury, Dover etc means that lorries and coaches from out of town will no longer be turning up D'Este Road, the narrow back street which the sign is on the corner of, and that my car and those of my neighbours will no longer be subjected to regular damage when they get stuck at the T junction with Truro Road, like this:

I would say 'thank you' to KCC, but after five years of faffing around to find six inches of tape, I'm inclined not to.

Neither would I be, Samantha! Kuh!

Whatever Floats Your Vote

Yippee! It's voting day!! Although an early straw poll of the usual pissed up and superannuated knob-knuckles dragging themselves along the street outside the old cliff top mansion resulted in a variety of reactions to my simple question: 'Morning! Election?', ranging from blank stares to the downright pugilistic.

Of course, as this is a vote for Kent County Council, and as KCC is currently bluer than my old showbiz chum Roy 'Chubby' Brown, the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Much of the county appears to be in the grips of a perpetual, true blue voodoo session in the desperate hope of bringing The Witch back from her grave to save/ruin the nation again.

Consequently Ruddy-Faced Man can comfortably look forward to another 1000 years of lording it over his Kentish reich from his Maidstone bunker, methinks. As you may be able to tell, I don't like Tories.

The real question is, how should I vote if I want to make any kind of difference here in Ramsgate?

UKIP? Well, on the Ile de Thanet at least, they seem to consist of disaffected Tories who are so right wing they think Thatcher was a commie plant. Or just outright, former Nazis. Strange how so many flabby, old decrepit men living with young, pneumatic, Thai brides can still object to foreigners swamping their country without a hint of irony, isn't it?

Greens? No, I already have a Toyota Priapus, thanks.

Yellows? Nope. Can't forgive them for becoming Bum-Faced Cameron's new bum chums.

Independents? Nobody can have failed to notice Ian 'Pile' (take that whichever way you like) Driver. He's been accused of being a motormouth and a 'career politician'. Er, hello! That's what most politicians are, ne c'est pas? I'd rather have someone representing me who was vocal and local, and spent his entire time gobbing off about Pleasurama, live exports, our derelict seafront, pooey beaches, and council corruption than the usual, mealy-mouthed, bent and pissed 'yes' men we have around here. And I admire his big, hairy, northern balls in publishing 'confidential' council documents that we all have a right to see. It's our money they're pissing away, after all. In fact, he reminds me a little bit of me (except I'm in no way northern, I hasten to add).

Two minor problems though. He isn't local. He lives in Boredstares, which is barely forgivable. And he has some cockamamie plan to declare UDI from Kent and Europe. But then that will never happen.

Then there's the lovely Liz Green, our local Labour lass. Not only does she actually live in the heart of Ramsgate, she also fights tirelessly (albeit quietly) on the town's behalf. She's helped me out of Duffer-induced pickles on many occasions. Oh, and have I mentioned she's lovely, too?

So I guess those latter two will get my vote when I stroll down to the jolly old polling station later. But who knows? As ever, I might always change my mind as I walk in!

Stupid Kent

Just to prove how wide-ranging the readership of this blog is, here's a Stupid Kent contribution all the way from Mr/Mrs/Ms Malaprop in Folkestone!

Stupid Kent

Stupid Kent

Stupid Kent

It's all gone terribly quiet, hasn't it? I suppose the combination of a short week along with a general election on Thursday has conspired to shut everyone up!

So while we're waiting for Friday's result, after which the inevitable recriminations will hopefully start, I thought we could amuse ourselves by spoofing Kent County Council's new £400,000 Saatchi campaign to draw visitors to our beloved county.

Click on the pic to read all about it. Then either email me your ideas (with a relevant photo if possible) at richardeastcliff@yahoo.co.uk, or put them in the comments section below. Here's my starter for ten!

RoRo Your Boats

Reader Scott writes:

ECR - I was taking the dog for a walk on the West Cliff this morning and spotted both the TEF Larkspur and the new LD/TEF Ostend Spirit in port. I thought you might like this snap I took with my mobile phone. Keep up the good work. Scott.

Thanks Scott. As you can see, the Ostend Spirit in the background dwarfs the Larkspur. But both are put in the shade by our beloved council's Great Wheelie Bin Pile, which you can just see the tip of in the foreground.

Hopefully the port and the town will be busy over the forthcoming Easter break, although if the state of the Thanet Way is anything to go by most motorists will probably give up around Whitstable. Why it required resurfacing, lord knows. Perhaps some public sector accountant's spreadsheet needed balancing before the financial year end.

Anyway, it's yet another planning triumph for Kent Highways, the people who have so far blocked off Boredstares shopping streets for a total of one whole year since 2005!

It's It's A Pothole Blitz!

I see that ruddy-faced man from Kent County Council has announced a 'pothole repair blitz'. Tory leader Paul Carter declared 'an army of road maintenance crews' will be mobilised to tackle the county's crumbling roads.

