Sweet!

Toddling around Ramsgate this afternoon, I was chuffed to see that these long-abandoned premises at the end of Harbour Street have been almost instantaneously transformed into a Mr Simms Olde Sweet Shoppe, just like the one they have in The Smoke (Margate)!!

Mr Simms is exactly the kind of emporium we need here in the Millionaires' Playground, what with its 500-penny chews and £14.65 bars of chocolate. That should topple the towers of Haribo and other chewy crap from the counters of the local Costcutters!

Down on the Croisette, things were buzzing. Amusement arcades and ice cream parlours were packed, even the Maritime Museum was open. And everywhere tourists were being dive bombed by flying poodles, keen to snatch the cornets out of their hands. If I hadn't pinched m'self, I'd have thought I was in a thriving seaside town!!

Time Flies When You're Plastered

Lorks! Has it really been over a week since I contributed to this drivel? Hmmm. I really shouldn't have downed that third bottle of Sambuca with Cilla last weekend.

Meanwhile all the news that's fit to print has, er, been printed in today's Isle of Thanet Gazunder. The air show at RAF London Kent Manston Margate Tracey Emin Maggie Thatcher Schipol International Airport was a shambles apparently, with vehicles backed up all the way to the M62. I'm indebted to one of my readers for sending me this pic of the catering van exploding due to the sheer number of four stone Shergar burgers being fried to feed the hordes of hungry Thanetians that attended.

Meanwhile Ferrygate rumbles on. One of my spies reports: 'I had the pleasure of talking to a council officer today. I mentioned TransEuropa Ferries and he said that all the staff had been instructed not to discuss this issue with the public.' Makes sense, I suppose. If I'd dropped a £3.4m bollock, I wouldn't want people talking about it either.

And finally, some good news here in the Millionaires' Playground, where our waterworks seem to have been rejuvenated! Not only is our lovely, Niagara-style Madeira Walk waterfall working again for the first time in living memory, but so is the Festival of Britain fountain up by the Granville Theatre and Cinem! There's even a rumour that the Winterstoke fountain might be in the process of being restored! Hurrah!!

PS: If you want a glimpse of what the inside of Pfizer's canteen looks like, I'd heartily recommend a trip to the flicks to catch World War Z, starring our very own Brad Pitt (who, as we all know, was born in Cliftonville, as was the lovely Tom Hanks). If, however, you're hoping to see zombies rampaging through the streets of Thanet, as reported in today's Gazunder, you'll be sadly disappointed since most of the film was shot in Glasgow and Malta, with just the 'exciting' denouement featuring the Pfizer site. That said, I'm sure if you take a walk down Boredstares high street on a Saturday night, you'll get a feel for what might have been.

Ten Things You Didn't Know About TransEuropa

Only in your super, soaraway Gazunder! We profile the defunct ferry firm that cost Thanet's taxpayers a whopping £3.4m!!!!

1. The 'Trans' in TransEuropa is short for 'transvestite', as the company was founded in 1948 by Lichtenstein-based cross-dresser Maurie 'Mary' Mosenberg.

2. TransEuropa's first regular shipping assignment was ferrying proboscis monkeys from Zeebrugge to Harwich for Billy Smart's Circus.

3. In 1967 the company developed a nuclear powered hovercraft, although this project was dropped after failing to get certification from the UK Atomic Energy Authority.

4. In its heyday, TransEuropa's ferries used the entire oil output of Nigeria every year.

5. During each crossing between Ramsgate and Ostend, hungry truck drivers used to consume on average 4,953 burgers, and a staggering 6,832 sausages!

6. More loo roll was used on the company's ships each year than during the entire 2012 London Olympics.

7. The oddest cargo ever carried was a refrigerated container of wigs for BBC celebrities.

8. Every ferry in the TransEuropa fleet had a secret compartment for the owner's Bentley.

9. On one of TransEuropa's ferries, nicknamed The Golden Behind, there was a toilet made out of 18 carat gold in the captain's cabin.

10. Laid end-to-end, 3.4m pound coins would stretch all the way from Ramsgate to Margate, a distance of nearly five miles!

That's enough ferry facts - Ed.

Separated At Birth?

