Lovely to see Ramsgate's newly reopened WW2 tunnels doing good business today. Hats off to everyone involved in the project! And over on the west side, the Bucket and Spade run, with its vintage vehicles, is also bringing in the crowds. Hurrah!
Imagine what the place would be like with a proper, joined up seafront that had attractions on the Pleasurama eyesore, a thriving Pavilion and a revamped Motor Museum. Brighton wouldn't get a look-in!
PS: I forgot to big up the folks involved in Ramsgate's Rainbow Steps (Augusta Stairs in old money), which are also a part of the buzz that is bringing the Millionaires' Playground back to life. Trebles all round!!
Hurrah! At last the iniquity of hipsters from the smog paying only a tenner for a trip to Margate, whilst being charged full whack to enjoy the delights of the sunnier south side of the Ile de Thanet, has been ended by Southeastern Trains!
So if any of you groovy Hoxtonites are planning to spend the upcoming bank holiday weekend in the Millionaires' Playground, you'll now have enough change left to buy a decent lunch at one of our fine dining destinations, and still have some left over for a deposit on a house! Plus you can experience the delights of being whizzed down here in just over an hour from St Pancras, in the heart of North Londonshire, on the superduper high speed trains!
Boredstares has also been included in the bank holiday bonanza, but frankly most of the shops there are boarded up these days, so best give that a miss. And quite why us Thanetians still have to pay the best part of a bullseye for the privilege of quick escape out of here is beyond me.
Update: What Southeastern don't tell you, of course, is that you can only buy a day return for a tenner. And the offer is only valid until the 26th of May. Kuh!
You know me, I like a good moan. But the weather's been so clement recently that I've been mainly whipping out my old throbber and thrashing it about a bit!
That said, I have been taking the odd snap on the way, so perhaps there's something to complain about on my camera roll...
Here's the crane taking the strain at that new development down on Ramsgate front. You know, what's it called, Watery Voles I think. Anyhow, they seem to be progressing at a pace. Much faster than that lot at the Pleasurama site ever did!
In fact there's building work going on all over the Millionaires' Playground, with developers finding no end of things to convert into luxury apartments. Hurrah! Of course, to feed the building boom you need the raw materials, which is probably why the mountains of hard core and gravel at the Bretts depot down at the port is growing like topsy...
Off to soggy Sandwich after that, and - Holy Noahs! Just like Russell Crowe, they seem to be building an Ark...
Not surprising after the recent inundations down there. Actually it's a £22m flood defence scheme, which means the Quay car park will be mostly hors de combat until some time in 2015.
Whistable next, and I was glad I'd donned my Rolex Oyster (Whitstable Edition) for the annual Toy Run hog-out...
Then later that day, back in Ramsgate, I happened to be trundling past The Goose (The Sovereign in, er, old money) on Harbour Street, which has been tarted up by the new owners...
Let's hope they've paid particular attention to the nasty khazis in there, otherwise their golden egg may end up cooked!
So, um, not a lot to whinge about really. Oh, apart from my brief flirtation with the eastern tip of the island, where I encountered this monstrosity...
A house covered in some kind of puke-inducing pink cladding! It's the architectural equivalent of a spray tan, and, of course can only be in Broadstairs, which generally requires four inches of bronzer and a pair of gold-plated hair straighteners to look even vaguely presentable. No wonder it's known around these parts as 'Boredstares'! Huh!
Well, it's the end of another news week, fellow millionaires!
And as the whole of Ramsgate waits on tenterhooks to learn the outcome of last night's Duffer cabinet meeting to decide the fate of our Royal Pavilion (will it be Wetherspoons?), it's got me thinking about the devastation that has been visited on our lovely seafront over the past decade or so. One name keeps springing to mind - Latchford!
For it was none other than Colonel Sir Roger Latchford OBE (pictured above in happier days with his former chum John Worrow) who, in his capacity as Regeneration Supremo and Chief Ezekiel Toady under the previous Tory administration, presided over most of the crap decisions that have blighted the Millionaires' Playground, and continue to do so.
