Spectacular End For Ostend Spirit

Holy shipwrecks! If you've ever wondered what it would be like to stand on a beach with a ruddy great cross channel ferry steaming towards you at full tilt, then this is the video for you!

The ferry in question is none other than our own Ostend Spirit, which, after we forked out £700,000 in 2010 to dredge the Port of Ramsgate to accommodate it, spent a grand total of, er, not very long operating on behalf of the now defunct TransEuropa Ferries between here and Oostende. The very same Ostend Spirit, in fact, that was occupied by its Slovenian crew in Tilbury for weeks while they demanded unpaid wages after TransEuropa sank without trace, taking £3.4m of our council tax with it.

The very, very same Ostend Spirit that could have been seized in our port and sold to recoup some of our decimated dosh, had not Our Harvey been out to lunch when the harbour master rang to tell him it was about to set sail and request permission to nab it.

Well, it's junk now, having been sold to a breakers yard in Turkey for scrap, which is where the video comes from.

Meanwhile TDC's spin doctors have been rotating at 20,000rpm to bring you the news that Ramsgate has been granted £161K of eurofunding 'to build on the success of this increasingly busy port'. Well, that's what it says in the Maritime Journal, and who am I to disagree?!!

New Ferry Firm 'All Piss And Wind'

Reports that a new ferry service between Ramsgate and Ostend will begin in the New Year have been described as 'all piss and wind' by the highly respected Army Rumour Service (ARRSE).

According to a post on the ARRSE website, several firms have been set up with a view to restarting the link to Belgium, including Yasmin Ferries, Regina Line and Sun Link. All the firms have been backed by an individual that ARRSE names as Ernst Munk, who boasted on his Facebook page as recently as 19 December that he would be starting a Ramsgate-Ostend service soon.

ARRSE concludes: 'If any of you are sent anything by a company called Yasmin Ferries at an address in Lydney, Gloucestershire, or someone calling himself Ernst Munk, burn it before it burns you.'

Rumours of a new service have also been circulating in Belgium. One ferry spotter in Ostend told The Daily Thanet over the weekend: 'The Larkspur ferry was sold again yesterday for €870,000, buyer unknown. The other laid-up ferry was sold for €750,000 to Oilchart, which has now chartered her for a new Ostend-Ramsgate line. Sunlink Ferries intend to start on 1 January 2014 with the Ardenia (ex TEF's Gardenia) and intends to put a second ferry on the line (a pure roro ferry). The third ferry would be a mixed passenger ferry and they intend to carry foot passengers.'

However, the Belgian source concludes: 'The strange thing is that neither (the port of) Ramsgate nor Ostend know anything about it.

The news comes in the week that Thanet Council argued it had been right to squander £3.4m of taxpayers' money in the now infamous Ferrygate deal, which saw the council secretly subsidising the route's former operators TransEuropa Ferries, who went bankrupt in April.

Meanwhile the Met Office has warned the south coast to expect substantial amounts of piss and wind over the next 24 hours, with 80mph gussets expected in the English Channel.

Ferry Interesting

My spies on the continent with the twiddly moustaches and little grey cells report that the second TransEuropa rustbucket that was holed up in Oostende, the Larkspur, has now been sold for €400,000.

This follows the sale of TEF's other tub, Gardenia, for €750,000 in September.

Of course, Thanet Duffer Council, which allowed TEF to rack up £3.4m in the secret Ferrygate deal, will see none of this as they never put their name on the list.

I dunno. Next time I have to pay my council tax, I think I might just get the money out in cash, pop it in a black sack, and bury it in a landfill somewhere. That way I'd be cutting out the middleman!!

RoRo Yer Boat Gently Down The Income Stream

There'll be a rustling of brarn envelopes down at our lovely port tomorrow, as the sealed bids are opened in the race to become Thanet Council's appointed consultant with the unenviable task of finding a RoRo operator to replace TransEuropa Ferries.

The, er, 'lucky' winner will have until June next year to entice an operator to the port, and will get a percentage of whatever income that attracts. Presumably the lowest percentage (or the envelope stuffed with the most fifty pound notes) wins.

The council's tender document, a copy of which I have in my hot little hands, states:

The Council has a desire to attract a ferry service(s) back to the Port of Ramsgate, as having an active ferry service assists in regenerating the locality, delivering jobs and retains skills within Thanet.

The Port of Ramsgate knows that it can deliver the relevant services to a ferry provider as it has successfully facilitated operational support for previous operations.

The Council’s aim is to have one or more ferry companies operating out of the Port of Ramsgate to regain public confidence in the both the Council and the Port of Ramsgate. It raises morale within residents of Ramsgate and brings support businesses to the area.

'Successfully facilitated operational support for previous operations', eh? Well you can't argue with that, can you? I'd say that stuffing £3.4m worth of our council tax into a dead duck was a right little morale booster for Ramsgate residents, wouldn't you?

