Dusting For Prince

You know me, I could never be accused of cynicism. Ahem. But news that the Prince's Regeneration Trust has been commissioned by Dreamland developers Waterbridge to scribble yet another report on future uses for the site seems a tad like Charlie's eponymous forbear being asked to fill out a post execution survey for the Choppers' Union.

There have been so many schemes, plans and inspections regarding what is now effectively a deserted piece of prime sea front real estate with a few bits of Grade II listed charcoal scattered about, that most Thanetians have given up wasting their precious head space on the topic. Our beloved council have come out in favour of a 'mixed development', giving over the majority of the site (well, 51%) to a 'heritage theme park', with the rest consisting of the usual luxury apartments etc. Even the Save Dreamlanders appear to have given up the ghost and gone over to the other side, getting into bed with the developers on the promise of a funfair full of knackered old rides that have been bought up from other seaside towns who've been glad to see the back of them.

The Princes Regeneration Trust is no doubt likely to reiterate the same old nonsense. Meanwhile Her Majesty's Rozzers have yet to come up with anything other than a big, fat zero in their arson investigation. So if any of you harboured any thoughts of PC Plod and Big Ears coming to the rescue - dream on! (PS: I have now removed the O' from my name as this post has no doubt put paid to any chances of me copping something in the New Year's Honours.)

Click here for Dreamland story in yourfannit
Click here for press release from the Prince's Regeneration Trust

Every Minute Helps

As Waitrose had run out of millionaire shortbread, I found myself schlepping out to the Tesco megabarn at Westwood Chaos this afternoon. Except they weren't even open, having evacuated the store due to a fire alarm.

Hundreds of bemused shoppers were hanging around outside wondering why the fire brigade had taken so long to turn up, given they're only based next door. After all, it's not as if the Tesco site's owned by one of our misfortunate, arson-prone local developers, for whom a considerate, half hour delay seems de rigeur these days!

Update: The cops are urging people to ignore an email hoax that is doing the rounds which states that a small girl was snatched from the Manston Tesco. Apparently there's absolutely no truth in it. Click here to read more. Meanwhile credit-crunched shoppers are deserting the Big T for cheaper supermarkets like Aldi and Netto. Oh well, as they say, every Lidl helps!

Doctor, Doctor, Give Me The News!

Reader Julie writes:

I was interested to see the BBC's South East Today programme coming live from Margate's QEQM hospital yesterday, especially as I have a relative who has been there for a few weeks. I was not surprised to see patients saying how marvellous everything was as ill people are often very grateful for whatever treatment they get. However I visit my elderly mother every day and can tell a different story. She has been left in soiled clothing for several hours, and chairs where she has been sitting in soiled garments have subsequently not been cleaned for days. Heart monitor alarms at nursing stations seem to be regularly ignored as the leads come off patients so frequently the staff can no longer be bothered to check whether it is a real emergency. On Thursday they carried out a thorough cleaning inspection but this seems to have been for the benefit of the cameras arriving the following day since my mother had never seen them do it before. I know the place has improved a lot and I am generally a supporter of the NHS but what I have seen has made me fearful for my mother's recovery.

Well, Julie, what you have witnessed is probably a one-off and I'm sure your mother is being well cared for. I personally would not have a word said against the NHS as they have saved my life on numerous occasions. Why, only last year when I was diagnosed with skin cancer (too much fun in the Caribbean sun!), my GP immediately rushed me past a nine month NHS waiting list to a private consultant in Canterbury. By paying out of my own pocket I also relieved them of the substantial burden of having to cough up for a highly-paid specialist! Now that's what I call a health service!

A Bit Of Politics

As regular readers will know, I rarely make any serious political comments here, except to take the proverbial out of our local Jurassic junta on occasion. It's probably because, as the only Lib Dem in the village, there never really appears to be any point. However, with Cllr Moores' 'popular but beseiged' Tory Thanet Life blog comatose, the chances of me being labelled a 'paedophile', 'welfare sponger', 'living gloating metaphor of all that's wrong with society', or a 'left wing c*nt' just for expressing an alternative political view seem to have diminished, so I'll take a chance and pop the old barnet above the parapet.

There is currently a mass debate going on elsewhere in the Thanet blogosphere about who's who in the zoo, which independents did what to who and when, and whether they were wearing brown shoes or Hush Puppies at the time, etc etc. Whilst this is all no doubt very interesting to the, er, mass debaters, it will do nothing to unseat the rabble who currently run our island, who will happily continue lunching with the Big Three (you know who they are) and bowing and scraping to their every whim, secure in the knowledge that it's not the electorate they answer to but their own and others' pockets. Yes, they chuck us the odd Big Event or Water Skiing Week occasionally, but that's bread and circuses to keep the masses happy, while they get on with the much more important business of feathering their not insubstantial nests.