Pleasurama, for example. Wasn't it The Colonel who was the chief flag waver for SFP and Tiny Terry's Royal Sands development? And look what a pile of steaming whatsit that turned out to be! I understand the Duffers' legal eagles are even now going through the paperwork with an electron microscope to try and discover why The OBE-ed One insisted there was no 'long stop' date built into the contract. I suspect, though, they won't find the Holy Grail of a get-out clause. The Pavilion's woes also stem back to his time in the driving seat, when his hands were clearly on the steering wheel that was up Ezekiel's backside.
(By the way, where is our Sandy? He must be out of chokey by now. Has anyone spotted him? I'm offering a crisp tenner to the first person who emails me a recent photo of the ex-con!)
Of course, Latchford is now head of the Kent contingent of the Purple (Foreign) People Eater Party. So he can now presumably lord it up in Maidstone, without having to get his hands mucky with all this Ramsgate mullarkey. In fact I'm told that he's ordered his Ramsgate contingent to desist from the previous protocol of regular chinwags with the local great and good. That's democracy folks!
Anyway, the Dom is on ice and I've got some of that nice duqqa dip waiting. Before I go, I'd urge you to sign this petition. No, silly! It's not the one to save the airport. It's the one to save that skatepark in Cliftonville that the Duffers dug up last week! Thus demonstrating that, no matter which side of the island or what colour banner is flying above Cecil Square, the Duffers will always be, er, duffers!
The lovely Emma Irvine (she of the Albion House Hotel) has given me first dibs on a short film she's just made about her non-Wetherspoons vision for the Royal Victoria Pavilion, here in the Ms' P.
It includes interviews with Ramsgate's very own Gaddfather of Ale, plus the owners of Miles Bar, Wyatt & Jones in Broadstairs, Margate Smokehouse, and others who are keen to invest in what could be a centre of excellence for food and drink in Thanet, attracting visitors from East Kent and beyond. All part of the plan to transform our septic isle from the last resort into a destination resort.
Do take a look, then email Chief Duffer Clive Hart or some such and tell them what you want. They're making their minds up, in a Bucks Fizz kind of way, right now. In fact, word has it that Coiffeured Clive is currently in the process of ripping his skirt off, so get in quick!
Personally I think Emma may be onto something. After all, who ever said 'I know, let's go to such-and-such a place, it's got a ginormous Wetherspoons'?!?!!
Meanwhile, er, I'd like to welcome Emma Irvine and her My Seaside Luxury apartments firm as the latest sponsors of these jottings. No conflict of interest for me there, then.
Update: Following the success of this video, which has now gone viral with more than a dozen hits worldwide, it's been suggested that we commission an operatic number for the upcoming FFS Ramsgate Music Festival, being organised by the Friends of Ramsgate Seafront.
If any of you budding lyricists out there feel like making up some words to the tune of 'Barcelona' by Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Cabbale (which neatly fits with 'Pleasurama'), please do.
Appropriately enough, I am currently making arrangements for the Montserrat Cabbale part to be played by a morbidly obese, heavily tattooed woman in a tracksuit who looks like she can bang six inch nails in with her forehead. In the original song, that part is in Spanish, so it would only be appropriate for the new version to be in fluent Fannit.
Yikes! I see Surrey-based developer Jason Hough has re-submitted his plans to build 346,907 flats with three parking spaces on the Granville Eyesore, here on Ramsgate's trendy East Cliff!
Actually there's not much more I can say about this that our local Bibliobloke hasn't already said on his excellent thanetonline blog. Click here for that.
Jason and the architects, Clague of Canterbury, are still proposing a hideous, 80s-style monstrosity, much taller than any previous structure that was on the site, along the lines of the one that was wholeheartedly rejected last year. The only difference appears to be that he has counted 100 parking spaces in the area, thus justifying the mingey parking allocation on his site. All I can say is that he must have counted them on a wet Wednesday in December, not in the blazing heat of a sunny Saturday in August, with a scout concert going on at the Granville Theatre.
