Newington Blogspot

Old Dogs.

2012-01-22T18:30:00.000Z

An old German Shepherd starts chasing rabbits and before long, discovers that he's lost. Wandering about, he notices a panther heading rapidly in his direction with the intention of having lunch.

The old German Shepherd thinks, "Oh, oh! I'm in deep shit now!"

Noticing some bones on the ground close by, he immediately settles down to chew on the bones with his back to the approaching cat. Just as the panther is about to leap, the old German Shepherd exclaims loudly,

"Boy, that was one delicious panther! I wonder, if there are any more around here?"

Hearing this, the young panther halts his attack in mid-strike, a look of terror comes over him and he slinks away into the trees.

"Whew!," says the panther, "That was close! That old German Shepherd nearly had me!"

Meanwhile, a squirrel who had been watching the whole scene from a nearby tree, figures he can put this knowledge to good use and trade it for protection from the panther. So, off he goes.

The squirrel soon catches up with the panther, spills the beans and strikes a deal for himself with the panther.

The young panther is furious at being made a fool of and says, "Here, squirrel, hop on my back and see what's going to happen to that conniving canine!"

Now, the old German Shepherd sees the panther coming with the squirrel on his back and thinks, "What am I going to do now?," but instead of running, the dog sits down with his back to his attackers, pretending he hasn't seen them yet, and just when they get close enough to hear, the old German Shepherd says...

"Where's that squirrel? I sent him off an hour ago to bring me another panther!"
<
<
<
<
<
<
<
<
<
Moral of this story...

Don't mess with the old dogs... Age and skill will always overcome youth and treachery!
Bull Shit and brilliance only come with age and experience.

The Golden Rivet

2012-01-17T16:53:00.000Z

Especially for Chris Wells.

In naval folklore there is a tale that every ship is built containing a single, commemorative "golden rivet"— an idea doubtless adapted from the golden spike that was temporarily driven at the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869. The rivet's location is allegedly different for each ship and undisclosed, known only to the crew. Of course no such thing exists: gold is too malleable to use for a rivet. Like many urban legends, the "golden rivet" is perpetuated for the amusement of "old salts" at the expense of the gullible.

Most often the myth is used as a practical joke or snipe hunt played on junior sailors, exploiting their naivete and natural curiosity with their new surroundings. The prank consists of informing a new sailor of the existence of the "golden rivet" and encouraging him to look for it. After scouring the entire ship without success, it eventually dawns on the junior that he has been the butt of a joke.

In a crueller version of the gag, a senior sailor calls attention to the rivet somewhere in the deck plating, then as the junior bends over to look at it, he is given a kick in the backside. Sometimes the snipe hunt is dispensed with altogether, with the senior sailor merely pointing to a spot on the deck and inviting the junior examine it. When pointed out to female guests (especially attractive ones), the point is simply to get the target to bend over.

In the same way that sending an aprentice for a rubber hammer or striped paint
the "golden rivet" gag can be seen as a fairly harmless form of initiation.

Other steel structures said to contain a golden rivet include the Forth Rail Bridge and the Empire State Building.

Another version of "The Golden Rivet" tells of a highly dubious practice involving young recruits and the ship's cook. The recruit would be told of the existence of a golden rivet which, he would be told, was always the last rivet to be fitted into the ship. This rivet could be seen if the lad leaned out through the galley porthole. As soon as he did so, the ship's cook would lower the porthole cover, pull down the unfortunate boy's trousers and violate him.

There is no evidence that this practice was real but the story of "showing someone the Golden Rivet" remains a traditional naval myth among mariners.

Expected resignation happens, again.

2012-01-13T12:48:00.000Z

I expect a lot of drivel will be posted about Ian Drivers resignation from the Labour Group on TDC and most of it will be just that, drivel. There will also be the usual speculation, rumour and sly innuendo from the usual selection of anonymous posters who troll through blogs looking to make trouble where none exists.
The cause of the resignation was over whether or not TDC should spend £20,000 on floral displays throughout Thanet. Ian Driver thought the money would be better spent elsewhere, he didn’t say where though!
In terms of TDC’s total budget of about £22.5 million, 20 grand is a paltry sum to spend making the area look a bit more appealing to residents and visitors alike.
The fact is that we are a tourist area and are in competition with other seaside towns that spend money on floral displays and decorations, to compete we have to provide a similar offering.
There is also a school of thought that thinks the events and floral displays budget is a waste and Town Councils should fund those things as they want them. The problem with that is that the residents of the various towns will have to fund it from an increased Town precept having already paid part of their Council Tax to TDC for such things. That is double taxation and it is not part of Labour’s remit to tax folks twice for the same thing.
This year’s budget for events and floral displays is coming from something called The New Homes bonus. This is a sum paid to all Councils to match the amount raised from the Council Tax from new houses built in the District. So if there are 10 new homes built in a District and that raises £1000 in additional tax the Government will match that with £1000. Rather worryingly the Gazette referred to it is a grant for housing, its not. It can be spent as the local authority sees fit as it isn’t ring fenced.
As Clive Hart said in the press The Labour Group spent over an hour discussing changes to this years budget and although small they seek to relieve the burden on Thanet residents and to provide some small help and assistance to hard pressed shopkeepers, some entertainment to residents and visitors alike and to keep hope alive in the coming year. Hopefully next years budget will be an exercise spreading what little money is available across the whole Island in a fair and equitable manner to reinvigorate the whole area and not just small enclaves covering Councillors pet projects.

2012-01-10T13:21:00.000Z

I have written before about my contempt for journalists on national papers and their inability to get even the simplest fact right or if they havn’t got any facts just make it up.
Reproduced below are some examples from todays papers to illustrate what I mean.

Daily Mirror,
Mark Hughes has been lured back into management by QPR - with a massive £30million transfer kitty.

The Sun,
QPR expect to name Mark Hughes as their new boss within 24 hours - after promising him a £20million January kitty.

Daily Star,
QPR are on the brink of making Mark Hughes their new boss - and are set to hand him an £8million transfer kitty.

Daily Mail,
Mark Hughes is being offered a £20million transfer kitty by Tony Fernandes to keep QPR in the Premier League.

Daily Express,
Mark Hughes has told QPR he needs £30million to pull them clear of relegation and chase an ambitious list of targets headed by Darren Bent and Didier Drogba.

The Times,
Mark Hughes sounded a note of caution last night over his seemingly imminent appointment as Queens Park Rangers manager, spelling out the need to be persuaded of the club's ambitions when discussions resume today.

The Daily Telegraph,
Mark Hughes, who is expected to be announced as the new manager of Queens Park Rangers today, is planning a raft of signings including the exciting young Brazilian striker Henrique.

The Guardian,
Mark Hughes is set to take over as Queens Park Rangers and has been promised significant funds by the club's owner, Tony Fernandes, to strengthen his squad this month, with the England forward Darren Bent a principal target.

The Independent didn’t even bother with the story.

I can only imagine the effect these varying stories have on the staff at QPR and the fans and if these so called journalists cant even get the facts right on a relatively minor story hidden away on the sports pages what confidence can we have that the reporting of major news stories is any more accurate?

And I wont even go near the disgusting daily revelations at the Levenson enquiry !!

Prejudice and Bigotry.

2012-01-09T15:12:00.000Z

Comments on the previous post, the current rows in football and the Stephen Lawrence trial have set me thinking about prejudice and bigotry generally. Particularly the reference to the comments made by Dianne Abbot. While her comment is quite true about divide and conquer as it has long been accepted that if you divide various factions the group that stays together will ultimately win following the unity is strength principal.
Prejudice and bigotry along with intolerance take many forms and most people will have suffered to a greater or lesser extent, for example remarks about someone’s weight can be just as hurtful as a remark about their race or sexuality. Equally a remark about Tourettes aimed at a political opponent may not hurt the recipient but will be offensive to sufferers and their relations. In todays world we have to be so careful about what we say and to who we say it as it may be taken the wrong way.
Racism is not the preserve of white people against black it takes many forms, apart from the N word in relation to black people we have many other derogatory terms for the French, Germans, Spanish, Portugese, Italians, Irish, Welsh, Scots, Asians and any other group who do not conform to our rigid view of ‘normal’. Equally other cultures have the same attitude to other cultures. My son lives in West Ealing and a walk along the Uxbridge Road demonstrates how one culture shuns others, there are clearly defined sections for the various national shops selling a variety of goods from their home countries. Personally my wife and I love it, a whole variety of different foods and clothes to try and enjoy. These folks also choose to live together in clusters, groups, enclaves or ghetto’s depending on your point of view.
Before anyone starts jumping up and down and starts complaining about foreigners coming here and refusing to live as we do let us look at Brits abroad, if you go to a lot of countries you will find expats living in the same area, opening shops and bars selling British goods, not bothering to learn even the basics of the language. A lot of these people have emigrated saying that the country is not ours anymore with all the foreigners living here now. They in fact are no better than those they seek to criticize.

The purpose of all this is to encourage everyone to try and live their lives in a less judgmental and more tolerant way accepting that everyone is different and that we should be tolerant and celebrate those differences rather than thinking that our narrow definition of normal is the only way.
I can do no better than paraphrase Martin Luther King who said : ‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character’.
‘By the content of their character.’
‘I have a dream that my children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by their race, colour, creed, religion, sexuality, illness or appearance but by the content of their character’.
It is a great shame that, nearly half a century later, people like Abbott and Cameron still seem to fail to understand this simplest of statements.

2012-01-05T15:26:00.000Z

I have been watching the furore surrounding John Worrows defection to the Independents with interest and not a little bemusement. Clearly he has the Tories rattled judging by the wild, irrational and frantic reaction on some of the blog posts. Possibly he is right and the local Tory Party is still languishing in the 50’s and 60’s where intolerance was rife. I looked for some examples of this and learnt that Payim Tamiz was frequently referred to as The Foreigner. ( You remember him, Tory candidate who thinks all Thanet girls are ‘slags’ ) I then notice that the well known Independent/Tory Bert Macastree was moved from a reasonably safe seat to a no win seat in Cliftonville, Bert is of course of Afro Caribbean descent. And now we have the row about homophobic comments made by a Conservative Councillor.