Reader Samantha writes:

Has anyone else noticed the striking similarity between Thanet Council's website banner, advertising their consultation on the latest Local Plan, and the popular board game Monopoly? Have Messrs Hasbro, the owners of Monopoly, been told?

Board game

Bored game

Ha! Well, Samantha, I'm sure The Duffers have paid something in the region of £3.4m out of our community chest for the rights to rip that off! If not, they'll probably end up going to jail, and that'll be the end of all the free parking round here!! (Geddit??!!??!?!?!!!!!!!????!?!?)

And while we're on the subject of lookalikes, another reader has emailed me to ask me whether anyone has noticed the similarity between Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government who has just given Tesco permission to build a 19,000,000 square foot supermarket on Margate seafront, and the Sontarans, the stocky, warlike aliens from Doctor Who? Hmmm, let's see...

 Sontaran

Pickles

Ferrygate - The Cover-Up Continues

Regular contributor Steve has sent me a copy of this reply to his Freedom of Information request for more details about the £3.4m TransEuropa scandal. It's from Thanet Council's Director of Operations Mark Seed.

Not that there's anything you could consider 'information' in it!

Thank you for your communication received on 20th May 2013 in which you requested information about the council's dealings with Transeuropa Ferries.

The information you request relates to meetings and other communications with Transeuropa since March 2011and this information would be directly relevant  to legal action taken by the council to recover the outstanding debt. Premature release of information relevant to a potential legal action could be significantly prejudicial to a legal case taken by the council.

It is almost certain that this information would be released into the public domain and lead directly to the prejudice to any potential case.

The council is owed over £3 million and any prejudice to legal action it may take would be significantly prejudicial to its commercial interests. The application of a public interest test in relation to this under Section 43 of the Freedom of Information Act relating to commercial interests has been applied to this situation and it is considered that the balance of public interest lies on the side of not releasing the information you have requested as the wider public interest lies in retaining the confidentiality of this information at this stage. This will remain the case until the issue with regard to the legal action to recover the Transeuropa debt is resolved.

However, I would wish to clarify a misunderstanding in your request as this seems to be based on an assumption that sums were being paid to Transeuropa, which was not the case. The council is owed money by the company and this sum remains payable. Given the position of the company the council is going to have to seek this sum from any assets owned by the company through legal action.

Ferrygate - One In The Eye For Thanet Council

I see my old chum Lord Gnome of the popular satirical magazine Private Eye has seen fit to publish my latest jottings about the ongoing £3.4m Ferrygate scandal today! In case you're too mean or stupid to trot along to the newsagents and buy a copy, here's what I wrote:

LOST AT SEA

Taxpayers are furious with Thanet council after discovering that it secretly sank millions into a failing ferry company - money that is now swimming with the fishes.

Thanet owns and runs the port of Ramsgate, home till recently of a tatty shipping line called TransEuropa Ferries. In spring 2011, TransEuropa, which employed Slovenian staff and carried mostly Eastern European lorries on ageing, Cypriot-registered ships between Ramsgate and Ostend, went to the council and confessed that it was skint, blaming the rise in fuel prices. TransEuropa had a proposition. If the council would let it off paying its bills it wouldn't go bust, saving the jobs of ten port staff - and only costing the taxpayer £120,000 a month! Thanet's chief exec Sue McGonigal agreed on condition the deal remained secret.

Last month the waters finally closed over TransEuropa. It emerged that under the clandestine deal Thanet had sunk £3.4m into the failing firm - almost a fifth of the council’s annual budget. Only McGonigal, a few senior council officers and the council leader appear to have been in on the secret. No specific mention was made in Thanet’s 2011/12 accounts, nor was provision made for potential losses. No mention of it was made at any public meeting of the council. Moreover, this enormous public subsidy to a foreign shipping company wasn’t even secured: all the Council had was a vague promise of jam tomorrow. The truth only emerged when TransEuropa’s other creditors forced the company into bankruptcy.

Now deprived Thanet is having to introduce deep cuts to make up for the shortfall, including slashing £1m from the housing budget. An application to TransEuropa’s Belgian administrator in the hope of retrieving some money is unlikely to amount to much, as the firm’s last two rustbuckets - its only assets - ended up in Ostend, and both are so old and knackered that they’re probably only worth their scrap value.