If Kent Highways, who were one of the main objectors last time, fall for that, then they must be dafter than we all give them credit for.
The other sticking point last time was Jason's refusal to contribute a sum of some £50K to the community chest, to cover the extra strain on local services and infrastructure (schools, hospitals, roads, etc) which such a huge development would inevitably place. Poor Jason said it would mean his development wasn't financially viable. To which the correct response is: 'So you want to subsidise your development with public money, eh?'
Whilst all the focus is rightly on the Pleasurama Eyesore down on the front, the Granville Eyesore eyesore pre-dates Pleasurama by some 15 years. That's right. More than 30 years an eyesore. Much of the hoarding around the site is now dilapidated, and the entire area looks a mess.
So I'm not agin development as such. But please Jason, come up with some plans that everyone can get behind!!
Update: The deadline for comments on this proposal is 14 March 2014, not 4 March (which is what the silly council duffers put on their letter to local residents). You can email them at planning.services@thanet.gov.uk
Thankfully we're not suffering from wind as much as those poor pasty-munching buggers down in Cornwall are at the moment. But as this picture of the hoarding around the Granville Eyesore here in the Millionaires' Playground shows, one or two things have nonetheless blown off. I'm glad it wasn't my Lamborghini Veneno parked there at the time!
It's the second occasion in a month that the fan's hit the shit, as it were. Property developer Jason Hough, who owns the site, really should have read January's notice on the excellent FixMyStreet website a bit more carefully. If he had, he'd have seen that one more hefty puff was about to bring the rest of his hoardy house down.
Still, by this afternoon Kent Highways had bulldozed it from their road and crammed it back into his hole, so that's not bad going.
Speaking of eyesores, the Pleasurama Eyesore rightly gets all the coverage when it comes to the Cannes of Kent, but the Granville's just as 'orrible in my humble proverbial, as is this in Bellevue Road, which is rapidly becoming the local flytippers' landfill of choice...
Not to mention the old cop shop on Cavendish Street.
I dunno. At this rate it might be worth resurrecting the old Eyesore Tours from 2008!
Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed a recent trend towards blasting on the past when it comes to the future of the Millionaires' Playground?
For example, the excellent Ramsgate Music Hall has recently opened. Its Victorian branding and moniker resonate more of unicycling Basset Hounds and plate spinning contortionists than the groovy sounds that are actually emanating from the place.
Then there's Albion House, rapidly being transformed into a boutique hotel which will very much draw from the heritage of the place. I hear rumour that there'll even be a King and Country Bar!
And now we have the imminent arrival of The Empire Room, a splendid looking restaurant addition to The Royal Harbour Hotel, over on the west side of town. Click on the pic above to visit their website.
I dunno. I guess with all the magnificent Victorian architecture around Ramsgate, and perhaps with a little sprinkling of the WW1 Centenary this year, nostalgia is rapidly getting back to what it used to be! Which is why, once the previous bodgers have been swept away from the Pleasurama Eyesore next month, I'll be putting in my bid to build a Barnum and Bailey style freak show on the site. After all, there's certainly no shortage of exhibits in these parts - bearded ladies, man-monkeys, cigar-smoking five year olds, skeleton women, elephant women, women who bang six inch nails into wood with their foreheads.... the possibilities are endless. Who knows, with my plan for a tattooed chav enclosure, I might even get public funding!
Reports that a new ferry service between Ramsgate and Ostend will begin in the New Year have been described as 'all piss and wind' by the highly respected Army Rumour Service (ARRSE).
According to a post on the ARRSE website, several firms have been set up with a view to restarting the link to Belgium, including Yasmin Ferries, Regina Line and Sun Link. All the firms have been backed by an individual that ARRSE names as Ernst Munk, who boasted on his Facebook page as recently as 19 December that he would be starting a Ramsgate-Ostend service soon.