I have no ill will towards Brian Goodwin and wish him well in his fight against his illness but the fact remains that he DID post comments that can only be interpreted in one way and that is homophobic, and that kind of language has no place in a modern, progressive political party. I also note that no mention has been made of his remarks about “ having a load of mogs on the Council now” , whatever ‘mogs ‘ are it doesn’t sound very complimentary when speaking about your own colleagues does it now?

To remove any doubt I have reproduced below a screenshot of the Facebook conversation, I have blanked out the name of the Conservative Councillor he was talking to, to avoid embarrassing this particular person as they didn’t seem to respond to the remarks posted.

Twas the season of spending all your wonga

2011-12-28T16:13:00.001Z

Well that’s it for another year,,,thankfully and we can all get back to what passes for normal although the whole country has come to a stand for the week until after New Years Eve has passed. Another awful American ‘tradition’, the holidays taken between Christmas and New Year. Of course “ when oi were a boy” only Christmas Day and Boxing Day were days off and News Years Day was a normal working day. It was first made a national Bank Holiday in 1974.

I say the country has come to a stand, that is not quite correct as most shops were open on Boxing day, indeed some opened as early as 5 am for something known as ‘the sales’ quite what that means I am not sure as stores had been heavily discounting for weeks in the run up to Christmas in a hopeful attempt to part hard pressed shoppers from their cash. I must confess that I watched some TV adverts rather incredously as potential must have presents were being advertised at ‘only £299’ or some other stupid amount that equates to more than a weeks income for most folks in Thanet. The pressure on parents at this time of year is immense to buy their offspring the latest Xtube PS 490 gizmo as the insinuation given in some of the adverts is that all their mates will have it and they will be the odd one out. Long gone are the days when kids were happy with a hoop and a tangerine and if they were lucky a wooden toy that gave you splinters or some lead soldiers that allegedly gave us all lead poisoning!

People say that I am wrong or out of date for harking back to the ‘good old days’ but life was definitely better then, we didn’t have the constant commercial pressures we have now to acquire the latest, biggest, fastest most expensive gadget or game, people were happier with their lot and didn’t aspire to own possessions they could not afford or quite frequently didn’t need.

Ironically as I write this Star Trek is on the telly and I am prompted to think that if my Grandad was to be suddenly transported into this century it would be much the same as me being transported into the 24^th century although in the 24^th century the overwhelming desire for possessions has been eliminated. I can imagine the wonder he would feel at being able to communicate with anywhere in the world at the push of a button, send emails instead of letters and telephones smaller than the size of a packet of cigarettes that fit in your pocket. Imagine the feeling that he would have at being able to do your weekly shop from your front room, be able to buy anything at the click of a mouse button, of course he would think a mouse is something small and furry.

So there you have it, hundreds of pounds wasted on food that will never get eaten, even more hundreds of pounds spent on the latest electronic toy that will be out of date come your childs birthday, all for a couple of days relaxing without the worry of will you still have a job to go to on January 3^rd, will I get through the winter without catching some exotic flu, will my car pass its MOT, will I break down in the bad weather, will the central heating pack up at the first sign of snow, will I be able to afford the January bills, will Charlton Athletic actually get promoted this year?

Happy New Year to you all.

R.I.P. Manston Airport.

2011-12-22T19:32:00.001Z

Today’s sad announcement that Flybe are to cease operations from next March will come as an unwelcome Christmas gift to the employees at Manston. Couple this with the rumored breakdown of talks to link with Schiphol Airport and you have a recipe for potential closure. Flybe spokesman Niall Duffy has posted on Michael Child's blog
"It is fair to say that Manston is one of the airports with the smaller catchment areas in the United Kingdom, and you have Gatwick not too far away.
We tried different routes and the numbers simply weren't there. It's impossible to sustain routes without the passengers. Manston is in the wrong place for a sustainable airport. All the airlines know it, hence none of them are there. Bugger all to do with TDC.

All this will no doubt come as a welcome Christmas gift to those whose sole objective has been to close the airport while masquerading as No Night Flight campaigners.

This may well throw into doubt the need for a consultation exercise on any night flying and I have no doubt that the new Cabinet will be approaching the Airport seeking an urgent meeting to discuss the future.

************************************************************

Moving on to other matters with Christmas rapidly approaching I thought I better go and do some festive type shopping. Having heard so much about dire times and folks cutting back I was somewhat surprised to have to drive around Sainsbury’s car park twice before I spotted someone leaving and quickly nipped into the only vacant space I could see. As I was only going to get some chives and milk I didn’t think I would be that long, how wrong can you be! Some 40 minutes later I dragged myself back to the car bruised and battered with my enthusiasm for present buying rapidly diminishing. Not wanting to subject myself to the rigors of fighting my way through Westwood Cross I made my way into Ramsgate to make my purchase. I was going to go and see Michael Child but thought better of it as I wouldn’t be buying an actual book as my Wife is an avid Kindle fan! Readers will be happy to know that I did in fact buy the present and card I set out to buy, of course this would not have been necessary had my original present for my wife been delivered in plain wrapping that I paid extra for so that she would be surprised on Christmas Day when she actually got the present she wanted. The surprise was somewhat ruined when the parcel arrived while I was out and the contents were written all over the packaging!

Incidentally I have had a great Christmas present already, thanks to the wonders of the interweb thingy I am now back in touch with two very old mates that I worked with at Butlins back in the 60’s. We will be having a reunion in the New Year and mebe revisiting some of our old haunts. Maybe some of my older readers will remember the 49 Club or the Jaguar Club, sadly both gone now.

As it’s the season of goodwill and extra grandchildren minding I think I shall refrain my blogging for a few days, hostilities will be resumed after Christmas.

Unless of course there is anything in tomorrows paper that demands comment!!

Tis the season of peace and goodwill to all men except on Simon Moores blogsite.

2011-12-21T19:08:00.000Z

Following the defection of Cllr John Worrow to the Independants there has been an eruption of bile and vitriol from the direction of Simon Moores on his blog. I could be charitable and put this down to disappointment at losing his Cabinet post and saddness at the Tories losing overall control at TDC, or I could say that it is in fact the true nature of Thanet Tories coming out at last.
Having sat opposite and watched the way they operate in one guise or another more or less continiously since 1979 I think I am qualified to say what their true nature is.
More so than most Tories they seem to think that they are somehow born to rule and the ' we know best ' attitude prevails, this is particularly true of those Tories with an academic or senior management background. It is this superior, supercillious attitude that particularly gets under the skin of the local proletariat. Despite their alleged higher intellect and ability to see things that other mere mortals miss they have failed to see what was happening under their noses. Cllr Worrow is not the only disaffected Tory and I know that several were quite uneasy about the autocratic manner in which Bob Bayford and co ruled Thanet.
And so to the current situation, reading his blog it seems that Simon Moores either has a crystal ball or a bugging device that anticipates future events. For the record IF Clive Hart was even thinking of offerering John Worrow a Cabinet post he would certainally have to get the Labour Groups approval, no such conversation has taken place,
also for the record , Tuesdays Labour Group meeting was to discuss the proposed changes to the budget to be presented to Council, and not the offer of a position to any individual Cllr. In particular parking was discussed and proposals will be put forward at the right time. Some of the figures being bandied about vary wildly and give no confidence in their accuracy. A full and in depth reveiw will be needed with carefully costed proposals that will be fully questioned and scrutinised in depth, unlike the processes that have been followed in the past, Cabinet have been presented with something and just agreed it. The evidence of this is blatantly clear in the reluctance of the Tory Members of Scrutiny Committee to have things investigated in greater depth. Scrutiny Committee also requested additional support to enable it to do its job with greater efficiency. In line with the paranoia that reigned it seemed likely that this request was going to be shunted to one side in case a better resourced Scrutiny found something flawed in a Cabinet proposal.

I know Clive Hart is commited to a more inclusive administration and if that includes Members of other groups well so be it and Simon Moores and others of his ilk should just shut up and get used to life as opposition Councillors and try and be constructive and refrain from the paranoid rantings aimed at those who have found them out.

A Green and Pleasant Land

2011-06-21T12:47:00.017+01:00

I was called twice this morning by different constituents who are having problems getting something done about a broken and dangerous manhole cover in the road. It seems that they have phoned KCC only to be told that it was Southern Water's problem/job so they phoned Southern Water only to be told that it was TDC's problem/job who in turn told them to phone KCC as it is a KCC issue, I bet you can see where this is going already !!
Anyway one phone call from yours truly and someone will attend within 24 hours, It's truly amazing what the word Councillor in front of your name will acheive, it shouldnt be like that but sadly it is. These jobsworths will only respond to someone who can make their life uncomfortable but seem unwilling to serve the majority people who help pay their wages !

Anyway while I was out with my camera I decided to do a Michael Child and take some random photos of the street scene near me and incidently something My Wife has been cracking on about for months.
I have headed this post as a green and pleasant land as it seems that we are surrounded by greenery everywhere I look, gardens, parks, gutters, pavements. Not just a few weeds growing but fully grown flowering plants everywhere you look. I dont know what the plan is maybe its just to let nature reclaim the land and then refuse to do anything about it as its a rare wildlife habitat and cant be disturbed. All these were taken in and around the St James Avenue area of Ramsgate if you have any of your area email them to me at cllr-mike.harrison@thanet.gov.uk and I will post them up.
Let us hope that Paul Carter is proud of his green credentials.

Night Flight Hysteria Begins.