Despite calls for her resignation, the £114,000 chief exec has refused to go. The fact that the secret subsidy was instigated with a nod from Tory council leader Bob Bayford, and subsequently endorsed by Labour's Clive Hart when his party took control late in 2011, has worked to McGonigal's advantage, with both parties forced to argue that propping up TransEuropa was the only ‘sensible’ thing to do.

All this comes just weeks after Thanet’s former Tory leader, Eye favourite Sandy ‘Shagpile’ Ezekiel, was jailed for 18 months at Maidstone Crown Court for misconduct in a public office, following dodgy property deals. What a place!

And while we're on the subject of Private Eye, I see the latest edition of Thanet Watch, the self-styled 'Private Eye of Thanet', has published a transcript of my recent UKIP film (starring A. Hitler) without so much as a credit! Which is why I've just toddled around all the local newsagents replacing as many copies of Thanet Watch as I can find with the real Private Eye.

The weirdest thing, though, is that they've redacted all my spicy lingo apart from the phrase 'bell end'.

Dornier Of An Old Era

 

Holy wordplay! I really must sack my headline writers!

Anyoldhoo, I'm indebted to regular reader Phil for this snap of that German bomber which just been salvaged from the Goodwin Sands and brought in to our lovely port here at the Millionaires' Playground!

Not exactly a minter, but it's only had the one owner (A. Hitler) and will make a good project for someone. To be honest, I suspect it's in better condition than some of those knackered old cargo jets flying over my roof into RAF London Kent Manston Margate Tracey Emin Maggie Thatcher Schipol International Airport!!!!

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!

Ferrygate Fixed!

Cripes! I see that green machine Councillor Ian 'Pile' Driver has fixed it for me to have my ferry fiasco fixed!

A bit of background. I popped a complaint on the excellent FixMyStreet website yesterday, moaning about the £3.4m of council tax the Duffers have poured down the TransEuropa plughole. I wasn't really expecting a response, as the site is more concerned with barkers' nests, abandoned jalopies and street lights that are on the fritz.

But only 24 hours later, the Right Honourable Member for Northwood Ward has marked it as 'job done'! Hurrah! If only everything in life was that simple!

Ferrygate - Sweeping It Under The Carpet

Fittingly for a local authority that was until comparatively recently led by a bent carpet salesman, Thanet's councillors have now successfully swept the scandal of TDC's £3.3m secret subsidy to a foreign ferry firm under the very carpets that the aforementioned bent carpet salesman no doubt sold them in the first place.

Both the Oversight and Scrutiny Panel on Tuesday night, and an extraordinary council meeting yesterday, effectively voted to approve Chief Executive and Chief Financial Officer Sue McGonigal's clandestine, multi-million pound cover-up, a commercial bollock-dropping on such a monumental scale that, if she had been working anywhere else, she would have been immediately escorted out the door with only her Miss Piggy rubber and a few paper clips as compensation.

What isn't surprising is that the right wing bears-of-very-little-brain seem to think this is the best outcome, even though you'd expect the idea of their council tax being used to prop up a bunch of Slovenian matelots to be anathema to them. You'd think they'd be arguing that McGonigal has acted like a small town version of Gordon Brown, pumping good money after bad, gifting £3.3m of public funds in unsecured loans, and causing an extended period of austerity to be brought in by, er, the Labour administration. (I think that's the point at which that particular hypothetical Tory argument breaks down.)

It's slightly more surprising that the left wingers seem compliant with this extraordinary state of affairs, but then I'm maybe crediting them with more brain cells than they actually possess. Only the independents appear to have properly got to grips with this fiasco, and understood its full implications.

What seems utterly ludicrous is that the two main Thanet bloggers who have experience of running businesses themselves seem to think there's nothing wrong with a debtor being allowed to rack up such a huge sum in unpaid bills. 'It's money we would never have had in the first place,' goes the argument. But then, if it was only 'funny money', why is £1m being slashed from the housing budget? Why didn't McGonigal use her business and commercial acumen to pull the plug before it all got so completely out of control? Well, the answer to that last one is that she evidently has none.

I dunno. For an island that's not short of whelk stalls, there seem to be very few people knocking about who would be qualified to run one.

Ask Sister Assumpta - Ferrygate Special

Yes, she's back by popular demand! Our holy mother of all agony aunts, Sister Assumpta, tackles your public funding problems!