I'm not saying the other mob would be any better. Years of pendulum politics have scarred Thanet and got us to the position we enjoy today - deprivation, underinvestment, and dereliction. Any independents that surface invariably seem to be the Tories, UKIP, or (heaven help us) the BNP in disguise, so we are effectively living in a two party state, where the incumbents feel at liberty to bully, intimidate and threaten voters and petitioners in a way that would make even the vile Mugabe blush.

Over in Hooray Henley yesterday, the Lib Dems ran the Conservatives a not very close second in the by-election precipitated by my old chum BoJo's elevation to the London Mayorage. But at least they gave them more of a run for their money than poor old New Labour, who limped home fifth and lost their deposit. The moral being that, if we really want a change here in Thanet, we have to start thinking seriously about a realistic third way. I'm not suggesting the path necessarily lies in the direction of the Lib Dems. After all, I for one can't even remember who their leader is these days, and I support them! But for the sake of this potentially lovely little island, someone, somewhere has surely got to come up with a serious alternative?

Now click here to call me a 'patronising pratt' and 'left wing c*nt'

Update: My thanks to regular contributor Mr X for sniffing out this clip from BoobTube which demonstrates quite aptly the kind of frustration many Thanet voters must feel!

Rough At The Top

Slated

A while back I reported on the slateless state of the Granville Court roof here on Ramsgate's swinging East Cliff. Well, er, as you can see they've now replaced them. And, um, the privet hedge along Victoria Parade has been trimmed by the council. Oh yes, the life of a millionaire celebrity is endlessly fascinating, you know!

Nayland Cock

This just in from the, er, nudes desk of Peter Checksfield, our man with the towel (and not much else) in Bottomy Bay. Apparently he's been contacted by someone who purports to represent the Nayland Rock Hotel in Margate, demanding the removal of images from his in-the-nud photo site Naked in Thanet that were shot in front of the aforementioned establishment. Peter's correspondent charmingly adds:

Please keep your minging tarts away from my property or I shall chuck seriously cold water over the lot of you – including you as the head perv of the sad band! Get a job!

Peter initially treated the email with the utter contempt it deserves, but has since received a follow-up message in which the, er, clearly liberated writer demands a £10,000 donation to a breast cancer charity for continued use of the photos, and threatens: '24 hours should be long enough, or I shall litigate.'

Really! And there was me thinking these kind of nutty, repressed Victorian values only existed in Westgate these days. Sadly it appears I was wrong. So in the spirit of mediation I shall be dispatching a complete set of piano leg covers over to Margate with my compliments forthwith!

Click here for discussion on Peter Checksfield's blog
Click here for Naked in Thanet

Ferry Sad News

I'm not normally one to plaster death notices all over my blog willy-nilly, but now that it's been officially confirmed you might care to know that Mr Denzil Dias, the founder and owner of TransEuropa Ferries, has, er, rolled on to meet his maker, having rolled off this mortal coil earlier in the month.

Ownership of the line has passed to his two sons, who were thought not to have any interest in things nautical, although I see they're now saying it will be 'business as usual'. Let's hope they don't change their minds again, and that Port Ramsgate's only customer stays afloat!

Click here to read TransEuropa story in Ferry News

Flight Of The Phoenix

Yikes! I'm getting unconfirmed reports that well-known Canada and Nigeria-crashers MK Airlines, who have spent most of the last year blighting our lovely seaside town with their endless, oozalum training flights and 1am cargo cruises into RAF London Kent Ramsgate Manston International Airport, have, like a kind of Frankenstein's monster with aluminium wings, been re-animated!

It was only just over a week ago that they announced they'd gone tits up, but now a British investor has apparently pumped several million (volts?) through them and they've jerked back into life. Of course, we heard that was happening with exclusive, business class airline Silverjet a while back, and they still ended up cashing in their chips. Still, who knows, there could be life in the old corpse yet. As a quick stroll around Westgate often proves!

'Are you seriously telling me that your only experience
is flying around Thanet in a circle every eight minutes?'

'Ja Kapitan, but ze principle is ze same!'

Sandy Beach Deemed Unfit For Purpose

Nope, not another story about dirty nappies strewn across Viking Bay (eeurgh!), but the result of my latest 7 day poll asking whether people would prefer to see the back or front of our glorious council leader. A whopping 63 people cast their votes, here's the final tally:

Question: Is our Sandy fit to be leader of Thanet Council?

No: 87% (55 votes)
Yes: 12% (8 votes)

An overwhelming majority in favour of putting the former pugilist and 'f*cking tosser' utterer out to pasture, then. I expect he'll hand in his resignation first thing Monday morning!