ARRSE concludes: 'If any of you are sent anything by a company called Yasmin Ferries at an
address in Lydney, Gloucestershire, or someone calling himself Ernst
Munk, burn it before it burns you.'
Rumours of a new service have also been circulating in Belgium. One ferry spotter in Ostend told The Daily Thanet over the weekend: 'The Larkspur ferry was sold again yesterday for €870,000, buyer unknown. The
other laid-up ferry was sold for €750,000 to Oilchart, which has
now chartered her for a new Ostend-Ramsgate line. Sunlink Ferries intend to start on 1 January 2014 with the Ardenia (ex TEF's Gardenia) and intends to put a second ferry on the line (a pure roro
ferry). The third ferry would be a mixed passenger ferry and they intend
to carry foot passengers.'
However, the Belgian source concludes: 'The strange thing is that neither (the port of) Ramsgate nor Ostend know anything about it.
The news comes in the week that Thanet Council argued it had been right to squander £3.4m of taxpayers' money in the now infamous Ferrygate deal, which saw the council secretly subsidising the route's former operators TransEuropa Ferries, who went bankrupt in April.
Meanwhile the Met Office has warned the south coast to expect substantial amounts of piss and wind over the next 24 hours, with 80mph gussets expected in the English Channel.
I'm pleased to report that my Twankey is going down well in Bournemouth! Hurrah! However, it does mean that I've become slightly semi-detached from the Thanet scene. Boo!
Nonetheless, I'm still getting a torrent of emails from my spies around the septic isle, and this one especially caught my eye. It's a proposal to re-open the Granville bars on the trendy East Cliff in the Millionaires' Playground. Apparently Punch Taverns are looking to sub-lease the space, and an application for a premises licence will be made shortly. According to the blurb above, the bars retain 'a very rare... Putin fire place'. Just the thing to go with one's iced Litvinenko Vodka, methinks.
So in the not-too-distant future there could be a boutique hotel, a theatre and cinema, and a couple of bars (if you include the San Clu), all within a hop and skip from the old cliff top mansion.
Sitting here in the luxurious splendour of my five star suite at the Bournemouth Travelodge, I can't help feeling sorry for anyone on the Ile de Thanet affected by last night's storm surge. Mind you, speaking personally, the old cliff top mansion stands at least 100 feet above any such watery nonsense, and Natasha, my housekeeper, reports it's as dry as a bone this morning.
TBH, quite why anyone would want to purchase a property at sea level these days, what with climate change and the world's oceans rising at the rate of a metre a year, gawd knows!
And it is with that tenuous link in mind that I congratulate the lovely Emma Irvine and her husband Ben on finally getting the keys to Albion House, high and dry on the trendy East Cliff in the Millionaires' Playground, off the council. They plan to spend a heap of dosh on refurbishing it, and opening it as a boutique hotel next year.
They recently held an open day, with guided tours of the pile. There's a video of that below.
And congrats, too, to that nice Dr Who lady, who's also finally got the council's thumbs up for her Project Motorhouse in the old Ramsgate Motor Museum! There's another video below the video below showing her plans for how that will pan out. So, it's all go Ramsgate!!!!!!!
Anyway, moustache as I need to devote a coupla minutes to polishing my Twankey ahead of this afternoon's matinee. Toodle-oo!
But after five years of neglect and dereliction, there now appears to be competition for the honour of owning the lease on the Royal Victoria Pavilion, one of the tryptic of tragic eyesores on Ramsgate's dilapidated front (the other two being Pleasurama and the old Motor Museum. Oh, and our deserted port! Er, that's four.)
I was the first to suggest, back in 2008, that Wetherspoons should take it over (click here to read the story), when Rank scarpered to their current shed out at Westwood Cross. And now it seems my plan is coming to fruitation, with The Duffers extending the lease to 100 years to accommodate J D and his crew.