Dear Sister Assumpta, I am the Labour Leader of a local authority in Kent which has just lost £3.3m of our council taxpayers' money secretly betting on a bankrupt ferry firm. I am now having to cut public services drastically in order to make up the shortfall. Should I resign? C.

Sister Assumpta writes: Yer a shower o'bastards an' make no mistake! I wouldn't ride yer fer practice! Jaysus, yer never saw a cow shit and didn't long fer a pancake! Now feck off before I feckin' reef yer, yer great toolin' gobshite!

Dear Sister Assumpta, I am the former Tory Leader of a local authority in Kent which has just lost £3.3m of our council taxpayers' money secretly betting on a bankrupt ferry firm. It was my administration which initially approved this risky action, resulting in drastic public service cuts in order to make up the shortfall. Should I resign? B.

Sister Assumpta writes: Yer great hairy gimp! Why don't yer go and blow it out yer arse, yer givin' me the runs! Yer've got a neck like a camel jockey's bum, yer big suckie whacker! Now feck off, or I'll put yer up against the wall an' give yer a puck in the gob!

Dear Sister Assumpta, I am the Chief Executive and Chief Financial Officer of a local authority in Kent which has just lost £3.3m of our council taxpayers' money secretly betting on a bankrupt ferry firm. It was me that recommended this course of action to both the former Tory administration and the more recent Labour administration. I now regret this course of action, and am also deeply ashamed at failing in my duty of public care by continuing to authorise debt write-offs to this exorbitant and ludicrous amount. Things are now so bad that I am having to instigate drastic public service cuts and recoup the money by robbing Peter to pay Paul. I am so embarrassed and upset. Should I resign? S.

Sister Assumpta writes: Feck me, yer've truly gone and put the kibosh on it, moochin' around fer money, yer mentaller! Yer've made such a feckin' bags of it, I'm surprised the taxpayers haven't eaten the head off yer! Sure, yer drawers are the size of Cork an' all! Go stuff a jammy rag up yer hole, yer thick manky gimp!

That's enough Sister Assumpta - Ed.

Ferrygate - Why Did They Pay The Ferry Man?

Today's extensive Ferrygate coverage in the Gazunder sees Thanet Council's Chief Executive, Sue McGonigal, make this ludicrous statement: 'The council takes its role to protect public funds incredibly seriously and will do all it can to recover the money owed.'

Really? Then how come she didn't manage to 'protect' the £3.3m in the first place??!!

In every other business I know of, it's drilled into the employees that they must treat the company's money as if it is their own. Thanet Council is the only outfit I've come across where the money is actually their own (it comes from their taxes as well as ours), but the employees spend it like water!

Anyhoo, one of my regular readers has emailed me this list of very pertinent questions. Comments on the usual postcard please!

The front page of the Isle of Thanet Gazette today quotes the Chief Executive of Thanet Council as saying: 'The council entered into an agreement which would see the recovery of the debt in full by 2014.' Then on Page 6 the paper writes:

'The debt accrued over two years following a secret agreement which allowed the firm to defer port fees.'

Where is this agreement? Why has it even now not been published? Why was it done in secret? What other secret agreements has the incompetent executive of the Council entered into that, like skeletons, are waiting to fall out of the community chest? There needs to be full and immediate public disclosure.

Hasn't the Council's lawyer and Head of Legal Harvey Patterson heard of the expression 'not worth the paper it is written on?' Why did he and the executive who is ultimately responsible for protecting the public's funds, namely the Council's Section 151 Officer Sue McGonigal, bind local tax payers in an agreement with TransEuropa when common sense, let alone due diligence, if they'd undertook any, would have told them the other party was offering no security for the debt already incurred, let alone the debt to come? They knew full well Transeuropa had no assets at all in the UK, and were on notice that Transeuropa were most likely already insolvent! 

Such an agreement was only going to benefit Transeuropa, and be detrimental to Council taxpayers. The 'sub-prime' lending that took place prior to the global financial crash looks cautious by comparison. When will these executives pay the price for squandering public funds?

It is no defense to claim there are other budgets available within the Council to cover these massive losses. The reserves of the council, or money somehow conjured up from the failed budgeting of the council (which is also under their control), are not there for the executives to play secret games of poker with.