Fairtrade Fair Trade For Water Week?

Yet more evidence, if it were needed, of the low priority placed on the Millionaires' Playground by our Margate based Jurassic junta. My spies tell me both the council chairman and our glorious leader, Sandy Beach, have booked themselves in for a Fairtrade bunfight at the Winter Gardens on the same night they're meant to be attending a gala dinner as the culmination of Ramsgate's Water Skiing Week next month.

I presume the chance to rub shoulders with my old TV chum George Alagiah, who'll be at the Mike and Bernie Winter Gardens in his role as a Fairtrade patron, has got the better of them. Let's hope there's not another of those 'f*cking tosser' episodes that seem to go hand-in-hand with Sandy's presence at the venue. Of course, it might also have something to do with avoiding awkward questions about what happens in Ramsgate next year, since this water skiing mullarkey is a one-off, and the previous, marvellous annual Powerboat Weekend has got the arse and moved on to pastures new.

Meanwhile I see the council's events listing website has unilaterally elevated the BBC's smiley, 6 o'clock newsreader to the knighthood. A vain attempt to make the whole Fairtrade thing seem more important, I presume!

Click here for Fairtrade bunfight listing
Click here for Ramsgate Water Skiing Week listing

Separated At Birth?

Reader Samantha writes:

I wonder if anyone else has spotted a similarity between Soo, the panda girlfriend of popular glove puppet Sooty, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alastair Darling? Are they by any chance related?

'The Bank of England has a critical role in protecting stability'

'Izzy wizzy, let's get busy!'

Update: I see Soo won the Weakest Link - Puppet Special this Saturday, pipping Roland Rat to £11,500 for charity. And only two days after local mosaicist Martin Cheek became a winner on the same programme. Well, not the puppet version, the normal version. Sadly all the Chancellor seems to do these days is go home with nothing.

Hair Today Gone Tomorrow

Cripes! My spies on the seedy north side tell me yet another shop in Margate's Old Town has gone west.

Back in April I predicted that no fewer than six outlets in the area were planning to shut up shop, the tally currently stands at four. Harbour Monkey upped sticks last month, Chantelle and Brown Sugar closed a couple of weeks ago, and now my very own tonseurist, Jamie the Harbour Barber, has apparently called it a day. Maybe if some of the 65,000 visitors to Margate's Big Event at the weekend hadn't been bussed straight past the town whose name it bore, the place might have benefited from a few tourist sovs.

Meanwhile if you want to see how retailers generally have been faring in the Arsonists' Playground, take a squiz at this video I found on BoobTube. Entitled Margate - A Town On Its Knees? it's been put together by the chaps at letssavemargate.com, who clearly don't stand a chance as they've signally omitted to link to the island's premier blog!

Spammer In The Works

One of the drawbacks of being a well known celebrity with a widely publicised email address is the amount of junk that finds its way into my inbox. I mean, I've lost count of the number of times I've been invited to increase my girth. My policy with those is to reply politely in the negative to the effect that, at 36 inches, I'm already stretching it in my opinion.

Recently I've been bombarded with messages from a 'Mark Sure'. Mr 'Sure' has apparently collared the market in 'Silica Oil Regen Lubricant' and rather charitably wants to cut me in on the deal. He helpfully explains that his product is 'an industrial lubricant used for lubrication purposes in the brain box of a ship'. A quick straw poll among the matelots down at our Royal Harbour elicited not much more than a few strange looks!

Bin And Gone

Meandering around Ramsgate's trendy East Cliff the other day, I clocked that the rubbish bin which the Uranians so helpfully placed next to our teeny-tiny kiosk a few months back has recently disappeared. I presume it's been redeployed to Broadstairs to fight the litter louts on the beaches and will now be a repository for bottles, cans and dirty nappies (eeurgh!).

Not that its services aren't required in keeping this particular part of Thanet beautiful. Perhaps Ramsgate Firster Gerry O'Donnell, who runs the kiosk, has annoyed the powers-that-be once too often with his stinging letters to the local papers, and this is their rubbish revenge!

Cowardy Cowardy Custody

I've received another email from reader Barry, who you will remember recently dished the dirt here on the island's premier blog on some of the, er, unusual practices prevalent among the local plods. Barry says that, whilst he stands by everything he said, his email has subsequently become something of an embarrassment to him, particularly now that he finds himself in a position to help the police (with their enquiries). As a result he has asked me to remove yesterday's insights from my jottings. Happy to oblige Barry!

What's Left To Conserve?

Cripes! Talk about closing the gate after the horse has bolted! I see Thanet Council has just announced an extension of the Ramsgate Conservation Area to include Granville Marina. As you can see from my photo, the Grade II listed Marina Restaurant, which is part of the newly designated area, was well and truly, er, 'conserved' by a bunch of shonky developers back in February.