2010-10-02T11:47:00.001+01:00

Finally Infratil have submitted The Application. I refer to it as The Application as it has been so long in arriving that it became an event to anticipate.
It has also inevitably started the hysterical reaction that was to be expected, wild and totally unfounded figures have been bandied about already and predictions of the end of the world abound.
The contents of The Application are in line with the Airports Master Plan and the predictions in it.
I should perhaps point out that it is only a plan and contains only predictions not facts.
Accompanying The Application is a report from Bickerdyke Allen outlining what they see as the impact of night flights insofar as noise in concerned.
MORI on behalf of Thanet Council will commence a comprehensive consultation as soon as TDC have got their own independent technical assessment of that report.
This I hope will happen sooner rather than later as this issue has been hanging around for far to long.
You can see The Application HERE.
The results of the consultation will help TDC decide what, if any, night flying is to be allowed from Manston.
I am pleased to see that already some balanced debate seems to be taking place on Herne Bay Matters blog.

For the record my own view is that while most people want to see a successful and developing Airport, that is not at any price and it should be subject to stringent controls.
The consultation will help in deciding what, if any, price is worth paying.

Government making savings at your expense.

2010-07-23T21:24:00.001+01:00

I have posted before about the reluctance of Officials of various Government departments to ensure that folks are getting the benefits they are actually entitled to and in most cases have actually paid for but quite by coincidence I have found out about another official scam.

It seems that if your wife has only paid contributions based on the married woman's reduced rate also known as the married woman's stamp or has never worked then she will not receive a pension in her own right. However what the Pension Service advisors don’t tell you is that she can receive a basic state retirement pension of 60% of your entitlement based on your contribution record. She can claim this when you reach your State Pension Age and it doesn’t affect your pension.
I have looked further into this and find that my Wife is entitled to another £5.50 a week pension so a claim letter has gone in today along with a claim for the backdating to my 65th birthday.

With the current national obsession with scroungers and other scoundrels by the wonderful Lib-Con alliance it seems that folks who are quite legitimately entitled to various state benefits will be cheated out of them by a state system that is hell bent on saving money whatever the social cost. There is already a culture of suspicion among those who process various applications and their starting position when applying the rules is that the applicant is on the fiddle and how do we get out of paying them and I fear that this will only get worse.

On the subject of savings is there a danger that the current drive to save money and reduce debt will become such a focus of Ministers that they will not know when to stop. Already we have seen unprecedented financial attacks on Local Government, Education, Aid to Industry, The Arts and many other parts of society. So the danger is that they will become so addicted to cost cutting and saving that like any common drug addict they will eventually self destruct finally achieving their aim of totally disbanding the State machinery by default.

A Tale Of Two Planning Matters

2010-07-01T18:14:00.001+01:00

Nothing is guaranteed to irk the ire of Residents and Councillors alike than the obscure and illogical planning laws and the way they are applied. This is the tale of two planning matters and the seemingly illogical outcome.

Case 1.
An individual has somehow managed to get a full size shipping container into his back garden. Not only is this an eyesore for properties that overlook his garden but it is also a handy wall for his kids to kick a football against until late evening. You can imagine the noise and nuisance that this creates with a ball bouncing against an empty metal container. Neighbours are rightly upset about this and have complained to The Council and Ward Councillors. The Council’s Planning Enforcement Officers have been and had a look and said that there is nothing that can be done as it is a ‘Permitted Development’

Case 2.
An individual has erected a pergola in her garden and is growing climbing plants up it to create a pleasant outlook for herself and incidentally her neighbours. For some reason a nearby Resident has complained to the Council about this and following a visit by The Council’s Planning Enforcement Officers this person has been told to remove the offending pergola or face dire consequences and extreme retribution including the dreaded ‘Enforcement Action’

Despite the best efforts of the Ward Councillors it seems that the situation will remain as it is ie one eyesore and source of nuisance is to remain and one pleasant flower covered pergola has to go.
It seems to me that rather than venting their spleen on all and sundry the new Government would be better employed sorting out the many ilogicalities in the planning system that result in mad decisions like this.

Discuss.

2009-08-23T15:35:00.002+01:00

Idly flicking through the blogs I don’t seem to be popular boy at the moment with a few people!
Not only do some of the comments display an alarming ignorance of the process that will be followed during the Night Flying Consultation period but some folks seem to think that it is a done deal with me having already made the final decision. Nothing of course could be further from the truth, the final decision on whether to allow the application or allow an amended version will be made at a full Council meeting early next year based on the results of the consultation taking into account ALL the comments.
Some of the comments about me would quite rightly result in me being taken to The Standards Board if I had made them about the individuals making them. I have no problem with people having a different point of view from me about any subject but lets try and keep it civil and adult and not descend into insults.
My thanks to Smeggers for his reasonable attitude despite our differing attitudes, also to Malcom Kirkaldie for his apology.

***********************************************************************

Onto less controversial things, we have recently bought a trailer tent and have already had several short breaks away and have been very lucky with the weather so far, we haven’t been quite so lucky with a couple of the sites we have chosen. We are members of The Caravan and Camping Club also this website and before going we always look at any reviews from previous visitors and if possible visit the campsites website. Most of these promise you an idyllic setting with peace and quiet, the reality is sometimes a bit different.
We went to one site that had got reasonable reviews and looked great on the web. We weren’t expecting a 5 star site but something reasonable. How wrong can you be!

Kids still running riot at ½ past 12 in the morning, 4 teenagers in the tent next to us who insisted on talking loudly all through the night, every other tent seemed to have two dogs with them and if one started barking the whole campsite was set off barking, site was on a slope, not normally a problem but when it rained on Thursday morning due to the hard ground we had a river running through our awning, the site advertised a fishing lake but it turned out to be nothing more than a pond. There were 85 pitches but only one shower and two toilet cubicles per sex.
Despite all this and apart from the rain early on Thursday morning we had a nice break and were visited by my Stepdaughter and family who took us out to a smashing pub for dinner.
Even the fact that on the way back my nearside brake calliper decided to seize on and we completed our journey on the back of an AA lorry didn’t dent our enjoyment or enthusiasm and we are planning our next trip only this time it will be to an adult only site that don’t allow dogs !

Mini riot in Cecil square

2009-07-24T11:08:00.001+01:00

At last nights Council meeting there were some bright spots and some dull ones. It is worth noting at this point that there were twenty three items on the agenda only one of which required an actual decision. Whether this is a result of the Cabinet system or plain and simple inaction on the part of the Tory Administration I will leave you to decide.
Anyway back to the action, as part of the meeting we were to have two new items The Chief Executives report and The Leaders report. Note at this point there is no provision in the Constitution for these items but nonetheless it is probably a good idea to be updated as to what is or isn’t going on. Nor is there any talk of allowing questions or discussion on these reports but that will be addressed when it is considered by the Constitutional Working Party.
The Leader was apparently going to give a Powerpoint presentation with his report and this was when trouble‘t mill started. Having cleared the Chairman’s bench and all the top dogs had moved themselves to another part of the chamber and the screen had been lowered the first slide appeared!
The first words to appear were something like ‘The Council is facing financial Armageddon’ it immediately became apparent that the Council was to be treated to a Party Political broadcast by The Leader, this provoked a furious reaction from the Labour benches not least from Myself, several of us immediately leapt to our feet to protest and chaos ensued for a few moments with the Leader vainly trying to continue with his presentation.
My objection is very simple, as Councillors we are constantly reminded that we represent ALL the people in our Wards and not just those who voted for us, by the same token The Leader is the leader of the whole Council and not just the Ruling Group, this applies equally whoever is in power. Nor is there any rule that says the leader of the Ruling Group has to be the Leader of the Council. As the Council Leader is elected by the whole Council I feel it is wrong that the minority groups should be subjected to a Party Political diatribe. As this report was supposed to be a report on what the Council has been up to is wrong to use opportunity to score political points in this way.
The Chairman, Cllr Margaret Sheldrake, to her credit recognised the problem this was causing and refused to allow The Leader to continue, despite this he started to desperately flick through the slides in the vain hope that they may have some impression on Members.
Eventually order was restored, top dogs returned to their seats and we continued. Sitting in the audience were the Chair and Vice Chair of the Standards Committee, quite what they made of it I don’t know but I do know that what is right is right and what is wrong is wrong and it is wrong for a senior Member of Council to try and use his position to berate members about the financial position the country finds itself in and to somehow place all the blame on The Government when we all know but appear to have forgotten that the current financial situation was initially brought about by the irresponsible lending in the US sub prime mortgage market.
Co-incidentally I hear differing reports about whether this presentation also shown to the Tory Group beforehand.
There was more excitement a bit later when poor old Tom Betts from Your Thanet got his wrist slapped for daring to take a picture of the Council in session to put beside a report he is going to write for his paper.
Quite why this paranoia exists about someone taking a picture of some old duffers sitting about talking about stuff is beyond me!
If you read this Tom can I suggest that you just write to the Chief Executive and ask permission to take a few pictures during a meeting for publicity purposes.
Of course if TDC were to stream their meetings onto ‘tinternet like a modern Council would Public could actually see us at ‘work’.
After ‘The Incident’ with Tom Betts the public were unceremoniously ejected, a decision incidentally that the Labour Group spoke and voted against, we proceeded to the only item requiring a decision this was the one about the future of the old Pleasurama site.
A lively and interesting debate then followed during which some potentially actionable remarks were made about the Labour Groups due diligence checks on the original plan and Developers and the Officers that made them. This caused an outbreak of harmony and The Leader leapt to his feet to correct the offending Tory and defend what went on at the time and remind Council that the proposal was agreed at the time by the whole Council.

