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!!
Moving on from all the doom and gloom surrounding this week's news about the airport, it may not have escaped your attention that today is Saturday! And what better way to celebrate the weekend than with another Scobie Dobie Doh pic from one of my lovely readers?
So, get your glad rags on, get down to the disco, and boogie!
Funny, though. I've not seen any comment yet from Scobes Minor about Manston, despite the fact that he is Thanet South's Labour candidate for next year's general election. Perhaps he'll, er, take off once he knows which way the wind is blowing! Geddit!!!????!?!!???!!!
Meanwhile Ramsgate's feisty Labour Mayor (-ess?) Kim Gibson has firmly pinned her colours to the mast with this comment on my Facebook page:
Time for facts. It could never work CAA was not going to give out any more flight paths due to capacity being filled by other airports. Secondly the catchment area does not support numbers that would use the airport. Thirdly if a miracle happened and they could be granted permission to fly more than 8 million passengers a year a public safety zone would have to come into force. This is a 4m isosceles triangle which means you cannot congregate within the area over 3 hours. No development. No schools etc. ie you could have a golf course but not a clubhouse. Thirdly at the sister airport Prestwick at its height it supported 300 jobs. Now we could have ikea plus other shops similar to blue water (£40.00 disappears down the M2) some residential maybe a centre park/haven incorporating a swimming pool, ice rink, funfair. All this could employ so many more than the airport ever could. People could come here and this would be the hub to visit Canterbury, Broadstairs etc etc people from up North could holiday and be an hour away from a day trip to London and visit all of Kent's wonderful villages, history again etc as there is so much. The airport was never going to be the regeneration of Thanet but a leisure/retail/residential will be.
So it doesn't look as if we'll be seeing Our Kim and Ann Gloag in a cat fight any time soon. Which is a pity, as I think they would have been pretty well matched.
Oh dear. We seem to have gone back to the airport again. Never mind, think of it as a training loop!
A busy week on the news front, what with work getting underway at the Ramsgate tunnels in preparation for a June opening, people pissing on war memorials, £10 rail tickets from London to Margate (but not Ramsgate and Broadstairs), and now the news that The Duffers are finally giving the 'developers' of the Pleasurama Eyesore the old heave-ho!
Lord, that I should have lived long enough to see that!
But strangely no local media outlet appears to have given a damn about yesterday's announcement by London Array that they have cancelled the second stage of their Thames Estuary wind farm - because of concern over the potential impact on the red-throated diver. That's a bird, apparently. Which the cynical might say has provided a convenient excuse to scrap something London Array didn't want to do in the first place.
The news that a potential 56 further turbines will not now be added to the 175 already blighting sea views from Margate will probably be received as a blessing by NorthEnders, but here on the sunny south side there could be some wailing and gnashing of teeth, given that London Array are based in the Port of Ramsgate.
Which means despite all the recent positive spin by our beloved council about a great future for the port and harbour based on leisure craft, a £7m loan for a cargo quay, and the wind farm business, we're currently down 50+ turbines, as well as a cross-channel operator. And, er, can we have our 3.4m quid back?
Oh well. Never mind. Something's bound to come up. After all, tomorrow's another day!
So there you are, a dufferish district council that has attracted a fair amount of controversy over its asset disposal plans on a sea front in deepest, darkest Kent.
You're trying to reassign the leasehold to a listed building. The whole sorry saga has been mired in claims and counter-claims, to the point where you've even been accused of seriously misleading your electorate, the people who vote you in and pay your wages and expenses.
What you really want is a great, big pub company to take the whole thing off your hands. But now so many questions have been raised that you're going to have to at least pay lip service to public opinion and be seen to be doing the right thing.
Perhaps you need some independent advice to get yourself out of the mire? Call in some unbiased experts so that you could demonstrate there was no conflict of interest once the lease has been handed over to the pubco? Good thinking!
Now, who do you hire? Yes, that's right, the same people who do the accounts for the great, big pub company.
No, dear reader, I haven't made it up. You couldn't.
Update February 2014: Since this item was published, TDC have given Deloittes the boot. Another victory for me! Hurrah!
Whilst us Thanetians haven't yet been affected by the polar vortex that's clagged up most of North America, I'm not taking any chances, and have kitted out the old jalopy accordingly. Boris the Bulgarian, round at that corner garage, did a very nice job - at a very nice price!