Two points here. The first is that whenever Paul Carter talks about 'Kent', he is invariably referring to an area within a ten mile radius of Maidstone. I don't know about you, but it's barely possible to drive more than a few yards in Thanet without the jalopy jiggling around like an old nana's knockers at a Graham Norton taping.

Secondly, I rather thought the word 'blitz' referred to what the Germans did to Blighty in WWII. There are still gaping great holes on the island where the Teutons carried out urban regeneration by carpet bombing. Exactly the opposite of a repair job, in fact. 70 years on and they still haven't been, er, filled in. Still, that's Cllr Carter for you. Always putting his foot in his pothole!

Click here to read about KCC's 'pothole blitz' on BBC News website

KCC Turns Off Kent TV

Kent County Council have hit the off button on their controversial internet TV service Kent TV.

Kent TV launched in 2007 for an initial investment of £1.4m and had annual running costs of £600,000. KCC's ruddy-faced Tory leader Paul Carter said the channel was no longer a priority in 'different and difficult economic times', adding 'Kent TV has proved itself to be a brave and bold innovation and we have learned a great deal from it. It has provided a source of practical, useful information for residents'.

The channel was run for KCC by Sir Bob Geldof's company Ten Alps, who will no doubt be, er, sad to be pushed away from their previously solid grasp on the public tit. Still, look on the bright side. The experience they've gained running this sorry soap at our £2m+ expense has no doubt done them no harm in their bid to run ITV's north east regional news, or their recent award of a two year contract to run a, um, internet TV channel for the North East Development Agency!

Click here to read about Kent TV on BBC News website
Click here to read about Ten Alps and the north east

Winter Draws On

Brrrr! With temperatures forecast to plummet below minus 30 here in the tip of Kent through the weekend and beyond, I'm glad I installed that new Sinegorsk heating system here at the old cliff top mansion. And I'll be keeping an eye on my elderly neighbour Doris during the cold snap. Although she recently took delivery of half a dozen polar bear vests from Iceland, so she should be OK.

If a bankrupt country can provide warm clothes for Britain's oldies, let's hope Kent Council can spare a few coppers and show some grit this time after their woeful neglect of the Thanet Way in the last icy spell. Or did KCC lose its shirt, sweater, thermal Reg Grundies and 50m quid of our taxpayers' lolly in, er, Iceland?

Click here for Iceland story on AP

Update: Noon on Sunday 1 Feb and it's snowing here in Ramsgate!

Grit Truth

Crumbs! I see the row over whether the duffers at Kent Highways did or did not grit the A299 Thanet Way on Wednesday morning rumbles on. If you recall, there were eight separate crashes involving more than 10 different vehicles, including an ambulance, on the coldest morning of the year so far. Sadly one driver lost his life. Eyewitnesses reported skidding, and the cops sealed the road off saying they weren't going to open it until KFC got out there with the salty stuff. Meanwhile the M2, which comes under the auspices of the national Highways Agency, saw no such problems.

Now Gazunder reader Lee has commented on the paper's website:

While I agree drivers need to drive carefully in bad conditions (I was involved in one of the accidents, and I thought I was driving safely!), I feel that Kent County Council must take some blame. Keith Ferrin of KCC has contradicted Phil Scrivener (Kent Highways spokesman) and admitted that the Thanet Way was not actually gritted in the early hours of Wednesday morning. One policeman I spoke to was astonished that many roads were not gritted especially as emergency vehicles were also involved in collisions due to ice on the road.

Yet so far no calls from any politician near or far for an investigation into what went wrong. Just the sound of salt blowing in the wind!

Click here to read full story on Gazunder website

Braking News

According to Kent Online, there were no fewer than eight separate accidents on the Thanet Way this morning, one of which tragically resulted in a fatality. The cops have told people in the area 'not to even try getting onto the Thanet Way'.

Rather tellingly the report adds that Kent's finest ordered Kent Highways to grit the dual carriageway following the accidents, although that didn't happen until 9.40am. So was the road gritted last night, the coldest night of the year so far (and widely predicted as such)? I think we should be told.

Meanwhile KCC have announced the average council tax bill this year will be above four figures. The Tory council's ruddy-faced leader claims front line services (like gritting, perhaps?) will be protected, but makes no mention of savings that could be made, such as the £2m spent on Kent TV, the £6m on pointless spin, and £50m poured into dodgy Icelandic banks!

Click here to read Thanet Way story on Kent Online
Click here to read council tax story on Kent Online

Update: According to the Gazunder's website, Kent County Council's district highway spokesman Phil Scrivener said: 'The road would have been salted.' Presumably what Phil means there is that the road would have been salted, if Kent Highways had salted it.