Manston Matters

2009-06-27T20:44:00.000+01:00

I attended Friday nights meeting of KIACC at Manston that was wrongly advertised as “tonight's night flight blight meeting “ ECR or “one more reason to go and berate the snout in the trough leader tomorrow night.” by SEMG on Big News and lord alone knows what on the “voice of the minority” from Herne Bay.
Apart from the collection of usual nimby anti everything suspects there were quite a few, I counted about 60 to 70, other interested members of the public and local luminaries. Among them Dave Green Chairman of RTC, Clive Hart, Labour Group Leader TDC, Liz Green and Chris Wells KCC Councillors and a couple of other District and Town Councillors including Gerry O’Donnell.
Notable by his absence, again, was Paul Carter the Leader of KCC who sent some feeble excuse about ‘a prior family event’ I am not the brightest person in the world but if ever I am asked if I can do something not in the Council diary I always ask the Domestic Authority if I am free. And I don’t have an office full of staff to organize me and I had dragged Myself out there despite feeling absolute rubbish as anyone who heard me coughing, hacking and barking at the back will testify, if I can do it so can he. I may be doing him an injustice but I think he just plain chickened out of coming to Thanet to explain his odd pronouncement that ‘planes from Manston take off straight out to sea’ and in any case Manston Airport is a Thanet matter any decisions about its future operations will be taken by TDC not KCC.
On to the meeting itself, the Chairman Paul Twyman gave a couple of short reports on various issues with a couple of contributions from members of the committee.
We then had a presentation from someone from Minster Church about what they had done with the non existent money from the non existent fines that are apparently not being collected to be distributed among local groups and organizations also cash from the same non existent fund had been given to a group from Herne Bay who provided a visual display.
Then on to the ‘Main Event’, The Public Speaking. To be honest it was a all a bit of a let down really, as expected Steve Higgins and Peter Binding stood up and vainly tried to justify their position re the Airport, a lady from one of the suburbs of Herne Bay, Ros McIntyre from Broomfield, gave quite a good presentation on why planes shouldn’t be flying over her house, some speakers defended the Airport and I would guess that the audience was split about 50/50 for and against although some antis were a bit undecided and seemed to support the Airport but with adequate controls.
As the meeting was for the Public I didn’t say anything although it was doubtful if I could have got a full sentence out the way I was feeling.
Right at the end an old fella got up and spoke against the Airport and edging ever closer to the Chairman ended his speech with a flourish and produced a banner that said something like ‘No To Night Flights and No To Training Flights’.
One thing that did strike me was the appalling acoustics in the place, added to the fact that obviously many of the speakers were not used to public speaking, (no criticism intended) and merely mumbled into their chest area it made it very difficult to hear what was actually being said by some of them, of course the same comments could be made about some members of the Committee!
What if any conclusions can be drawn from this I don’t know but I expect that the hardcore antis will hail it as a triumph and insist that this was the voice of the majority of Ramsgate Residents.
By now I had almost lost the will to live and dragged Myself off home and into My pit.
You can also read another report HERE.

Town Council up and running.

2009-06-16T13:27:00.003+01:00

I was at last nights inaugural meeting of Ramsgate Town Council to witness the birth pangs of this newly elected body. Like most births it was a drawn out painful affair starting with the head emerging. As some of you will know this is usually the most painful part of the process and so it turned out to be. In front of a packed house, there were probably 60 people in the audience, The Midwife, TDC’s Head of Legal Services struggled manfully to get through the process but was thwarted by the various factions voting on strictly party political lines. Nominations for Chairman of the new body were Pat Doyle, moved by Jill Kirby, Dave Green, moved by Steve Ward and Ralph Hoult, moved by Gerry O’Donnell. Eventually following an elimination vote where the candidate with the lowest number of votes drops out Ralph Hoult was eliminated. Following another failed attempt to elect it was agreed that the two remaining candidates should address the Council in an attempt to break the deadlock. This resulted in Dave Green emerging victorious. He made a short acceptance speech and then presented retiring Mayor Kay Dark with a commemorative badge. Next on the agenda was to elect a deputy for Dave Green, this was achieved in no time at all as Ralph Hoult was elected unopposed.
We then moved on to something headed ‘Style of the Council’ this was just to decide whether to mutate into a Town Council or remain as a Parish, it was duly agreed that Ramsgate should have a Town Council as Ramsgate is indeed a Town.
It was also agreed that the Town Council should meet on a monthly basis except August and December at 7pm, then it was onto the formation of the various committee’s that actually make a Council work. It was decided to form three main ones, a planning committee, a finance & general purpose one and an allotments committee. The normal rules of political balance apply so no one group will be over represented anywhere.
Next it needed to be decided where the Councils home would be, obviously Albion House has to be the choice but as TDC seem intent on flogging it off there is some doubt about this so it was agreed that RTC should sort of squat at Albion House until agreement can be reached. It was accepted that RTC will have to pay a commercial rent for the place but arguments lay ahead about the condition of the building and who will pay for it to be made fit for purpose not to mention making it DDA compliant. The rest of the meeting was taken up with even more turgid and soporific debate and items until it came time to exclude the press and public although by this time considerable numbers of the public had decided that Horlicks and News at Ten was a considerably more enthralling prospect and had left.
Quite rightly in my view the Council decided NOT to exclude the public as there were to be no discussions about individuals salary levels or performance.
Some of the new Members obviously didn’t understand that the Town Clerk is not the person that takes the minutes and writes reports, he or she is in fact RTC’s Chief Executive or indeed that he/she will also have to be the Section 151 Officer. I wont explain what a 151 Officer is here other than to say that all councils that spend public money have to have one and they have to have a CIPFA qualification.
Details of what a 151 officer is and does can be seen HERE.
I am very concerned that Gerry O’Donnell seems the believe that you can advertise a job and then start negotiating pay and conditions either at the interview or after you have appointed someone. No one worth their salt is going to apply for a job where the terms and conditions or salary range are not on offer up front.

Also discussed was what interim assistance may or may not be needed from TDC until RTC actually employs its own staff.

I suspect that the 60 or so folks in the audience who came looking for some kind of revolution and some world changing actions and decisions went home disappointed, unfortunately Annual Meetings are always rather long drawn out turgid affairs. No doubt in the coming months RTC will start making decisions that will have a far reaching effect on the Residents of Ramsgate including potentially increasing your Council Tax.
I also noticed in the assembled multitude some ‘furiners’ there was among others, from Birchington John (am I an Independent, no I am an Independent in public and a Tory in private) Worrow. From Westbrook there was Cllr Dean (call me Bert) McCastree and from Margate Cllr John (Snowy) Watkins. I can only assume that they were there to gather information about how a Town Council looks and works having as they do aspirations in that direction themselves.

I am still concerned that some of them are unable to grasp the basic premise that if you are going to spend money it has to come from somewhere and the only source of income are the Taxpayers of Ramsgate but only time will tell if I am being unduly pessimistic .

Some Random Ramblings.

2009-06-11T15:52:00.000+01:00

I read with some incredulity the Real Madrid have just paid Manchester United £80 million for Ronaldo, add to that the £56 million they paid for Kaka a couple of days ago all adds up to a staggering £136 million quid and they are still on the lookout for more players.

(For Ken Gregory’s benefit Ronaldo and Kaka are football players and Real Madrid and Manchester United are football clubs, football is probably the biggest spectator sport in the UK, although fishing is the biggest participation sport!)

In addition to the transfer fees these players and others in the squad will command something like £100,000 quid a WEEK in wages you can see that when you compare these mind numbing sums of money to the mere pittance plus expenses that our MP’s are expected to survive on it puts it into perspective.
For those of us on a rather more modest income we read about these things with a sense of disbelief, the sums being bandied about frequently exceed our total income for eight or nine years and I am sure that a lot of the people who I represent would be glad of my yearly income never mind the weekly income of some people. Although I fully accept that MP’s who have constituencies in Cornwall or Leeds, Manchester etc cant go home after a day at the office it seems to me that there are thousands of folks who live in the South East of England who commute daily to and from London and most of these manage to get into their office’s by 9 am so I don’t accept that MP’s who live within the same distance of London as their commuting constituents should have a second home. Parliament no longer sits through the night so even with a late night most of them should be able to catch the late train home if not bed and breakfast would be a perfectly acceptable and legitimate expense. The added bonus of this would be that they would have to suffer the same trials and tribulations as the normal passenger and maybe then something would be done about the state of our railways and possibly even get the trains to run on time more frequently than now.
Just as an aside to this post what most of you wont know is that for some strange reason any MP who is also a Minister HAS TO HAVE a London address, again I can understand that for senior Ministers but quite why the Minister for Broom Cupboards and Loft Ladders is required to live in London I don’t know.
Now the expenses furore has died down and the Government have said they will change the system although only time will tell Journalists (spit) are moving their attention onto the outbreak of Swine Flu. As usual they are all becoming excited at the prospect of a pandemic and the reporting of it is becoming more and more hysterical bulletin by bulletin. If you believe what they are saying more and more people are becoming infected and we will all be dead in our beds by the Autumn. The figures quoted are of course the total number of people who have caught the disease since the outbreak began not the number currently suffering from it, and in any case 750 cases out of a population of 55million is hardly cause for hysteria. If you stuck a nought or two on the end of that figure I could understand the concern. All this assumes of course that in the meantime Mars doesn’t collide with Earth sending us all into oblivion !!

I am off this evening to a briefing on something called The Working Neighbourhood Fund, this is a fund that among other things is supposed to help people find work or give them the skills to help them find work.
I shall find whether this is true or if it is just another excuse to line the pockets of the Consultants and Middle Class Groupies and Luvvies who seem to be employed by these schemes in great numbers and who spend their time telling the proletariat what they should or shouldn’t be doing but not actually achieving any positive results.

