Toilet Protesters Stage Sit-In

Here I am in Jersey about to go into a taxing but blissfully tax-free meeting with the backers of A Snip at £900 for the Harley Street Vasectomy Clinic. Yet thanks to the power of the internet I can assume almost godlike powers of omniscience! Which is why I know that, right about now, pissed off locals are taking matters into their own hands and staging a protest at the open/closed/open/closed loos down on the east end of our lovely Blue Flag beach there in the Ms' P.

A quick scan of the tourist map of Jersey kindly provided by the 12 star Radisson I'm staying in reveals no fewer than 32 public khazis located on this sunny Channel Island, which is roughly the same size geographically as Thanet, but with about two thirds of the population. On the other hand, our beloved council can only manage to keep around 20 conveniences open across our septic isle. Giving Jerseyans, by my calculation, a lavvie for every 2,700 citizens, and us Thanetians one inconvenient convenience for every 6,500.

So, good luck to the protesters! It's about time people stood up, or sat down (depending on their gender and requirement) for their right to splash out whenever they want to!

Flushed With Success!

Hurrah! I see the duffers at Thanet Council have reopened the facilities at our beautiful Blue Flag beach here in the Millionaires' Playground! Now we can once more splash out when we need to spend a penny without having to tramp all the way to the bog/smoothie shack by our derelict Royal Pavilion.

I hear our new teeny-tiny council laid some heavy shit on the Cecil Square mob for, er, taking the piss when they closed the khazis at the start of the summer season. Now they're open for business, until the end of summer anyway. At least two traders told me they had lost customers due to the inconvenient conveniences, so three cheers for Ramsgate Town Council!

It's not the only place where TDC have done a U-bend U-turn. Recently they reinstated the loos at the Albion Street car park in Boredstares. Perhaps they've woken up at last to the fact that, if they want tourists to pay a visit, there has to be somewhere where they can pay a visit!

Public Inconveniences

As promised a while ago, here's my map of where the council have taken the piss out of Thanet in the recent past. From south to north, we have:

1. Ramsgate Western Undercliff
2. Ramsgate West Cliff Hall
3. Ramsgate Queen Street (now a sandwich shop)
4. Ramsgate East Cliff (sands)
5. Ramsgate East Cliff (demolished)
6. Ramsgate Marina Road
7. Ramsgate Boundary Road (on asset sale list)
8. St Lawrence
9. Ramsgate Margate Road
10. Broadstairs Vere Road car park (rumoured to be closing)
11. Broadstairs Albion Street car park
12. Broadstairs Harbour Street ('under repair')
13. St Peter's railway bridge (demolished)
14. St Peter's centre (now a house)

It seems the Cecil Square duffers, true to their Margatecentric form, have concentrated the closures on the south and east of the island. If you have a favourite former khazi that I've left off the list, do let me know and I'll add it. Let's keep our legs crossed that they don't shut any more!

Click here for council's list of public dunnies that are still 'open'

Ramsgate's Bog Event

I'm referring, of course, to yet another public khazi closed due to cutbacks by our incompetent council. This now-inconvenient convenience stands at the eastern end of the, er, leisure facility known as the Never-Ending Pleasurama Eyesore, just before you get to the Car Park Of Fun. Further along, you can marvel at the Demolished Grade II Listed Marina Restaurant, and then proceed to the EU-Funded Dogging Facility That Used To Be A Magnificent Swimming Pool. I'll add this one to the definitive done-for dunnie list I'm compiling, which I'll publish next week.

Meanwhile it's heartwarming to know that an estimated £100,000 of your hard-earned sovs have been spent this weekend staging an exhibition of joystick jockeys flying round in circles over at Palm Bay. Margate's Big Event has had the presumably unintended consequence of dragging most of the people who would have been spending dosh on the island's towns and beaches to a windswept, roped off area of clifftop grassland. Where they will instead spend their money with burger vendors from Neasden and hot cock roll sellers from Sevenoaks.

Of course, I much prefer the thrill of seeing a Lancaster circling our island, or the sight of a Typhoon at full throttle, to the usual knackered old crates that blight the place. And presumably some cash will have been generated through landing fees at Chas 'n' Dave Margate International Airport, unless they used Sarfend. Which fees will naturally return to the local economy... of Wellington, New Zealand!