The Fat Lady Sings On The Pleasurama Eyesore

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.

Well, whaddya waiting for?!!?!

Inn-comprehensible Plans

The Pleasurama drama rumbles on, with another public meeting slated for this Thursday. So I thought I'd step back a decade or so and look at the original plans that were submitted to our lovely council, when Whitbread were alleged to be involved in the scheme.

Actually, it's not the drawing of the building that I'm interested in. As you can see, local estate agent and, er, pillar of the community Terry Painter submitted the plans, and next to his logo is the slogan 'enjoy!Whitbread'. That's a rebranding that Whitbread went through in September 2001, when they stopped brewing beer and became more interested in brewing lattes, running restaurants and owning hotels.

Trouble is, no-one at Whitbread seems to have known they were involved in the scheme, as this email from the time suggests:

According to LinkedIn, Jamie Cowen is a real person, and has subsequently moved on to become Head of Mixed Use Development at Sainsbury's Property Investments.

So on what basis did Thanet Council consider these so-called plans from 'Whitbread'? Was any due diligence performed? Did they bother to ask Whitbread if they were actually involved? Or was it all accepted on the basis of Tiny Terry's say-so and a photocopied logo? I, for one, would find that nothing short of inn-credible!

Meanwhile here's how the Pleasurama (aka Royal Sands, aka Titanic) development looks today, more than ten years on:

History Lesson

With the news that Thanet Duffer Central has offered the 'developers' of the Pleasurama Eyesore aka Royal Sands aka Titanic Towers more time to cough up the sponds to avoid further 'scrutiny' (ooh, they must be really scared!), I thought I'd take a trip down memory lane and see if history can teach us a lesson here.

So settle down, and please do pay attention at the back. Poole - stop playing with McGonigal's calculator. Yes, it does spell 'boobs' if you hold it upside down, put it down. Thank you.

Now, it all starts back in 1986 with Thanet Council leasing the site to the late Jimmy Godden. Yes Poole, you're right, that is nearly 30 years ago. Well done.

Jimmy didn't much like running amusement parks, but he did like burning them down, collecting on the insurance, then applying for planning permission to build luxury seafront apartments. In 1994, Jimmy and his chums at Thanet Council cooked up a scheme to redevelop Pleasurama which would retain the listed building at the heart of the site. It was agreed that a mixed retail and leisure development would be completed by 31st December 2000, and the council would be paid £500,000.

Then in 1998, before work on the development could start, what happened? No McGonigal, the council didn't receive lots of money and live happily ever after. Bayford? Hart? Any clues? No? I'll tell you then. The site burnt down, and despite the fact that the council could have insisted the insurance money was spent on the new development, they allowed Jimmy to trouser the lot. He then trundled off in his Rolls-Royce to burn some other seafront heritage sites down, leaving Pleasurama to rot.

The council's Chief Executive at the time argued that no further dealings should be had with Mr Godden, and what happened to him? Yes, McGonigal, you're right! He received lots of money, retired early and lived happily ever after!

By 2001, Ramsgate's residents were so unhappy with what was happening to their lovely seafront, and the incompetence of their council, that they called in the District Auditor. Does anyone know what the District Auditor does? No Bayford, he doesn't check bus passes. He's a scary man with a big stick who goes around asking lots of very awkward questions. In 2002 he produced his report, here it is. It concludes that the biggest single impact of what had transpired was 'the lost opportunity to-date of developing a key area of the district for the overall benefit of local residents', and that 'a considerable amount of (council) staff resources were expended on this scheme (615 hours) for very little tangible output'.

What's more, he chastised (it means 'told off', Hart) the council for lacking project management skills, carrying out negotiations with the developer in secret, failure to approach alternative developers, failure to get a proper valuation for the site, failure by council employees to provide proper reports to councillors, and failure to take proper minutes of meetings and keep proper records of costs incurred.

Now, Poole, Hart, Bayford, McGonigal - what do we learn from this? Poole? What's that, you say? Keep secretly negotiating for ten years with one 'developer' you know nothing about, and offer to change the pathetically sketchy agreement you have with them to suit the requirements of their 'bankers'? Stupid boy! Go and stand in the corner!

Great Wall Of Ramsgate - First Pic Of First Pic

Reader Jimmy writes:

Hi ECR. Thought you'd like a photo of the first artwork on Gerry O'Donnell's Great Wall of Ramsgate [Pleasurama Royal Sands Eyesore Hoarding in old money - Ed].

There seemed to be a lot of interest this afternoon following the press launch. Only another 1,000 feet to go!

Jimmy

Hmmm. Not yet the 'Bayeux Tapestry' we were promised, but it's early days. For the life of me I can't understand why GO'D hasn't contacted me to take up my excellent suggestions!

What's The Crack?

Forget 2012! This piece of work from our beloved council looks as if it'll barely make it to 2010!

I hope our local, crusading biblio-bloke Michael Child doesn't mind me purloining the photo he took this morning of the, er, 'newly renovated' cliff face behind the Ramsgate Royal Sands (Pleasurama in old money) development.