Long term readers will recall that the last time we were on the verge of getting a new ferry operator was in 2009, when I made the above video commemorating the imminent arrival of Euroferries' new vessel Bonanza Express. Needless to say, it never did arrive. Neither has their latest ghost ship, despite it being trumpeted all over their website.

On the plus side, warm and heartfelt congratulations are due to me for clocking up half a million page views since July 2008 (and more than three quarters of a million since I started this blog in January 2006, according to Site Meter). Three cheers for me!!!!!

Sold Down The River By Thanet Council

So, my Belgian spies tell me that defunct TransEuropa's tub Gardenia went for €750,000 at the auction in Oostende yesterday, although that price can still be outbid (by a minimum of 10% on top) until the end of the month.

And the amount Thanet Council, which is owed £3.4m of our lovely lolly by TransEuropa, will make from the sale? Nothing. Zero. Nix. Nada. Not a sausage. Because someone at the council (step forward Chief Executive and Chief Financial Officer Sue McGonigal, for it is you!) failed to secure any of the debt on the company's assets.

Would it be too much to ask Ms McG to pass 'Go' forthwith, without collecting her £200,000? Kuh!

Meanwhile, in what writers such as myself like to call a 'bizarre twist', it's emerged that as late as April this year TDC joined an EU-sponsored organisation called 'LO-PINOD', one of those Eurocratic acronyms which, in this case, apparently stands for 'Logistics Optimisation for Ports'.

LO-PINOD'S blurb states: 'Through improvements to shortsea routes, local ports and their hinterland connections, LO-PINOD encourages a wider use of water-borne transport across the North Sea Region. Greater use of local ports will re-balance Europe's transport network, reduce road congestion, aid regional development and deliver more freight by sustainable sea transport.'

It was on 17 April 2013 that LO-PINOD welcomed the Port of Ramsgate to its fold, just three days before yours truly broke the story that TransEuropa had sunk without trace, and the whole Ferrygate scandal began to unravel. Did the TDC bureaucrat who signed up for LO-PINOD not know that, within hours, there would be no more 'logistics operations' or 'freight' from the Port of Ramsgate? Or is this yet another case of our beloved council's arse not talking to its elbow? I think we should be told!

Click here to go to LO-PINOD website

Ferry For Sale - One Careless Owner

Ahoy fellow salty millionaires! I'm just back from my annual break in Cannes. What a lot of yachts they've got!

And talking of floaters, my Belgian spies have alerted me to the fact that one of the two old TransEuropa tubs that's rotting away in Ostend is being put up for auction this month.

Bidding on The Gardenia takes place at the Hotel/Restaurant Weinebrugge on Saturday 14th September at 2pm. So, er, do pop along if you fancy grabbing yourself a rusty bargain.

It's worth reading the small print, though, since there's a whole list of debtors attached to the sale, amounting to some 5m Eurowhatsits of prejudged charges on a ship that's probably not worth much more than a mill. Strange, though, that despite the Port of Ostend, a number of Belgian companies, and sailor types (who are presumably attempting to claim back unpaid wages) attached as having a charge over The Gardenia, there's not a single mention of Thanet Council or the Port of Ramsgate being owed a bob or two. So what's going on there, then?

The Ostenders reckon they're owed €2.5m by the defunct ferry line, which, they say, is about the same as us Fannit taxpayers are out of pocket. Although my calculator makes that about £2.1m, way short of the £3.4m that Thanet Duffer Central has fessed up to so far. And not even a chance to make some back on the auction. Kuh!

Meanwhile, I see from my copy of Krant Van West-Vlaanderen that Ostend Council are, not surprisingly, vexed about the €25,000 a month it's costing them to keep The Gardenia, and its sister rustbucket The Larkspur, moored up in their lovely port. Each ship apparently has to have a three man safety crew on board, and there are other costs such as popping the odd Euro in the lecky meter. All of which is coming out of the public purse. The Krant Van West-Vlaanderen also mentions there have been talks about restarting an Ostend-Ramsgate service. Apparently 'there may be Italians or Greeks interested'. Yep, I'll believe that one when I see it!

Click here to read the notice of the Gardenia auction in Ostend.
Click here to read the TransEuropa article in Krant Van West-Vlaanderen

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.

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'.

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.

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?

Ramsgate Ferry Firm Finally Runs Out Of Steam

Sadly it seems that our lovely TransEuropa Ferries here in the Cannes of Kent have gone into administration. That's what my spies in the anoraks with the binoculars tell me, anyway. The latest dispatch from Ostend reads:

The company has gone into administration today. Administrators will now try to find someone to take over the company. There seems to be one company who are keen to operate the line. They want to put a fastcraft on the line capable of taking trucks and cars.

We have to be a bit careful, as my understanding is that TEF is composed of a number of different companies, any one of which may, or may not, still be operational. And we all know that going into administration is not the same as going bust.

What does seem to be clear is that the Ostend Spirit has been repossessed by P&O, that its Slovenian crew are staging an old skool sit-in up at Tilbury claiming they haven't been paid for months, the TEF website is on the fritz, and the two remaining TEF vessels are laid up in Ostend.