We have, nonetheless, been experiencing the odd blow down here on Kent's Ramsgate Peninsula. According to the excellent FixMyStreet website (from which I have purloined the photo below) the hoarding around the Granville Eyesore here on the trendy East Cliff has succumbed, and is partially blocking a road...
I guess the owner, a Mr Jason Hough who lives in Surrey and bought the site for a paltry £165K, couldn't really be expected to give much of the proverbial tinker's, especially given that his recent planning application to build 1,235,987 flats there was rejected. I must say, though, that with last year's tragedy over at the Ramsgate flour mill still fresh in people's minds, and with the parlous state of the deep earthworks on the site, he's taking a bit of a gamble leaving it exposed like that.
Meanwhile I see the Ramsgate Society is offering a £100 reward for information leading to the conviction the knuckle-dragging vandals who desecrated the restored shelters on the front. Good luck with that!
And the Krug is on ice for the end of next month, when the deadline for those other knuckle-dragging vandals, SFP Ventures, to get on with their non-development at the Pleasurama Eyesore runs out. Our beloved council appears to have grown a full set of cajones this time, the indications being they will tell SFP to shove it where the sun doesn't shine (Margate? - Ed.). About time too.
My chum Councillor Motormouth has already congratulated the 1000+ Friends of Ramsgate Seafront group, which has, er, 1000-handedly carried out a high profile Facebook campaign to rid the town of this more-than-decade-long blot on our seascape. That seems a trifle premature, but what the heck! Well done chaps!
Now, what are we going to put in its place? Heritage theme park? Van Gogh Museum? Ginormagantuan Wetherspoons? Site-specific barker's nest installation? Answers below please.
Pip pip!
Update Jan 2014: The hoarding has now been repaired - hurrah! Update Feb 2014: But now the rest of it has blown down - boo!
As I'm currently 'off-territory' here in Bournemouth, I thought I'd go the whole hog and bring you an item about Broadstairs!
I'm indebted to the excellent Broadie magazine for this one - click on the pic to big it up. It's a press release from Isle Homes about the company's 'exciting new development' of 14 houses on the Vere Road car park site in the town. But, as the Broadie says, what about all the disruption during the build, which starts in the New Year and will continue until autumn 2014? Not to mention the future lack of parking facilities once 14 houses have been plonked there!
Oh well, at least Boredstares will get a new public toilet block out of it. And as for parking, well, I'm sure all those lovely summer visitors will be able to find plenty of spaces in the Millionaires' Playground, where our buildings seem to have turned into car parks over the years, rather than the other way round!
Update: Despite me being told at the time that this was an old story and a 'non-issue', it seems that it has subsequently (Jan 2014) exploded into a ball of angry, disgruntled fire that is threatening to engulf the whole of Boredstares in the flames of outrage and revolution! Well, sort of. Click here for more.
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.
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!
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!
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:
Well, well, well. It appears to be a week of fine dining and horticulture here on the big blog! Regular contributor Mick has been doing a tour of the Millionaires' Playground with a view to entering it into the Britain in Bloom competition. Here's his report:
One of the key features of Ramsgate is the number of delightful roof and verandah gardens which host some fantastic fauna and flora. Here's a good example:
Moving along, I spotted a rare, sprouting Ramsgatus Urbanus:
Followed by Aerialis Neglectii and some Weedus Ridgius:
Finishing with the common Buddleia Aloftus Thanetii:
The love and attention that's lavished on these aerial gardens is a quintessential part of the town's heritage, and Ramsgate should make an excellent contender for the Britain in Bloom competition. I trust, Richard, that you will use your undoubted influence with your peers to ensure that these horticultural wonders are preserved and displayed for the wider enjoyment of the nation.
Hmmm. I'm not sure you're being entirely serious there, Mick. Still, I will pledge to use my influence with the producers of GQT to put Ramsgate on the bloomin' map!
Meanwhile, if any of you lot are bored rigid by my endless stream of nosh and gardening stories, you could always pop over to the excellent IsleOne and see what I think of the silly folkers!
Pootling around the interwhatsit just now, I thought I'd cop a butcher's at the Great Wall of Ramsgate website. The Great Wall is, if you remember, GO'D's project to get the Pleasurama/Royal Sands eyesore hoarding plastered. In paintings.
So far there ain't much to see, apart from the above Photoshop mock-up. Can anyone spot the deliberate error?
I'm not talking here about the recent handbags at dawn between Sainsbury's favourite chef and the ConDem Health Minister, Andrew Lansley.