Ferrygate - Where Does The Buck Stop?

The sorry saga of how Thanet District Council handed over £3.3m of taxpayers' funds to a failing ferry company continues to rumble on. Let's recap the story so far, and then make some conclusions:

• At some point in early 2011, TransEuropa Ferries started getting into trouble and were having difficulties paying their bills at the Port of Ramsgate (owned by TDC). This could not have come as a surprise, as TEF had been running down their services for years, and despite TDC spending £700,000 dredging the port for a new, larger ferry (the Ostend Spirit), the new service had failed to attract more than a few months' income. The £700,000 spent on dredging, which had been done without adequate financial safeguards in place to recoup the money from TEF, plus around £70K of bad debts owed by TEF, were written off. That's on top of the £3.3m that TDC have 'just' discovered.
• According to TDC, around March 2011, at the same time the council effectively removed the port accountant who had successfully handled the port's financial and commercial affairs for 27 years and had raised concerns about the slowing up in payments by TransEuropa through late 2010 and early 2011, some bright spark at the then Tory-led administration decided that, rather than chasing the invoices, they would allow more debts to stack up in the forlorn hope that TEF would come good.
• TDC's then Head of Regeneration, Brian White (who held the port in his portfolio), is reported as having demonstrated little concern about the mounting problems, and having few solutions as to where to source another major shipping line to replace the cash cow that had previously been TEF.
• Not long after, the aforementioned Brian White was given a golden handshake of around £150,000 (including pension arrangements) and waved on his merry way. Chief Executive Richard Samuel, who also presided over this state of affairs, scarpered too, with £173K in his pocket, leaving the current Chief Exec Sue McGonigal to land the six figure job (and keep her finance officer responsibilities) after a 20 minute interview.
• By the time the new Labour administration came into power at TDC in December 2011, TEF's debts were already standing at a staggering £1.7m. Alarmingly, there seems to be no mention of this sum in TDC's accounts for that year. Nonetheless, the Labour administration were, we assume, informed of the situation, and were complicit in the plan to allow TEF to carry on not paying their bills.
• At the beginning of 2012, The Ramsgate Port and Marina Cabinet Advisory Group, which was set up in late 2010 to advise on the commercial development of the port, decided that neither it nor anybody else at TDC had the competence to advise on the commercial development of the port, and would therefore spend £20K of public money hiring consultants to do it for them. At which point it also decided that all future meetings would be held in secret.
• Last month TEF finally went totally tits up, and this week we learn that the total cost to TDC is £3.3m.
• Not only that, but the Belgians are holding all the debt recovery cards. Where are the ferries? In Ostend.

Now, thinking about this disaster, if TDC were a company, heads would roll, knighthoods would be revoked, and pensions halved. The trouble is, as the Tories set up this silly scheme, and Labour then continued it, they can both conveniently blame each other until the proverbials come home.

But what about the permanent TDC officers, TDC's employees paid for by our council tax, on stupendous stipends of £100K a year or more, who have been overseeing this mess all along? Sue McGonigal has been the Section 151 officer (or Chief Financial Officer in private sector speak), all the way through this ferry farrago. Local government guidelines state: 'The S151 Officer owes a personal duty of care to local taxpayers in managing Council resources on their behalf. In discharging this responsibility the S151 Officer must balance the needs and interests of both current and future taxpayers' and 'the responsibilities of the S151 Officer cannot be delegated'.

Doesn't that mean the buck must truly, and legally, stop with her? Could she not be prosecuted for dereliction of duty? Don't EU rules forbid public subsidies to ferry companies? And doesn't allowing unpaid debts to rack up to £3.3m before imagining that a company might be insolvent show a woeful lack of business awareness, to say the very least? She should do the decent thing and leave without passing go, without collecting a six figure payoff, and never darken our doors again.

In an interview with the Gazunder in June 2011, Ms McGonigal said: 'The flip side of risk is opportunity - and if you are overly risk-averse then you miss out on opportunity.' True. But if you take too many risks, and lose £3.3m of public money, I would suggest that the flip side is you miss out on the opportunity of keeping your job.

Ferrygate - Separated At Birth?