It's a bad day for the town, and, of course, a bad day for those people who might lose their jobs as a consequence. But who knows, something may arise from the ashes. Anyone for Euroferries?!!?!

Meanwhile, don't forget that while most of the island's 'journalists' and political commentators were getting their proverbials in a twist about what may or may not be filmed at council meetings, I was bringing you the real news first! Hurrah for ECR!

Click here for the full story in The Gazunder (wot followed up my scoop!).

Trains And Boats And Planes

Trundling around the old Millionaires' Playground earlier, I thought I'd snap a few off. So here goes. I'll start with the trains...

Well, you would have seen trains there 100 years ago, as it used to be our lovely Ramsgate Sands station. Now it's a delightful row of, er, concrete sticks, part of the ever-to-be-constructed Royal Sands (aka Titanic) development of luxury dwellings, sanctioned by The Duffers. If you pop over to the developer's website, and have a spare two grand handy, you can put down a non-refundable deposit and look at an artist's impression of your splendidly appointed apartment. Which is probably all you'll ever get for your money.

Next some boats...

Oh dear! There don't seem to be any there either! In fact, as I've said before, I haven't seen a TransEuropa ferry in ages. Never mind, there are still some boats in the marina...

Then to cap it all, this thing flew over...

Hey-ho! Just another day in paradise!

Ostend Of An Era?

Effortlessly piloting my graceful Bentley Continental Flying Toss back to the Millionaires' Playground this afternoon, following a week at my Chelsea pad for the funeral of the century and a recording of the new series of Celebrity Nipples for Dave, I couldn't help but notice that our lovely TransEuropa Ferries in our lovely Royal Harbour/Port had been replaced by a floating hotel!

It got me to pondering what was going on with TransEuropa Ferries (TEF), as I rarely see the old tubs wending their way across to Belgium from my captain's lookout here at the cliff top mansion these days. So I emailed my old chums with the anoraks and binoculars on the other side of the briny, and this is their response:

You may well have noticed that Ramsgate port is 'ferryless' at the moment. Yesterday the Ostend Spirit (formerly the Pride of Calais) returned to their owners P&O for lay up at Tilbury. Strange that the Thanet press didn't pick up the story.

In short Transeuropa have some problems, and it seems that the owners the Dias brothers are wrapping up the company their father left them. They have sold two ferries that operated in the Med to Russian interests. The two ferries were moneymakers as they were chartered to the biggest Spanish ferry operator TRASMED for service between Spain and Morroco.

If TEF goes then at least 10 jobs will go directly with some indirectly such as security, cleaning and jobs at Orbit import-export, based at Ramsgate ferry port.

Blimey! Now, following a little, er, misunderstanding with Euroferries (Where are they now?! - Ed.) a few years back, I hasten to add that no-one is saying that TransEuropa have sunk. Let's be absolutely clear on that. But it does seem a little fishy! (Geddit??!!!!!???!!!??!!!!!!!!)

Especially as a visit to TEF's website is currently resulting in a big, fat empty load of white space.

Meanwhile I suppose we must welcome C-Bed to the Cannes of Kent. They provide floating hotels for windfarm workers, enabling them to be on the job 24/7. According to C-Bed's website, they use 'leather and other luxurious materials' to make sure their floatels 'are a place to unwind, sit back and get ready for the next day without worrying about cleaning, cooking, or getting to or from work'.

Fit for a millionaire, I'd say!

Click here for more on the current state of TEF in the Belgian newspaper De Tijd.
Update: The Gazunder has finally caught up with this story. Click here for more.

Ferries cAsh In!

Just a quick reminder to anyone out there who may have been stranded by the ongoing ban on flights that there's still room on our lovely ferries if you need to get to the continent.

LD Lines say they have capacity for cars in both directions between Ramsgate and Ostend.

Click here for more

Primrose Bows Out

Here's a sight we won't be seeing off Ramsgate's trendy East Cliff again. TransEuropa's Primrose is to be retired to sunnier climes in Italy. Reader Frank from the Ostend Ferry Crew writes:

The TEF ferry Primrose has been sold to a Italian company called Blu Navy for use between the ports of Piombino (Tuscany) and Portoferraio (Elba). The journey will take one hour.

She received bunkers [What that? Ed] this morning and her TEF logo on her funnel has been painted out. She is expected to sail tonight for the last time from Oostende [Ostend in old money] to Livorno where she will be renamed and will receive a internal upgrade.

In 1991 she was withdrawn with the arrival of the Prins Filip (Ostend Spirit), now history repeats itself. From 1991 to 1997 she was laid up as a spare vessel to cover for refits. This time she will begin a new career.

As Frank points out, many ships of the Primrose's age are now part of a new ship or car, or holding up buildings as metal bars in reinforced concrete. As least she's been recycled as a, er, ferry. Good luck to all who sail in her!