No, it appears that Jamie Oliver's TV production company Fresh One is making a Hotel Inspector style series for Five (Channel Five in old money). And their first target is a restaurant in Ramsgate!
They've imaginatively called the show The Restaurant Inspector. I think you get the idea. But if you haven't got the idea, the idea is that they take my old chum Fernando Peire to a restaurant, and he inspects it. Fernando, as the cognoscenti will know, is the boss of ever-booked sleb-haunt The Ivy, where I've spent many a happy hour listening to Kerry Katona howling into her pud on the other side of the room.
According to the Press Association, the hour-long programme, due to air this autumn, will see Fernando take on a yet un-named family-run restaurant in Ramsgate. Well, un-named until now, that is, as I can exclusively reveal that it's the excellent Alexandra Ristorante on Harbour Parade, where filming has been taking place over the past few months.
Well, what's the point of being a media luvvy if you can't not keep a secret?! Mwah!
Carousing with the Ramsgate glitterati on the strip last night, it soon became clear that rumour is rife about pub chain J D Wetherspoon taking over the soon-to-be-defunct Kent International Hotel.
Wetherspoons, who operate 780 hostelries around the UK, including Margate's Mechanical Elephant, is on the acquisition trail. Their website even asks readers if they've got any recommendations for sites that could be transformed by the company's own brand of beery magic. And surprisingly they're after hotels as well, they already run 16.
Whether Wethers can break Frank Thorley's grip on Ramsgate front is yet to be seen. Whether the local rozzers can prevent packs of pie-eyed punters staggering all over the road at pissed o'clock in the morning is another question. To which, I would suggest, the answer is a resounding 'No'!
PS: I see the excellent Thanet Anthem (see story below) has put on almost 3,000 BoobTube viewers since yesterday, and is now going to be released on iTunes! Our beloved council must be spewing that six times as many people in a day have watched a video that portrays them as the nincompoops they are than are prepared to watch their guff about Margate's 'Big Event'. Hurrah!
As we all know, staying in the UK is the new going abroad this year, so I was chuffed to see the Millionaires' Playground given a rave review on the influential Have A Lovely Time blog this week.
The blog describes itself as encompassing 'holiday and activity reports - by parents for parents', and their correspondent Alice Castle, taking her cue from me (natch), dubs our island 'the new Riviera'. Staying in a rented cottage in Ramsgate for four days with her two girls, Alice waxes lyrical about being only two minutes from Waitrose, the 'pretty town centre' and Peter's Fish Factory. Unfortunately she then takes a wrong turn and ends up going to the Dickens House Museum and Morellis in 'Margate', but then it's an easy mistake to make.
So the next time our council duffers tell you the bucket and spade holiday is dead, and that we must now make our way in the world by assembling Chinese tut and disassembling dumped old DC10s, point them in Alice's direction. And as a little reminder of just how your council has let you down in the last 20 years, here's a montage from the Jolly Boy's Outing episode of Only Fools and Horses, filmed in Margate in 1989. Watch it, count all the things that have been bulldozed or burnt down, and weep!
Ordinarily I wouldn't be seen dead buying a copy of the Torygraph, but my new friend Louise tipped me off that the Millionaires' Playground got a mench today. So off I toddled to the Costcutter clasping 90p in my sweaty paw.
Sure enough, there on page 15 was a list of the world's 50 'most authentic destinations', including Los Angeles, Paris, Venice, and, um, Ramsgate. The list has apparently been drawn up by a panel of luminaries including Alain de Botton, Will Self, and my old chum Pierce d'Organ.
Admittedly some other places you might have heard of got a guernsey too. Like Deal, Hastings and Albania. Not a sausage about Margate or Boredstares though. Ha ha! Still, it does rather beg the question why all the cultural resources are being pumped into Margate, while 'authentic' Ramsgate's are being sucked dry. About the only thing the council wants to pump into my neck of the woods is more pollution from those flippin' knackered old jumbos. Oh how I laughed, then, when I noticed the 'most authentic' list was originally published in none other than... the British Airways High Life in flight magazine!
Update: This story is now running in the Daily Mail. Click here to read more (if you can bear the stench of hypocrisy!)
I say! Those cads at the council appear to be refusing to chuck a 10G lifeline to our luxury Granville Theatre and Cinem here on Ramsgate's trendy East Cliff! According to the local red top, the trust which took over the venue last year is short of folding. But despite a request for a rent holiday, they've received a terse 'Niet!' from the heartless apparatchiks at the TDC politburo.