100 Holes In Lancaster Gardens, Birchingtonshire

Holy holes! Here's one for Kent Highways! Following an alert from the excellent FixMyStreet website, where ordinary, council tax paying mugs like you and me can report problems to our local and county councils, I see a Mr Gavin Coles has just grumbled about well over 100 'repaired' pot holes in Lancaster Gardens on the seedy north side of the island. Mr Holes continues:

The council is constantly coming back to refill these 'repairs'. It is about time that they did the decent thing by skimming and resurfacing the entire street. Either that or they should learn how to properly repair a pothole.

Too right Mr Moles! They've probably used enough tarmac to fill the Albert Hall by now!

Click here to look into Birchington's holes on FixMyStreet

No Mumms Going To Iceland

Cripes! I see Iceland's going tits up! Not the frozen food store formerly known as Bejam, but the country near the North Pole! Fortunately none of the Eastcliff millions are invested there, otherwise I'd be straight round my old showbiz chum Bjork's, getting her to empty the krona out of her piggy bank.

What is worrying, however, is that Kent County Council has placed 50 million of your hard-earned council tax sponds in banks over there, according to the BBC News website. Nice one geysers! (Geddit?!!!?!)

Councillor Puts Us In The Picture

Following yesterday's kerfuffle over a Kent County Councillor who purloined my pic without permission, I've received the following email from the gent concerned:

Richard - I arrived in my office this morning to a flurry of emails pointing out that the photo on my 'KCC in the Community' blog posting was the image from your blogsite.

Please accept my profuse apologies - the image has clearly been lifted from your site. In my rush to put up a posting, I asked my office to find me a 'Margate' image - perhaps I didn’t make it clear enough that this should have been a KCC image!

I have immediately taken the image off the posting, and replaced it with a KCC image showing the architect's impression of the new Turner Centre. Nowhere near as attractive as your image admittedly, but it will have to do until I can get down to Margate and take my own pictures.

Apologies once again. As a more practical gesture, I have added your blog address to my blogroll on my Wordpress site - http://kevinlynes.wordpress.com/.

Regards,

Kevin Lynes
KCC County Councillor for Tunbridge Wells East
Cabinet Member for Kent Adult Social Services

Apologies accepted, Kevin! As a general rule, I have no real objection to people purloining my piccies (unlike some other silly bloggers) as long as they give me a nod when they do. Our local caff-crushing car-crushing councillor Dave Green has had the courtesy to do that in the past, as has local rag yourfannitinnit. What's more telling about Kevin's email, though, is the fact that his office were charged with finding a nice snap of Margate, and instantly came up with mine. I mean, I'm flattered that they're fans, but really, haven't KCC got any of their own?!

Councillor Caught Up In Copyright Claim

by Isle of Thanet Gazunder Crime Reporter Dud Fivers

Kent County Councillor and cabinet member Kevin Lynes has been accused of copyright theft by one of the isle's most popular bloggers. Celebrity millionaire Richard Eastcliff, who runs Thanet's Eastcliff Richard website, was shocked to see one of his photos appear without permission or a credit on the Conservative councillor's blog recently.

'I clicked on a link from Tony Flaig's Bignews Margate site to Kevin Lynes' blog and there was my photo of Droit House, which I took on 12 May this year. I was devastated as I'd put a lot of time and effort into twiddling my f-stop to capture the right mood for that particular shot. The photo on his site even has the same file name as mine - 'droit+house'. You'd think a KCC cabinet member would know better than to blag other people's copyrighted material off the internet.'

Mr Lyne, who represents Pembury, Sherwood and St James in West Kent, had been on a KCC cabinet fact-finding tour to Margate earlier this week, their first visit to the East Kent resort since 1926, and used the photo to illustrate his article. A furious Mr Eastcliff added: 'You'd think the Tories would be all in favour of law and order. Couldn't the cheapskate have bought a camera and taken his own photos?'

Mr Eastcliff, 29, said he would now be consulting with his media lawyers.

Can you spot the difference?

Eastcliff Richard blog 12 May

Councillor Lynes' blog 15 July

Update: Cllr Lynes has now apologised for his, er, error. Click here to read his email.

Open And Shut, Then Open And Shut, Then Open And Shut Again Case

Well blow me! Just when you thought the twelve years of roadworks in Margate's Old Town were finally done and dusted, they go and dig it all up again! I'm told they put the finishing touches on the streets round there at midnight last Friday, but were back today because (I kid you not) some twonk forgot to install the speed humps. Talk about an army of duffers. Do Kent Highways give out awards for incompetence or what?!?!

Whatever the latest completion date is it'll be too late for the businesses that have gone bust waiting for the place to get back to normal. They were originally promised it would be all over by Easter. A bit like WW1 being over by Christmas, I suppose. Still, at least Sandy and Co's cafe-cultured mates will be happy with the lovely new, outdoor seating areas created by the super-duper extended pavements!