After more than three years of 'temporary' Heras fencing, our crumbling East Cliff was tarted up only last year in readiness for the imminent construction of the long awaited, ribbed-rubber-roofed condominium, the plans of which famously show people's heads embedded in concrete, and no escape routes should the planets align (in accordance with some ancient Mayan myth), causing sea levels to rise 29,000 feet. Work on building the condom itself has just been delayed yet again until 2011, putting the Pleasurama eyesore in its 13th glorious year.

I mean, this new cliff face has only been up there a matter of 18 months, and it's already cracked to buggery! The flippin' Mayans (to continue the theme) managed to bung up stuff that's still there 2,000 years later! As council taxpayers, we forked out around a million sovs for this. Not to mention the millions the Thanet Reich has let the developer drop his bond by. If you ask me, it's the Cecil Square duffers who have dropped their Bonds and allowed themselves to be shafted right up the crack by whoever carried out this bloody atrocious cliff facelift!

And speaking of pants, yes I did hobble out to Westwood Vue to take in the new Roland Emmerich blockbuster 2012 last night, as you may have already guessed. In fact it was beyond pants, more like utter gusset. But then I thought the same of his other end of the world movies, Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow when I first saw them at the flicks. And d'you know what? Having now watched them both something like 23 times on ITV4, I'm almost coming around to liking them!

Click here for more cliff complaints and photos on Michael's blog

Pleasurama Drama

Word reaches me that our beloved duffers held a meeting down at the Royal Sands development ('Pleasurama' in old money) yesterday without inviting members of Ramsgate's new, super-duper, teeny-tiny council. No doubt they will quote 'confidentiality' for failing to inform the town's democratically elected representatives, just like they have with next Wednesday's freemason-style meeting to sign off the airport's Daft Bastardplan.

Who said we live in a democracy?

The Writing's On The Window For Council

Tooling around the grubby back streets here in the Millionaires' Playground last night, on my way to an assignation with one of our lovely local authors, I spotted this notice in the window of a derelict shop:

Further along, I happened to glance over the cliff at the Pleasurama aka Royal Sands development:

Pants definitely pulled down, but not much rogering going on!

Royal Sandcastles In The Sky

Time to move on and put those Tesco bags in the cupboard, methinks. I'm sure you've all had an elegant sufficiency of ChinaGatewayGate.

Now as you know I'm not usually one for the red tops, but I couldn't help noticing that the front page of yesterday's Thanet Times splashed the news that people had been camping overnight to get a slice of Tiny Terry's Royal Sands development. You know, down here on Ramsgate front where Pleasurama burnt down. Well, I can imagine the DFLs haven't heard about the knackered old jumbos that will be circling over their penthouses, but apparently even Thanetians have been piling in. No doubt the lack of heavy training flights over the weekend won't have done Terry's open day any harm.

And speaking of knackered old jumbos, regular contributor Steve tells me he's had a call from those nice people at British Airways after his, er, inquiry following one of their 737s going round 40 times the other weekend. Apparently we can expect to hear more from them, as they've stopped training in France due to a plan to cut down their carbon footprint (= can't afford the fuel). Hey ho. Do Harrods stock earplugs?

I Love The Smell Of Jet Fuel In The Morning

This sign has recently appeared on the site of Ramsgate's Royal Sands development (Pleasurama in old money). Amongst other things it promises potential buyers 'the opportunity to wake up in the morning to the sounds of waves lapping on the beach and the smell of the freshest sea air'.

Hmm. More like 'the opportunity to be woken up in the middle of the night by the roar of knackered old jumbos and the smell of nitrous oxide and aviation fuel', methinks! And as for 'waves lapping on the beach' it could be more like 'waves lapping through the ground floor of your apartment block' if the Environment Agency is to be believed!

Speaking of knackered old jumbos, I see there was a veritable flight of the phoenix this afternoon as our old friends MK Airlines made an unwelcome return to the Millionaires' Playground. If you recall, MK, famous for their Canada and Nigeria crashes, went tits up last month only to be refinanced by a mystery investor so that they could return and blight our lovely Victorian seaside town all over again. Who knows, if car-sized chunks can fly off even Qantas's lovely, modern 747s, perhaps the occupiers of Royal Sands might one day have the opportunity to gaze out to sea from their own private balcony on a scene not dissimilar to this:

Royal Sands Of Time Running Out?

Last month I brought you the news that tiny Terence Painter, the Ile's dapper, diminutive developer and estate agent, had closed his office opposite the Royal Harbour. TP, if you recall, is the lead agent for selling the seven, 12 star hotels and 9 million luxury apartments at the planned Pleasurama Development (aka Royal Sands aka Titanic aka Elsbels Palace Hotel).

Word has now reached the old Eastcliff lugholes that the bankers for the developer, SFP Ventures (UK) Ltd., have withdrawn their funding for the project, no doubt because their credit has been well and truly crunched. If confirmed, this would be a serious blow to the future of Ramsgate's seafront, which has already suffered a decade of eyesore blight, following the mysterious fire that destroyed Pleasurama in the late 90s. Should the development not be in position to go forward, may I humbly suggest that our friends on Uranus somehow wrest the site back from SFP and flipping well do something useful with it? Heritage theme park, anyone?