Although some of the other properties along there still stand in their original Victorian finery, the majority were vandalised long ago with the substitution of 60s frontages, while the rest of the area consists of weed-infested, derelict eyesores with only Heras fencing to show where once-splendid buildings stood. From the looks of the place, the horse bolted more than 50 years ago and has long since gone to the knacker's yard!

Click here for Thanet Council press release

Dad Loss

It's Father's Day today in case you'd forgotten. I dad. I mean did. So stuck for a present, and lunch looming with Eastcliff Senior, I've been desperate to find a suitable gift. Fortunately, as I was cleaning out Bertie's litter tray just now, I came across this Friday's edition of the Gazunder. 'WIN A FATHER'S DAY BREAK AT AN INNKEEPER'S HOTEL' screamed the banner across the front page. Hurrah! 'See page 25'.

Dad's the word at Innkeeper's Lodge. To thank dads for their patience, pocket money and love over the years, sons and daughters will be looking for that perfect gift to treat them.

You're not wrong there. Please sort me out and quick!

Men will no doubt disagree, however, that they are notoriously difficult to buy for. So, if you are bored with buying ties and cufflinks and are stuck for present ideas, why not let us help you?

Yes, yes! Please help me!

If you want your dad to put his feet up and forget the pressures and strains of the week, then this is the competition for you.

It's definitely for me!! Only trouble is, it's not exactly an instant win. There's an answer form for you to send off in the post, with winners announced a week tomorrow. So what to tell the old Pa? Something along the lines of 'I've entered a free competition for a weekend break for you, if I win you can go there next Father's Day' I suppose. On second thoughts maybe it'll be simpler just to gift wrap the form and let him fill it in himself.

'Obeless Situation

Kuh! Snubbed by Her Madge yet again! I mean, Paul O'Grady, Des O'Connor? Anyhoo, as you can see from the banner at the top of my blog, I've now made the necessary adjustments to ensure I'm not overlooked in the new year.

As consolation I'll be taking myself off to Margate's Big-ish Event. Formerly known as the Kent Air Show until the organisers decided to give their own aerial display by pointing their nipples skywards and blasting off into the wide blue yonder last year, the marvellous derring-do of those magnificent men in their flying machines has since been replaced by a knackered old Sopwith Camel and a couple of bouncy castles. Still, at least it's free, and I should get to cop my annual butcher's at the completely and utterly splendid Battle of Britain Memorial Flight!

Click here for full details of M's BE

A Right Pair Of Knits

Here's something you won't have read in today's Gazunder. (So what's new? - Ed.) Barely a month after being rapped by the Standards Board for his famous Fannit f*cking tosser/wanker outburst at a black tie do, the Blue Rinsers' glorious council leader has been caught tussling again - this time in front of startled shoppers at the Edinburgh Woollen Mill outlet on Margate High Street.

Apparently the former pugilist wasn't there to buy a kilt yesterday morning, but to object to a 1500-signature petition against his proposed redeployment of the community wardens to fight the litter louts on the beaches, instead of bagging shoplifters (which they're rather good at, I hear). The petition was jointly sponsored by Margate Labour councillor Iris Johnston and the Edinburgh Woollen Mill store manager. At Sandy's side was none other than Deputy Dawg, Rodge OBE. One shopper who witnessed the entire incident has emailed me with the following account:

Bystanders, including the store manager, were aghast at the behaviour of Cllrs Sandy and Rodge as they berated Cllr Iris. The 'boys' turned up unannounced and uninvited to throw their weight around and quite frankly made very big fools of themselves. It's safe to say they weren't the least bit interested in purchasing tartan trews, bonnets or kilts from said retailer!

Iris just about remained composed throughout but this was clearly a shocking turn of events for her. Roger tried to snatch the petition from Iris at one point and lunged forward to get it from her as she swept up the sheets of paper. Sandy then carried on berating Iris saying she was wrong to suggest that wardens were being made redundant or taken away from the High Street altogether.

To put it charitably, this was very ungentlemanly behaviour from both of them and they deserve to be exposed.

Our Sandy seems to have a thing about petitions. Only last week he complained that those fighting the flogging of their own assets by his junta of Jurassic Tories were making 'mischief and they should know better'. How different from the lovely new image the national Conservatives cultivate! There's Cuddly Dave, pedalling to parliament, and the other Dave, resigning over liberty, justice and freedom. Down here in the tip of Kent one gets the impression that it would still be possible to stumble across a Maggiesaurus roaming the fields of brassicas!

Update: A full account of the incident has now appeared on Thanet Extra. Click here to read it. And another eyewitness account on the island's second most premierest blog after me, Thanet Strife. Click here to read that.