 

Reader Samantha writes:

Has anyone else noticed the striking similarity between the £3m Thanet Council was hoping to get for the freehold of the Pleasurama eyesore in Ramsgate, and the £3.3m it has lost in the Ferrygate debacle? Talk about funny money!

Haha! Well, Samantha, if you are saying that the council's book-cooker woke up on Monday morning this week, saw that the three million sovs would be unforthcoming from the 'developers' of the Pleasurama site, and realised that, as the £3.3m ferry hole it was intended to fill would therefore remain unplugged she had better fess up, you may have a point.

I'll get my accountant Cyril on it straight away!

Ferrygate - Inside The Secret TDC Committee

Hands up who's heard of Thanet Council's 'Ramsgate Port and Marina Cabinet Advisory Group'? I certainly hadn't. But apparently it does exactly what it says on the tin.

The minutes had, until a year ago, been published on TDC's website. Then the powers-that-be decided that what they were discussing was way too confidential for the likes of you and me, the people who actually pay their wages, to be privy to.

Councillors who are or were on the committee, according to those minutes that have been published, include Bayford, Campbell, Gideon, Huxley, Roberts and Watkins, with occasional appearances from D Green and Poole, and TDC officers such as Maritime Operations Manager and Harbour Master Rob Brown, and Corporate and Regulatory Services Manager Harvey Patterson.

Now, what is interesting is that on 26th January 2012, the last meeting where the minutes were published, the committee decided to spend a £20K EU grant that had to be used up by June 2012 on hiring a consultant to see what could be done to attract new business to the port. And here's the clincher. The reason? Because 'no-one within TDC was expert enough in this field'.

So, by their own admission, by the beginning of 2012, when TransEuropa's debts were already piling up, no-one at TDC was competent enough to run a maritime business in such a way that alternative shipping lines could be attracted to take up the slack. Un-flipping-believable!

Of course, we'll never know if a consultant was indeed hired, or if anything was done to attract any alternative, viable business. Because the minutes end with this killer punch: 'AOB: The Ramsgate Port and Marina Cabinet Advisory Group agreed that all future meetings would be private.'

Ferrygate

Following my exclusive revelation last month that TransEuropa Ferries had sunk without trace, we have now been presented with the bill by Thanet Council - a whopping £3.3m!

Yes folks, that's 3,300,000 of your English pounds pissed up the swanny, without so much as a 'by your leave'. That's your council tax, that's my council tax, that's money that should have been going towards funding decent public services in Thanet, not propping up a failing foreign business.

So what did we get for our mulah? The answer to that has to be: 'Chuff-all'. I've seen councillors on other blogs justify their actions by saying TEF was a major business that couldn't be allowed to fail. Really? Are they actually suggesting that it was a worthwhile exercise to clandestinely syphon off our money into a Slovenian firm, owned by a couple of Maltese barristers, for the sake of protecting, what, ten jobs down at the port? That's £330,000 per job!

Someone, somewhere has dropped a massive bollock. Or worse, there's been enough council collusion and corruption going on to make even a crook like Sandy Ezekiel blush. Who ordered this unlawful secret subsidy? Councillors? Council officers? Why aren't they in jail too? Wasn't Brian White, the former Head of Regeneration and Planning, in charge down there at the time? Why did he get a £70,000 pay-off for this, er, sterling work? And why was the port accountant, the only person with the bottle, experience and nouse to flag up this monumental misappropriation of public funds, suddenly sacked in 2011 and told that all the number crunching would, in future, be done at Duffer Central in Cecil Square?

In order to pay for this ferry fiasco, we are now told that, amongst other things, £1m will be taken from something called the 'New Homes Bonus', a government grant aimed at helping local authorities build affordable homes and bring long-term empty properties back into use. So to line a few pockets, people are going to lose out on much-needed accommodation. Kuh!

The whole thing stinks worse than Margate Harbour when the tide's out. I think Eric Pickles should be told!

Meanwhile, in other Ramsgate seafront news, TDC have concluded that something needs to be done about the Pleasurama eyesore, and that they're now not entirely happy with the decade and a half of dereliction they've been promoting down there. Call me a cynic, but releasing this 'good news' straight after their Ferrygate revelations strikes me as a rather obvious attempt at media manipulation.

And to be honest, it ain't all good news either, as it's going to cost us council taxpayers several more millions in legal fees to undo that particular mess. You couldn't make it up, could you?