2009-06-07T19:22:00.002+01:00

Well it’s been a busy week for me after a week doing nothing but lazing about.
A few meetings and lots of running around in the lead up to my Stepdaughters wedding on Friday. This was held at The Blazing Donkey near Sandwich and we were treated to an overnight stay at the hotel. Apart from the fact that Stepdaughter and new Son-in-Law were very happy and it all went well I will gloss over the value for money or the lack of it at a venue that is supposed to be one of the best.
Saturday saw me at a celebration of ten years of Richard Nicholson’s leadership of the Labour Group on TDC. Members of the Group past and present were in attendance to celebrate the past ten years. We reminded ourselves of some of our achievements, who for example remembers York Street in Ramsgate as it was? We were told that it was not possible to do anything about it but we did under Richards’s leadership, Christchurch University was another thing that was achieved under him, we started the process that led to Westwood Cross including a new road layout that was promptly abandoned by the Tories in 2003, then when the Sally line left it was Labour under Richard Nicholson who had the replacement ferry company in place the next day these and many other things have been forgotten in the furore over MP’s expenses that have resulted in the bad showing and awful results for Labour in the Elections.
Meanwhile over on Michael Child’s blog he accuses Labour Bloggers of not talking politics so I will say that sadly the real issues have been overshadowed by this scandal and the very real achievements of the Labour Government have been forgotten.

Consider the following real issues.

* David Cameron's Conservatives do nothing but talk Britain down and would cut support for families during these tough economic times.
Labour is investing now so we are best placed to take advantage of the upturn when it comes. Labour believe that we should grow our way out of recession not cut our way out of recession.

* David Cameron and George Osborne are alone in believing that we should not grow our way out of recession but cut our way out of recession. Their approach is isolated, incoherent and unfair - they would cut help for families.

* At a time of recession the Conservatives have said they would:

* Cut Labour's guarantee that all people under the age of 25 who are unemployed for a year will receive either a job or training.

* Cut this year's £60 cash boost for pensioners while threatening to do away with free TV licenses and free bus passes for the elderly.

* Cut support for families under real pressure who need to defer interest payments so they don't lose their homes.
* Scrap the right for every patient to see a cancer specialist within two weeks if they are suspected of having cancer.

* Cut £160m from crime-fighting budgets - the equivalent of losing three and half thousand police officers.

I wont even mention the Ramsgate Town Council election results other than to say that already the maneuvering and skullduggery to be appointed Mayor has started.

Well I am back,,,,

2009-05-31T19:20:00.000+01:00

Well, back from my holiday renewed and refreshed and ready for whatever the world can throw at me for another year.
Of course holiday’s are a time for relaxing and generally slobbing about, none of this activity holiday lark for me, dossing about by the swimming pool suits me just fine. This of course involves wearing a swimming costume, having dutifully packed my trusty knitted woollen swimming trunks (older readers will remember those go swimming, get out of pool, trunks fall down due to weight of water retained in trunks!) I was smartly told no way was I going to wear those so a trip to a well known sportswear retailer was duly convened. Now call me old fashioned but for swimming I like swimming trunks but apparently you cant buy those anymore unless you want to spend a months wages on a pair of what Olympic swimmers wear, you have to have bathing shorts. Shorts of course is a misnomer, shorts as the name implies should finish somewhere between your groin and knees but today it seems to refer to anything that finishes short of your ankles, or something that looks like Eric Morecombe’s boy scout shorts in that memorable sketch. “Its fashionable” I am told, well I couldn’t care less, I flatly refuse to walk about wearing something that looks like a normal pair of trouser that have shrunk in the wash. I am old enough to remember the way that younger brothers and sisters had to wear hand me down clothes and how they never fitted properly now young people pay small fortunes for ill fitting ridiculous looking clothes. Why do kids who go skateboarding have to wear trousers with the crutch flapping round their knees? Not only do they look silly they must be bloody uncomfortable.
Of course being on holiday also involves eating out, on arriving at a restaurant you are presented with a menu, most dishes nowadays are given fancy names and equally fancy prices but when you enquire of the waiter what exactly is this dish you are given some arty farty fancy dandy explanation but when you reduce it to basics is it one of two things, stew or grilled meat, after finishing your stew or grilled meat that has been stewed or grilled with some unmentionable, unpronounceable and virtually inedible sauce laced with god knows what strange herbs you come to the coffee. Now this in itself is a journey into the unknown, when you ask for “coffee please” you are given a choice, just from memory there is a choice of, Espresso, Cappuccino, Espresso Lungo, Espresso Americano, Ristretto, Latte, Macchiato, Doppio, Mocha.
“ Err, no thanks, I JUST WANT A CUP OF COFFEE,,,”
“ Well Sir we have Espr,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,”

“ Look forget the coffee, bring me a cup of tea please”

“ Would Sir like Assam, Darjeeling, Ceylon, Formosa Oolong, Souchong, Lapsong, Bing Bong, Sing Song or Ying Tong”

“ look, forget it, just bring me the bill.”

Which brings me to the point of this post and that is the interpretation of modern language ie,
Latte, Espresso etc means you have just paid to much for that cup of coffee,
Lapsong, Suchong, Ding Dong etc means a bloody expensive cup of tea,
Fashionable means you are about to be ripped off for a piece of tat that makes you look like a complete and total wally.

A little bit of politics

2009-05-08T14:09:00.002+01:00

A bit of politics today with the upcoming set of elections looming but first a nod in the direction of Simon Moores who has been elevated to TDC’s Cabinet to replace the sacked Jo Gideon. I suppose that many people especially in Westgate had high hopes of our Simes when he was first elected the TDC. He was perceived to be one of a new breed of Tory who would stand up to the Leadership and tell it like it is but he seems to have been sucked in and now sits within a Cabinet that has overseen a series of disasters and non actions and will have to sit by as the Council continues to lurch from crisis to crisis unable to stand up and be critical. This of course assumes that the notion of Collective Responsibility has been explained to him!
A bit closer to home is the small matter of elections to Kent County Council and particularly Ramsgate Parish Council.

I am told that the BNP are putting up a candidate in Ramsgate, what they seem to have overlooked is the fact that many of Ramsgate’s residents fought to defeat a fascist party in Germany and will have no truck with people who dress themselves up as patriots but are no better than the Nazi party in Germany during the 1930’s.

On a rather more serious side there are some well known ‘names’ appearing on the statement of persons nominated posted outside TDC’s offices.
Pat Doyle and Peter Landi who have asserted their independence and disinterest in party politics on many occasions have appeared as official Tory candidates. To those of us who are veterans of Ramsgate political scene this comes as no surprise whatsoever.
Also poking his head above the wall is one Eric Easton, during the time he was a District Councillor several rumours were circulating about him and his business dealings, as with all these things they turned out to be nothing more than rumours, what is an undoubted fact is his reluctance or inability to actually come to a decision, I can remember that whenever a difficult or controversial decision had to be made it was always Eric who was the first to propose that we had yet another report to add to the several we already had.

Rather more amusing is the fact that G.O.D. aka Gerry O’Donnell has put his name forward as a candidate in the Ramsgate Parish election. Despite assertions about candidates in every ward, a strong group of people, blah, blah, blah it seems that Ramsgate First can only muster one candidate and that is, err their Chairman, Deputy Chairman, Secretary, Treasure, Committee and total membership of err, erm, err ONE !!!
Of course non of the other usual suspects have put their heads above the parapet to test their somewhat bizarre policies and theories on the voters. As usual these people are very quick to criticise Councils and Councillors and tell everyone and anyone how much better, cleverer, wiser and more knowledgable they are but when push comes to shove they dont have the courage of their convictions, or maybe they are all so clever they have managed to get their nomination papers in late !!

I don’t feel quite so grumpy now.

Grump, Grumpy and Grumpier

2009-05-01T20:51:00.001+01:00

My grumpiness has been particularly active for the last couple of weeks due to several factors.
I had to attend an interview at the Job Centre because after 11 weeks out of work I havn’t found a job. Clearly the real world hasn’t caught up with these folks yet, they obviously havn’t noticed that unemployment is rising and the Job Centre have had to open up another two signing points to cope with the increase locally. Anyway the guy I saw was rather more in touch and a fairly realistic interview followed, up until the point that is that he asked me if I had thought of using some thing called a Work Trial. The way this works is that if you see a job you fancy you apply for it and enclosed one of the cards they give you for the prospective employer. You then get to work at a job for two weeks to see if you like the job and the employer likes you, great, smashing, super you might think, well yes but the only snag is that you don’t get paid any wages !!! So to summarise an employer gets two weeks free labour, says you are not suited, please send me someone else. Shades of the discredited YTS Scheme methinks.

‘Er Indoors has been hassling me to try and repair the leak in the pond for some time now so I decided to make the effort, now its not that hard to find a leak is it ? fill pond up, watch edges for bubbles coming in through leak in liner, drain some water from pond, repair leak, refill pond. After several hours on my hands and knees crawling round the edge of the pond I couldn’t find any evidence of a leak despite the fact that the water was going down. To cut a long story short and after trying several coats of pond paint to no avail The Domestic Authorities decided that a new pond was the solution. Apparently ‘we’ wouldn’t have much of a problem doing it!!
So I got dragged round various pond selling places to choose a new preformed liner that was roughly the size and shape of our existing pond, we eventually found one that was near enough and got it home. It was at this point it became obvious that the one we had bought was considerably deeper than our existing pond. So not a problem….’we’ could dig it out. < bigger sigh> so in the interests of marital harmony I set to work with my shovel, due to the necessity of moving the pond around to accommodate the shape I had to dig out some of the existing rockery that bordered the old pond. This in turn now looked ‘funny’, back to work with my shovel to completely dig out the rockery, this of course now leads us to something to replace it,,,result is that we have a big bag of pea shingle delivered 900kg worth that has to be carried from the front of the house to the back and spread out. It was then decided that as we have several bamboo bushes along the fence we should have a sort of Chinese Feng Shui garden shape, this means that we now have to buy some bamboo rolls similar to log rolls to create a border around the shingle. Nearly two weeks later what started out as a simple job for a couple of hours is finally finished. It is Sods Law that these things always take on complications and take a lot longer than originally planned.

I also got dragged around the supermarket the other day and was surprised to see on sale breakfast bacon, breakfast orange, breakfast eggs, breakfast tea and something called salad leaves, what ever happened to bacon, eggs, tea, orange juice and lettuce? Is this yet another example of the creeping Americanisation of our society.