If the Granville closes, that'll take the number of cultural venues here in the Millionaires' Playground down to a big fat zero. Let's recap:
Pleasurama - gone Motor Museum - gone Maritime Museum - gone Casino - gone Model Village - gone IOTA Gallery - gone Cinemas - gone Pooland - gone. Although that place was, in all fairness, a bit shit actually.
What kind of a Millionaires' Playground is this anyway? I suppose at least the library, which had gone, is due to return any, er, year soon!
The Ile's Olympics dividend currently stands at exactly 0 as far as I can make out, with today's announcement of 11 potential training sites for the Paralympics, none of them here in the tip of Kent. Those that do get a guernsey include Dartford, Gillingham, Sevenoaks, Ashford and Canterbury.
I suppose there's still a glimmer of hope as Margate beach and the Marlowe Academy have been listed, along with 630 other sites across the UK, as possible training sites for the main Olympics. But still, it's hardly a gold rush. Which is no doubt how we'll be describing the UK's performance come 2012.
I suppose with a large elderly population here on the Ile de Thanet, there's fierce competition in the private medical sector. I wonder if there's a discount for getting both done at the same time? Or all three, if you're Jake the Peg.
If I was an octogenarian with a gammy leg, I'd jump at the offer. Well, after the op that is!
Our beloved council are taking part in a national, online poll to find the best spots in England. And so far, Ramsgate's seafront architecture is way ahead of their other nominations such as Minnis Bay, Viking Bay and Margate Old Town. I say way ahead, what I mean is 'Ramsgate Seafront Architecture' has four votes, whereas their other nominations have one or none. And, um, two of those votes were mine.
Avast behind! Participants prepare to get their bottoms scraped
Moving along, I spotted a rare, sprouting Ramsgatus Urbanus:
Followed by Aerialis Neglectii and some Weedus Ridgius:
Finishing with the common Buddleia Aloftus Thanetii:
The love and attention that's lavished on these aerial gardens is a quintessential part of the town's heritage, and Ramsgate should make an excellent contender for the Britain in Bloom competition. I trust, Richard, that you will use your undoubted influence with your peers to ensure that these horticultural wonders are preserved and displayed for the wider enjoyment of the nation.
Pootling around the interwhatsit just now, I thought I'd cop a butcher's at the Great Wall of Ramsgate website. The Great Wall is, if you remember, GO'D's project to get the Pleasurama/Royal Sands eyesore hoarding plastered. In paintings.
I'm not talking here about the recent handbags at dawn between Sainsbury's favourite chef and the ConDem Health Minister, Andrew Lansley.
Carousing with the Ramsgate glitterati on the strip last night, it soon became clear that rumour is rife about pub chain J D Wetherspoon taking over the soon-to-be-defunct Kent International Hotel.
As we all know, staying in the UK is the new going abroad this year, so I was chuffed to see the Millionaires' Playground given a rave review on the influential Have A Lovely Time blog this week.
Ordinarily I wouldn't be seen dead buying a copy of the Torygraph, but my new friend Louise tipped me off that the Millionaires' Playground got a mench today. So off I toddled to the Costcutter clasping 90p in my sweaty paw.
I say! Those cads at the council appear to be refusing to chuck a 10G lifeline to our luxury Granville Theatre and Cinem here on Ramsgate's trendy East Cliff! According to the local red top, the trust which took over the venue last year is short of folding. But despite a request for a rent holiday, they've received a terse 'Niet!' from the heartless apparatchiks at the TDC politburo.
The Ile's Olympics dividend currently stands at exactly 0 as far as I can make out, with today's announcement of 11 potential training sites for the Paralympics, none of them here in the tip of Kent. Those that do get a guernsey include Dartford, Gillingham, Sevenoaks, Ashford and Canterbury.
I suppose with a large elderly population here on the Ile de Thanet, there's fierce competition in the private medical sector. I wonder if there's a discount for getting both done at the same time? Or all three, if you're Jake the Peg.
Our beloved council are taking part in a national, online poll to find the best spots in England. And so far, Ramsgate's seafront architecture is way ahead of their other nominations such as Minnis Bay, Viking Bay and Margate Old Town. I say way ahead, what I mean is 'Ramsgate Seafront Architecture' has four votes, whereas their other nominations have one or none. And, um, two of those votes were mine.