Wheelie Bins On Fire, Rollin' Down The Road

Apologies to the late, great Bob Dylan (He's not dead - Ed.) for appropriating his lyrics, but there appears to have been a spate of what can only be described as 'arson about' across the island recently.

Not that earner burners and the like are unknown here in Fannit. But having torched all the big stuff (Dreamland, Pleasurama, most of Margate), the local ne'er-do-wells have now turned their attention to the slightly more trivial pursuit of popping the odd Bryant and May into our wheelie bins.

Showing a modicum of talent for the job, they are targeting the recycling bins, being, as they are, full of combustibles such as paper and plastic. Even the local fules know it's hard to set light to cat turds, soiled nappies, and used condoms.

Regular contributor Steve has put an FOI request into the boys in brown at Kent Fire and Rescue, and come up with some startling figures. In the three-and-a-bit years since records began, there have been 74 wheelie bin fires on the Ile de Thanet, that's around two per month. Out of those 74, almost a third (26) have been in Central Harbour ward, down here by our lovely Ramsgate Royal Harbour. Thus confirming my theory that the closer to large amounts of water something gets, the more likely it is to burst into flames.

I guess it's all in the name of 'fun'. But, as they say, it's all fun and games until someone gets burnt to death.

Election Night Special - Secret Footage Found!

Holy Blue Rinsers! My spies have just uncovered footage from the Tory bunker of the night UKIP wiped the floor with them here in the tip of Kent.

As might be expected, the language is a little, er, ripe. Enjoy!

Roger In The Local Economy

Here's a picture from Google Street View of an ordinary house in Birchington. Well, actually, it's not any old house. It's 10, Sea View Road, home of Field Marshal Sir Roger Latchford OBE, one of the new crop of seven old UKIP county councillors voted in at the recent KCC elections. In fact he's just been elevated to the lofty position of UKIP's Chief of Staff for the whole of Kent.

Now, there's no privacy issue here in my publishing this picture. The former Tory and TDC Deputy Duffer's address is on all the election material, and his house is there on Street View for all to see. So nothing contentious there.

That photo was taken in 2009. Take a look, however, at this more recent picture of Sir Roger's drive, which was taken from the public footpath by one of my spies in the last week...

Notice anything different? Yes, that's right, he's had a lovely new, brick block paving job done! Nothing contentious there either, you'd think. Ah, but thereby hangs a tale. Apparently a couple of neighbours also had their drives resurfaced recently, one by a father and son team from Birchington, the other by a company based in Sandwich. Sir Rodge, on the other hand, chose a pair of itinerant Irish lads to do his, which hardly chimes in with UKIP's bluster about local jobs for local people, methinks.

To be fair to the OBEed one (Why? - Ed.), it's hardly the makings of, er, Drivewaygate. And anyway, I'm told the workmen pulled the proverbial over his eyes by claiming responsibility for the neighbours' improvements. Which just makes him a silly old brick, if you ask me.

Ballot Dancing

Readers with long memories will remember that we once had a Conservative councillor on the Ile de Thanet who actually did kill a kitten. Straight up. No bullshit.

Anyhoo, following last week's UKIP love-in, today sees another two elections down in the tip of Kent. Both are by-.

One is here in Ramsgate and has been called because of independent motormouth Ian 'Pile' Driver's flouncing out of our teeny-tiny council. The list of candidates makes for grim reading. Three I've never heard of, and two who I have heard of and would never vote for. I'll leave you to ponder who's who in that particular zoo.

The other ballot is over on the grubby, north side of the island. It follows the conviction and jailing of our erstwhile, inglorious Tory council leader Sandy 'Beach' Ezekiel for corruption. The only name I recognise on the list is the lovely Louise Oldfield, tireless Margate campaigner and owner of the excellent Reading Rooms, that splendid boutique B&B on Hawley Square. She made the 80+ mile round trip to Maidstone Crown Court every day of Ezekiel's nine day trial to tweet and blog us the latest. So my vote, if I had one, would be for her.

Oh well. Hey-ho. Whoever I recommend, it's pretty much a dead cert that we'll end up with another couple of purple people eaters to add to the ever-growing list!

Update: I was right (but then when am I not?!). Two more to add to the UKIP list. Kuh!