TV Chefs have also been taxing my patience lately, they all seem to have taken to messing around with classic regional dishes and ‘improving’ them, the Spikey Haired one who apparently went to Broadstairs College has taken some Caribbean dishes and 'improved' them, the dozy Canadian has been messing with classic Italian food and others have been busy interfering with various foods that have stood the test of time. In my opinion these people are no better than the arty farty pretentious types who tell us that the Turner Centre will improve our intellect and social outlook as well as curing all Thanets problems at a stroke.

On a brighter note I managed to escape for a weekends fishing with a couple of friends of mine at a place near Ashford, the weather was really decent and we caught fish as well. The positive side of this is that these guys have no interest in politics at all and we spend most of the weekend talking about anything and everything except politics, they are also merciless in taking the mickey out of me if the occasion demands it.

As you will have read elsewhere Richard Nicholson has stood down as Labour Group Leader after ten years of service to the Labour Group. I count Richard among my closest friends, indeed he was best man at my wedding and he shared with me in confidence his intention to stand down several months ago. So any talk of a coup is misplaced, misdirected and should be discounted. Ten years is a long time to carry the responsibility of leadership and Richard can now take a well earned rest and spend more time in his garden that he loves so much.

Another Grumpy Day !!

2009-04-12T12:14:00.000+01:00

I have just got in from being dispatched tout de suite and with much alacrity to the shops to avoid an Easter disaster, (no Yorkshire pud with the beef) as we had no eggs. Apart from the roads being virtually deserted I had completely forgotten that it was Easter Sunday and therefore nowhere would be open. The newsagents was open but that is run by a lovely Indian couple Soo and Ram for whom Easter has no meaning apart from profit from selling Easter Eggs. All the other multinational running dog capitalist conglomerates were shut apart from that is the Co-Op.

What a sad reflection on how much our standards and principles have declined since the founding of the Co-operative Societies by the Trade Union and Labour movement many of whose beliefs were founded on religious principles, indeed it is often said the Jesus was the first Socialist, that the only shop open for business is the one whose roots are to be found in those beliefs and principles.

I can remember when I was a child the only shop to be found open on Good Friday morning was the village baker who opened for an hour to sell hot cross buns (proper ones of course, not the rubbish you buy today) apart from that nowhere else was open. There were no papers as printers had the religious holidays off, butchers, bakers and others all closed over Easter, Christmas, Whitsun and other Bank Holidays. These holidays were a time for rest and relaxation and spending time with your family but sadly now with the advent of 24/7, 365 days a year trading and power advertising any time off work is seen as an opportunity to sell you something and get you out in the garden building a patio that you don’t really want but have been convinced by one of the TV gardeners (usually sponsored by one of the large DIY stores) that you simply must have or poisoning yourself with a barbecue (suggested by a TV chef usually sponsored by a supermarket) by cooking frozen food from the freezer that you bought on the last Bank Holiday.

I could go on all day about the much vaunted good old days ( I remember them well, Typhoid, Ricketts, Diphtheria, Polio, mass unemployment and poverty etc, etc.)
But I wont, suffice to say that now I have time on my hands and I have the chance to become more sullen and morose by the day and even more grumpy than usual I find that I am more and more hankering for a return to a society with basic decent values, simple good manners, proper table manners (a particular bugbear of mine) and a lot less of the ‘in your face’ attitude of advertisers, newspapers, teenagers, prime time television programmes, (and that’s another appalling American expression) and a lot less of the me first materialistic attitude that Thatcher spawned.
**********************************************************************************
Quite how I got from a trip to buy some eggs to a rant about the Thatcher Generation is beyond me, but then I am a Grumpy Old Man so I absolutely reserve the right to be grumpy as and when I feel like it!

The democratic Process, Part One.

2009-04-09T13:22:00.001+01:00

I went to a meeting last night of the Councils new General Purposes Committee. I had booked Myself in to speak on one of the items, well the only agenda item actually, under Council Procedure Rule 24.1 that allows other Members to attend and speak at Committee’s.
I set off all fired up because I had received a phone call just as I was leaving telling me that I would not be allowed to speak as this Committee was exempt. This came as a complete surprise to me as Members have always been allowed to speak, the only exception as far as I know is Licensing as that is a Quasi Judicial Committee.
Without wanting to sound too grand and full of my own importance I am a democratically elected Councillor and as such should have the absolute right to have my say on behalf of those who I am elected to represent wherever and whenever and about whatever I feel that I should.
So I arrived all fired up and full of adrenalin ready for a massive argument and quite prepared to be physically removed from the building by security if necessary only to have the wind taken from My sails when it was agreed that I would be allowed to speak. I can only assume that it was felt the subject matter on the agenda was potentially embarrassing and no-one should be allowed to criticise the proposals.
At this point I suppose I should congratulate Simon Moores for making a decent fist of his first meeting as Chair and allowing a free and true democratic debate to take place, I hope that he continues to run his meetings in the same vein in the future.
I don’t always agree with him but credit where it is due.
Basically the Committee were discussing the Council’s senior management restructuring and the resulting increase in Senior Officers salaries. I wont go into details here as the report is confidential, suffice to say that it was agreed that the proposals would be made public shortly and Cllr Moores undertook to ensure that this happened.
The only sour note is that Cabinet had already agreed last November that the Council would be bound by the Consultants report before they even knew the content or consequences of it!.
Now call me a Silly Billy but how can you agree to something in advance that you have no idea about or any idea what or where it will lead to.

Angry Old Man

2009-03-27T14:12:00.001Z

As I enter my dotage and have more time on my hands I sometimes worry that I am turning into an angry old man. Not a grumpy old man as portrayed in the tv series but a genuine angry person as I find I am getting more and more angry at the simplest things.
I am currently finding the Americanisation of our society particularly irksome, while I have nothing against America or Americans per se I find that some things really annoy me. I suppose it all started with chewing gum and bubble gum as bought into this country by American Servicemen during the war and it has been a downhill journey since then. Chewing gum is a filthy habit especially if done with the mouth open as seems to be the fashion now amongst the hoodie clad young of today, hoodies are another American import as well.
Spelling is a good example of how creeping Americanisation is affecting our society, as someone who dabbles in HTML having to remember to spell centre as center or colour as color or programme as program irks my ire beyond belief. And why oh why do supermarkets (another American idea) only sell large packs of everything. At one time you could buy a pound of sugar, three eggs, a quarter of butter and a whole plethora of other things in quantities suitable for single people now you can only buy in packs suitable for families of five or six, of course in America you can only buy large packs so rather than waste it they eat it, that and the dreaded fast food outlets that have now arrived in the UK probably explains why Americans are the most overweight people in the world it also goes to explain why we ( the Brits ) are fast catching them up in the obesity stakes. Yet another example is found in this Daily Mail story, The Daily Mail is not a paper I read normally but saw this from a link on a website I use. Ignoring the debate about whether it right for young girls to be dressed up in small versions of 20 somethings clubbing clothes apparently it is normal in America to have child pageants where your kids are dressed up as mini adults and paraded around as some sort of trophy or show horse, also ignoring the fact that this is clearly some sort of posh dysfunctional family, I mean who would call their children Bronte, Merrily, and Bridie, the whole piece is littered with Americanisms, Mom, chores, sleepovers, Play-Doh (I always thought dough was spelt dough and Doh was the expression Homer Simpson makes)
My Grandchildren now tell me that they no longer wear trainers but sneakers, they don’t go to the pictures but catch a movie, go to the drive through or thru to get burger and fries.

They will be telling me next we are going on vacation!

Gee, thanks Gerry,

2009-03-19T17:29:00.002Z

By now most of you will have heard the dull thud as your Council Tax bill drops through your letterbox. I daresay that the booklet that comes with it is along with Adscene one of the quickest items sent to the recycling bin but time should be taken to read it as it reveals a very interesting fact.
As a direct result of Gerry O'Donnells half arsed, half baked, cock eyed scheme when he conned a lot of old people into thinking they were going to get the old Ramsgate Council back. A quick look at page four reveals that the increase in the precept for Ramsgate is a massive 43% although not a lot in cash terms, £3.87 increase for a band D property, in terms of a percentage increase it is huge. The ONLY reason for this is that money has to be in place for all sorts of things before the Parish Council is formed. So we have a 43% increase before they have even been elected and held a meeting !! As there is no cap on how much a Parish Council can increase its precept this is I fear a precursor to some obscene increases in the Ramsgate Tax if the barking mad party wins control.

Talking of barking mad and Council Tax I see that Tim nice but dim Garbutt is
advocating a Council Tax strike. I can only assume that he enjoyed his sojourn at one of Her Majesties Hotels that he wants to go back for a second stay!

Well,,what can I say,,,,,,,,,,

2009-03-16T20:27:00.002Z

Well, I have just returned from the so called hearing into the events at The Woollen Mill shop in Margate last year.
I say so called hearing because the whole thing consisted of the Chairman reading out a series of pre prepared statements. Not one witness was called, no discussion took place on the ‘evidence’. It could not by any stretch of the imagination could it be called a ‘hearing’.
This charade was open to the public presumably so that the populace could see justice being done. There were in fact quite a few members of the public there as well as some Labour and Tory Councillors and a couple of reporters. An inauspicious start was made when it has been decided beforehand that microphones were not going to be used so people in the public gallery couldn’t hear what was going on. As I said the Chairman then read out the script and the Committee decided to retire to consider their ‘verdict’ and what sanction ( if any) to apply. At this point the Chief Executive decided to intervene and instructed that the members of the panel should sit at seats with microphones and use them, hitch number one was that the cupboards where the on/off switches are housed were locked ( why) so an Officer was quickly despatched to get the key,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,key duly arrived and cupboard was opened, all to no avail, wrong cupboard,,,,,,,,,further rushing around to try and find the right key then followed, in the meantime the panel had returned to deliver ‘The Verdict’ and ‘The Sanction’.
The Chairman strode purposely to the front of the panel to address the assembled multitudes (as the microphones were still not working) again reading from a prepared statement she began to read the verdict that consisted of a repeat of the previously read bits of the report until,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

SHOCK,,,,HORROR,,,,STOP THE PRESSES,, HOLD THE FRONT PAGE !!!!