But wait! Coming up the rear is the lovely Emma Doherty-Irvine, the owner of several successful seaside rental properties here in the Millionaires' Playground, which attract thousands of visitors to the town every year. Her plan is to use the Pav more as a community space with food stalls and a market, along the lines of London's thriving Borough Market.
Emma is a highly motivated, young, Irish architect who is currently in the early stages of turning Albion House, here on the East Cliff, into a boutique hotel. She seems to have the knowledge, drive, and, most importantly, access to the financial backing to make things happen (it'll take millions to tart the place up). She fronted the film for Ramsgate's bid to win a portion of the Portas Town Team money last year, take a look...
So which horse to back? The decision will be crucial for the future of Ramsgate. Lord knows, we don't want to end up with another Royal Sands on our hands! Look what happened there, with TDC backing Tiny Terry's lame Swiss horse as if it was the only nag in town!
I'm not knocking Wetherspoons, they seem to have a tremendous track record when it comes to tarting up old buildings, they have the sponds, and Frank Thorley could certainly do with some competition. But they only want two-thirds of the building, and as far as I know there's no mention of using the rest for community space. And what if they do a runner in ten years time, like Rank?
Then there's the question of whether we need more 'community space'? Surely that's what that nice Dr Who lady is proposing for the old Motor Museum up on the grimy West Cliff? Kuh! I dunno!
Anyway, make your own mind up. You can watch Emma's very thoughtful presentation by clicking here, and take a gawp at her Facebook page here. Then vote in my 7 day poll on the right!
Or more appropriately 'gawd gimme strength', as the rubber-lipped one also no doubt intoned at some point.
According to reader Ben, this damage was done to one of the recently restored shelters here on the East Cliff yesterday afternoon. The vandals were apparently four nippers, aged around nine or ten, who were, er, getting satisfaction out of heaving stones at the shelter.
The rozzers were called and some names have been taken, let's hope they don't have any sympathy for the little devils. (That's enough Rolling Stones tracks - Ed.)
I had been meaning praise the restoration of these Victorian edifices (14 in all along our lovely front), which the Ramsgate Society supervised having won a £500K grant from the Townscape Heritage Initiative. My picture below shows their previous, parlous state, back in ye olden days (2007), after they'd spent a number of years being neglected by that other gang of mindless vandals, Thanet Council.
There'll be a rustling of brarn envelopes down at our lovely port tomorrow, as the sealed bids are opened in the race to become Thanet Council's appointed consultant with the unenviable task of finding a RoRo operator to replace TransEuropa Ferries.
The, er, 'lucky' winner will have until June next year to entice an operator to the port, and will get a percentage of whatever income that attracts. Presumably the lowest percentage (or the envelope stuffed with the most fifty pound notes) wins.
The council's tender document, a copy of which I have in my hot little hands, states:
The Council has a desire to attract a ferry service(s) back to the Port of Ramsgate, as having an
active ferry service assists in regenerating the locality, delivering jobs and retains skills within
Thanet. The Port of Ramsgate knows that it can deliver the relevant services to a ferry provider as it has successfully facilitated operational support for previous operations. The Council’s aim is to have one or more ferry companies operating out of the Port of Ramsgate
to regain public confidence in the both the Council and the Port of Ramsgate. It raises morale
within residents of Ramsgate and brings support businesses to the area.
'Successfully facilitated operational support for previous operations', eh? Well you can't argue with that, can you? I'd say that stuffing £3.4m worth of our council tax into a dead duck was a right little morale booster for Ramsgate residents, wouldn't you?
Long term readers will recall that the last time we were on the verge of getting a new ferry operator was in 2009, when I made the above video commemorating the imminent arrival of Euroferries' new vessel Bonanza Express. Needless to say, it never did arrive. Neither has their latest ghost ship, despite it being trumpeted all over their website.
On the plus side, warm and heartfelt congratulations are due to me for clocking up half a million page views since July 2008 (and more than three quarters of a million since I started this blog in January 2006, according to Site Meter). Three cheers for me!!!!!