Councillor Ezekiel had been found guilty of two breaches of the Code of Conduct and Councillor Latchford was guilty of one breach.

This of course was one of the first things the Chairman had read from the prepared statement way back at the beginning. So why had we sat through nearly two hours of tosh ?
Anyway on the much anticipated Sanction.

In view of the fact that Cllr Ezekiel had apologised the sanction to be imposed was to be a censure.
In view of the fact that Cllr Latchford had apologised the sanction was to be nothing.

In the words of Katherine Tate’s character Granny Taylor,

What a fucking liberty.

We Always Told You So !

2009-03-06T10:10:00.000Z

Today’s news that there has been an unofficial blacklist operated by construction companies comes as no surprise to those of us who have been involved in the trade union movement. We have long suspected that such a list operates despite denials by construction companies spokesmen. What is worrying is that the firm that acted as a sort of clearing house for this information acted with total disregard for the Data Protection Act and shouldn’t have held this information in the first place, add to that the weak and flaccid response from the so called watchdog, The Information Commissioner and you will agree that the Tory based Establishment hasn’t changed much.

This week also see’s the 25th anniversary of the start of the last major miners strike. Much has been said and written about those events some of which has since been proved to be true. Also come true is Arthur Scargill’s prediction that there was a policy to destroy our mining industry in Britain. Even last night and this morning there were a couple of the fat, bloated spokesmen from the Thatcher era denying that there was ever a policy of smashing Trade Unions and major industries.
I wait with interest for March 2014 when the 30 Year Rule will allow cabinet Minutes from that time to be released!

Good News, Progress and Blog Spots.

2009-03-05T18:39:00.004Z

First the good news, as I mentioned in a previous blog Newington Community Primary School where I have the privilege of being the Chair of the Governing body has been awarded an OFSTED rating of GOOD with some outstanding features. This is due to the hard work of all the staff from the school caretakers, dinner ladies etc right up to the Headteacher, but the people who contributed most are the pupils. They have shown that by being given good teaching, strong but fair discipline and providing decent facilities any school can overcome previous difficulties. I am immensely proud to be associated with this school and it is a real poke in the eye for many people who constantly write Newington off as a desolate place ridden with ‘feral children’ and ‘giro munching wasters’ to quote one particularly unpleasant individual.

You can see the full report here.

I continue to wrestle with ‘The System’ without much success, I am particularly pissed off with insurance companies at the moment. As I have written before I have payment protection insurance supposedly to cover unexpected sickness or unemployment. These people want all sorts of information from me that has been provided usually by return of post and despite my speedy return of the information I find that nearly two months into the process payments are still coming out of my ever diminishing bank account. I have this morning phoned these providers and having struggled through the morass of people reading from flow charts finally got through to decision makers and err, erm, err let off steam at them. They have been given seven days to refund the payments that they insured me against having to make or I am going to the FSA, the Banking and Insurance Ombudsman and anyone else I can think of. I have all the glossy leaflets they send when you make a claim making all the promises about ‘peace of mind’ ‘speedy resolution of your claim’ ‘keeping you fully informed at all stages’ etc, etc, blah, blah, blah, it all seems to be empty rhetoric and false promises.
No doubt there will be those who will think they are politicians in training. !!!!

A quick tour of the Blog’s reveals that ECR is off being an international jet-setter living the high life in Canada, well actually he is probably working the clapperboard on some obscure travel show for an even more obscure cable TV company !
Dave Green is still keeping his head down for some reason.

Elsewhere good ole Smeghead is becoming more and more desperate in trying to drum up support for his futile attempt to close Manston Airport, interestingly on a door knocking exercise in Newington Ward last weekend one of the questions we asked folks on the doorstep was if they had any issues with the Airport. There are no prizes for guessing that there was general support for it!

Bertie Biggles keeps up the pressure on TDC this time with an item about the long awaited Standards Committee hearing into the alleged goings on at a certain Wool Shop in Margate. Well yes there were letters sent out including to the Press who haven’t used them for whatever reason. The whole process has taken an inordinately long time for some reason. I have long thought that complaints about Members should be dealt with by a neighbouring Authority to ensure that there is no leaning on Members of Standards Committee to come to the 'right decision'.
Not that I am suggesting that this may happen in this case!!!
I am not going to comment further on this for fear of being accused of prejudicing the outcome.

His next item concerns a Cabinet Member and her apparent invisibility in her Ward, hopefully her Satnav will be working next week as she is due in Newington for a meeting about the demolition and rebuild of The Centre.

Tony Flaig, who I had the pleasure of meeting a couple of weeks ago comments on the appearance of bee’s who seem to be able to get to work without having to rely on the train services in the South East that ground to a halt after a very frosty night. Not much change there then. I worked on what was then called British Railways for 20 years leaving in 1984 and despite the advances in technology in many areas it seems that the problems caused by a bit of frost is still beyond the wit of boffins to solve.

Mark Nottingham points us in the direction of a BBC programme tonight. Judging by some of the replies to his post a lot of folks don’t understand exactly what an elected Mayor is all about, maybe they should do some research before passing comments.

Michael Child has some interesting stuff on his blog. I find the one about Ramsgate library a bit puzzling though, I can understand locking valuable books away but to hide what are I understand copies seems a bit bizarre. I know Michael has some interesting stuff in his shop, now I have time on my hands I must pop in and browse.

Bugeting, Penny Pinching and Generosity

2009-02-27T12:38:00.002Z

Last night we had the Council’s budget meeting to set the budget and Council Tax for the coming year.
First item of business was to elect a new Chairman for the rest of the Council year following the handing of the poison chalice of the Planning brief to John Kirby. Council was unanimous in supporting Margaret Sheldrick as our Chair. I have to say that she made a pretty decent fist of her first meeting and at least seems to have a basic grasp of Standing Orders and the Rules of Debate!
So it was on the main business of the evening, in a previous post I referred to the political bile that spewed forth from the Leader and in an attempt to get some facts out into the public domain I asked Martin Wise the following question:-
‘In addition to the Formula Grant I understand that the Council receives a number of other funding streams. Please can you tell me how much the Council will receive by way of specific grants (including miscellaneous revenue grants) and area based grants in 2009/10 and how much capital grant funding the Council has been allocated for next year.’

The Formula Grant is what used to be called the Rate Support Grant and the Council gets its revenue funding from 3 main sources:-
Government Grant £17.7M
Fees and Charges £7.57M
Council Tax £9.52M
The Council also gets a lot of other money from Government by way of extra grants, I won’t bore you with a list but suffice to say that in total over an extra 7 million will be pumped into Thanet via the Council this year. If you add to that the many millions spent on upgrading and improving our school buildings and facilities, our health care services by way of new Health Centre’s, improvements to our Hospital and extra Doctors and Nurses, the planned extension to the East Kent Access plus the money paid to third sector organizations you will see that far from neglecting Thanet, Government has recognized our unique and special problems and has provided much funding to address them. Of course much more needs to be done and local Labour Councillors will continue to press for extra help.
Martin Wise was a bit sheepish about the extra money and listed a few of the smaller amounts received but the inescapable fact is that he was a bit embarrassed about it.
The debate then moved on to the Budget itself and an amendment was moved to remove the £10 charge being imposed on disabled peoples carers to get a bus pass to accompany disabled people on the bus. This charge is estimated to raise £1000.00 in a year, yes just a thousand pounds which in overall terms on a budget of over £34 million is a drop in the ocean. Prior notice was given of this amendment and in private conversations with some Tories they were very supportive of this move but on the night it was voted through with 100% support on the Tory benches. I suspect and hope that this mean and penny pinching move will come back to bite them.
To rub salt in the wound we were also discussing the Scheme of Members Allowances, although it was agreed not to increase the basic allowances and Special Responsibility Allowances overall several additional payments were agreed. It seems that Cabinet Members are to get two ‘Lead Members’ each and these people are to be paid £500 a year each, also agreed was the setting up of a General Purposes Committee.
This Committee may or may not meet in the course of a year according to the Officers report but notwithstanding this it was agreed that the Chairman of a Committee that may not meet will receive £1216 a year and the Vice Chairman £279 a year.

So to sum up the Tories agreed that an extra £6495 a year should be included in the Budget and paid to an additional 12 of their Members but £1000 should not be removed from the Budget to help people who care for disabled people.
Incidentally this means that 29 out of 34 Tories now receive an extra sum of money on top of their basic allowance! No doubt in the coming months they will find a way to rectify this situation.

Politics, Politicians and Little Local Difficulties.