I see the planning application for the massive development behind the Granville on Ramsgate's East Cliff is due to go before TDC's Planning Committee this Wednesday.
To put this in perspective, if this development goes ahead it will be about a third of the size of the proposed Pleasurama development on the front. As a local resident who will be enormously affected by this proposal to build 38 flats with only 19 parking spaces, I feel that the council should really have given me more notice than a second class letter, posted last Monday, to arrange to speak before the Committee by today. I have already objected to this development on the grounds of the materials used, the height, and the woeful lack of parking space. I understand that the plans have been altered since they were first submitted in January, and the number of parking spaces reduced even further! Neither the developer's architect - Clague of Canterbury, who I emailed months ago - nor the council, have updated me on any of these issues, despite being able to hold 'public meetings' with the current residents of Granville House and Granville Court.
I agree that the site, which has been derelict for 30 years, needs something done, but if it isn't done in close consultation with the people who live around it, the chances are that we will have yet another Pleasurama debacle on our hands. Yet again, it seems that local democracy and accountability is singularly lacking in Thanet.
Hmmm. Well, Samantha, that certainly is a poke in the, er, eyesore for Thanet Council!
Update: The application was rejected by the planning committee. A victory for common sense, methinks!
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!
Yikes! According to a report from the Office for National Statistics on seaside towns, Ramsgate has overtaken Margate as one of the top deprived areas of the country. Thus proving that, in Thanet at least, it's grimmer down south.
The, er, Millionaires' Playground is now ranked as having the fifth highest level of poverty and social breakdown in the country, after Skegness, Blackpool, Clacton and Hastings. Margate came 7th.
So, undeniable evidence there, if it was needed, that TDC's policy of pouring all the sponds into Margate and Cliftonville, and neglecting the sunny south side, has done its job as far as they're concerned.
Now would be a good time, then, to let the moths out of your wallets and spare a fiver or two for the deprived yoof of Ramsgate, who are organising a fantastic day of parkour, urban art and poetry at our lovely Eastcliff bandstand this coming Sunday. They're trying to raise £1500 for the event, and there's only a few days left to do it.
Excitement is mounting in Boredstares, I'm told, where Victorian bathing costumes are about to make way for the thrills and spills of hemp smocks and bladders on sticks.
Yes, the Dickensians are eagerly anticipating their annual Folk Week (or Drunk Week as it's become known locally), which kicks off today. Around 150,000 men and women with beards are expected to descend on the UK's second best seaside town, turning the camp site at Upton School into a mini version of Glastonbury, with the waft of illicit drugs such as Old Nutty Shag and Nadger's Dorchester Wobbly permeating the air.
Meanwhile, here in the Millionaires' Playground, we're anticipating something much more salubrious. Ramsgate Week, organised by our very own Shirley Temple Yacht Club, will see the cream of the yachting fraternity hoity-toiting on land and sea for six days as of tomorrow. Billed as 'the friendly alternative to Cowes', the regatta is expected to attract matelots from Belgium, Holland and France, as well as the UK.
With one or two financial transactions still being in the, er, pipeline I shan't be participating in the sailing. But I'll definitely be rooting out my CockSox swimmers for the Hunks in Trunks competition!
Eastcliff Richard makes no apology for running this exact same article every year since 2006. After all, nothing's changed, has it?
Avast behind! Participants prepare to get their bottoms scraped at Ramsgate Week!
Hurrah! At last someone has made a clean sweep of our super-duper bandstand here on the swanky East Cliff! Thanks to reader Samantha for the pic.
I must say, it's been looking in need of a back, sack and crack for some time. Ever since it was tarted up in 2006 (click here to read my story) it's been sorely neglected by Thanet Duffer Council. Like so many of their projects, it appears to be a case of neglect it for forty years, spend a bit of dosh on it, then neglect it for another forty years. Hey-ho.
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