2009-02-25T19:52:00.004Z

It seems that two of our popular Thanet Blogs are in a state of cryogenic suspension at least temporally I hope. Both Eastcliff Richard and Dave Green have stopped blogging, both for very different reasons it seems. Poor old Eastcliff Richard has had enough of banging his head against a wall and worn himself out and it seems that Dave Green is suffering a little local difficulty again about something that apparently appeared on his Blog. While I don’t know the gory details of Dave’s problems I do know that the Tories monitor Blog sites both here and nationally for writings that they deem to be political and worthy of complaint to something laughingly called The Standards Board for England. My own view is that this thing was set up to emasculate local Councillors and prevent them from criticising opposing Parties policies in public. While I agree and accept that some behaviour is unacceptable fair criticism and pointing out faults is a perfectly right and proper way to go about things especially if you feel that something is wrong.
It seems to me that a set of double standards is being operated here by the local Tories, there is a concerted and concentrated effort to discredit one particular Labour Councillor at the slightest opportunity yet when the boot is on the other foot and they feel they have in some way been slighted they rush like goody two shoes to report the offender to teacher. They then frequently have the gall to accuse us (Labour) of being political and making mischief.
I also accept that many of the Tories on TDC have never had a political thought in their heads and some even deny that decisions are made for political reasons (so why they then joined a political party is beyond me) the Leadership at TDC are most certainly politically motivated. You only have to read the political bile that spews forth from the Leaders column in the local rag fortnightly to understand that, although I suspect that most of it is written by one PC 49 Roger Gale MP. Incidentally you may also wonder why so much of that column is dedicated to national matters when it is local stuff that Thanet folks want to read in a local paper, I strongly suspect that it is to divert attention away from the ever growing list of failing of TDC to properly serve the people of Thanet and to hide the Thanet Tories own shortcomings.
A quick look at something called The Forward Plan reveals that in the coming months they will be considering and adopting yet another raft of politically slanted policies and strategies most of which have no relevance to and are of even less interest to 99% of the people of Thanet. It does of course give them the chance to say when someone rings up about something “ oh we have a policy/strategy for that” the fact that they have no-one to do bugger all about your problem is conveniently overlooked!

More general incoherent ramblings of a silly old duffer.

2009-02-13T17:18:00.003Z

I had to sign on again this week and what a complete difference to the last time, a friendly face, chatty advisor and all done with good grace and a smile, it was almost a pleasure !!!
Its just a shame that they still havn’t sorted out my claim for JSA yet.

*************************************************************************************

Much has been said and written about the proposal to allow ‘night time flying’ at Manston Airport.
When you remove all the hysterical ranting, ill informed tosh, opinion from misguided folks who claim to be experts on just about every subject under the sun, wild exaggeration and hyperbole carefully designed to create false impressions and spread fear you are left with one inescapable fact there will be four flights a week arriving between 6 and 7 in the morning all the others will be arriving and departing during normal operating hours.
Infratil have said that they will emphasis to the carrier that arrivals should be on Runway 10 (west to east) and departures on Runway 28 (east to west) I would hope that if indeed it is the carrier that has been mentioned but not yet confirmed, their Pilots would be of sufficiently high calibre that they would adhere to the rules. Unless we have a prolonged period of adverse weather most of the arrivals should avoid Ramsgate altogether.
Following the accident in America this morning some folks are already using that as a reason to claim that the Airport should shut completely as there may be a plane crash, following that logic no-one should get in their car, cross the road, go up a ladder as they may have an accident, no doubt there have been several car accidents, pedestrians run over and builders fallen off ladders already today. Lets all just stay indoors and go nowhere and do nothing in case we have an accident, and be careful don’t boil the kettle in case you burn yourself!! Every time we carry out some activity we are subconsciously doing a risk assessment the only difference between that and flying operations is the level at which that assessment is carried out. Accidents rarely just happen they are usually caused by sudden mechanical failure, human error or more usually plain stupidity. SEE HERE FOR DETAILS.
At the risk of upsetting some air freight operators I would suggest that the touted operator has very high standards of aircraft maintenance, their pilots are very well trained and probably not subject to acts of stupidity while in charge of an aircraft.

**************************************************************************************

No doubt ECR is creaming his Gucci jeans at the fact that one of his many obsessive postings has reached 97 replies as I write, no doubt it will creep above three figures this evening as the anonymous ‘ I’ve got a job’ posters get to work posting their bile, vitriol and general corruption of the facts.
To correct some false statements, I DID NOT mention Pilots when listing the jobs that may become available at KIA when speaking, I spoke about semi skilled jobs that people could be trained for locally, I also mentioned the fact that when Infratil originally took over the airport they were using an Aberdeen based recruitment agency to get staff. Incidentally at that time there were only 7 full time employees of the Airport all the others were agency staff recruited locally but employed via this agency in Aberdeen. That practice has now ceased and about 100 staff are directly employed by Infratil at KIA. The point I was making was that that should not happen again and that any jobs created should use local labour recruited by the local Job Centre or a local agency.

****************************************************************************************

Much indignation emerges from members of KIACC about all sorts of things that Infratil and the Council have or haven’t done, before criticising others may I suggest that they take a closer look at themselves and see what, if anything they have done to comply with THESE GUIDLINES They may also wish to consider joining this organisation. Oh ! silly me, the present criterion for membership of the Liaison Group is that an airport should have a passenger throughput of 0.6. mppa or more, given the present attitude of KIACC that is not likely to happen for many years although that is not to say that they (KIACC) couldn’t or shouldn’t approach them for help and advice.

Gissa Job Mister, continued,,,,

2009-02-03T16:06:00.005Z

My apologies for not updating this sooner but I have been a bit busy with the dreaded OFSTED visiting the Newington School, more of that later perhaps.

Again many thanks for the continuing messages of support and encouragement and also for the many tales of woe that have reached my ears, I have ensured that these have been passed on to James Purnell the Minister responsible for these matters, I will post any feedback from him here at some point. I can hear some of you saying “well why don’t you use your connections to get a job?. I suppose I could if I was that way inclined but in my view that is no better than some of the more sleazy things that Politicians of all Parties do to further their own ends. If I find another job I want it to be because of me and my skills and abilities (or lack of them) not because of the fact that I am on nodding terms with some of the so called great and good of this Island.

Anyway I had to ‘sign on’ last Tuesday and duly attended at the appointed time and place. For those of you who fortunate enough not to have had this experience it is a steep learning curve. On arrival you are met by a greeter who takes your collection of forms from you and a gorilla in a Group 4 uniform who tells you to ‘take a seat’ with a vague wave of the hand in the general direction of some seats, nearby is a sort of podium thing that contains the electronic job board. While doing the uniquely English thing of queuing you are expected to look through this list of available jobs. There are a series of touch screens to follow and in theory you should arrive at something suited to your talents or preferences. I wont dwell on the fact that I arrived at a list of jobs for children’s nursery assistants, despite the fact that as a Grandfather of 7 and I am probably uniquely qualified to keep children constructively occupied for several hours I don’t have the bit of paper that says I can so that was a non starter, ironically as I am a School Governor I have been List 99 checked so met at least 50% of the criteria. Also there were several jobs that were described as ‘driving’ I am assuming that from the descriptions attached to those that weren’t specific about being a delivery driver were private hire/ hackney carriage driving jobs.

Having been there, done that, and had my own taxi company I didn’t fancy that at my age, it’s a young mans game. Another really helpful fact was that the White Van Man jobs were all out of the area. So after dutifully browsing the jobs I took a seat in the area indicated and started reading my Thanet Times, starting with the sports pages then the front page then the inside pages and oh I suppose I had better look at the jobs page as well, during this my peaceful reverie was frequently interrupted by a hatch being opened and a name being called followed by people going up to the hatch and receiving wads of cash! It seems that I was sitting in the area reserved for folks getting crisis loans, as I was sitting up taking notice of what was going on around me I could hear a voice calling out my name in the distance so I got up and went to investigate, as I walked round the screen I was met with a sea of desks with privacy screens around them but couldn’t see anyone standing calling my name. Undeterred I started to approach all the empty ones to see who had summoned me, eventually I found the right person who very snottily told me that I had been sitting in the wrong place and she was just about to mark me as ‘absent’, resisting the temptation to tell her exactly what I thought I politely pointed out that I was sitting where the gorilla in the Group 4 uniform had told me to sit but I would know better next time and also know my place. I also thought better of telling her that she had called me 20 minutes late. And so to the signing on ceremony, I was asked a series of questions about what I had done to find work and asked to produce my documented proof, she seemed a bit surprised that I had copies of a couple of letters and emails I had sent to various employers also a copy of what passes for my CV to show as proof. This all seemed to satisfy her and she completed the necessary paperwork and instructed me to attend in a fortnights time and I got the feeling I was being dismissed, not so fast Missus, I want something from you now !! As I have got a couple of payment protection insurances in case I couldn’t work for some reason, I needed something called an ABI 1, well actually I needed four, so I politely asked her for four copies of this form, the look I got had to be seen to be believed, with extreme bad grace she manually filled in four of these forms and threw them across the desk at me. By now I was very pi55ed off with this bints attitude and told her that next time I expected to be seen on time and treated with respect as per the Customer Charter, I also told her that without folks like me she would be out of a job. I am still debating whether to write a strong letter of complaint to the Job Centre Manager, copied to my MP and James Purnell.

It remains to be seen whether she has marked my file ‘Troublemaker’ or maybe I just caught her on a bad day.

Gissa job,,,,,day two.

2009-01-21T15:49:00.005Z

First may I thank publicly all those who have posted here and sent messages of support and good wishes to me, some of whom I profoundly disagree with politically but this proves that what I have always said is true, any differences should be left in the Council Chamber.

To Anon 22.46 on my previous post I would say this, first I resent your implication that I am a scrounger ‘leading the charge’ its quite simple really so I will try and explain in simple words so even you can understand how I see it. I pay car insurance so if I have an accident I can claim from my insurance, I pay National Insurance so that if I become sick or unemployed I can claim from that insurance. Having paid my 40+ years premiums I feel I have the absolute right to claim on that particular insurance policy.
No doubt you are the kind of person who thinks that the greedy, unscrupulous, plain dishonest bankers who got us in this mess in the first place are jolly good chaps. You really should abide by one of your undoubted hero’s words, ‘ we make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give’ Winston Churchill.
So get a life and ask yourself when did you last give something back to your community ?

Anyway I digress,,

Day Two, ‘The Interview’
I duly arrived at the appointed time and place, hair combed, shoes polished and with all the information I had been asked to bring with me. First hitch was the Northern Person I spoke to in Derby had told me the wrong time but to be fair they were very helpful and understanding at the Job centre and I got the feeling that was not a particularly unusual event, so I was asked to wait a while and someone would see me soon.
Hitch number two, the Northern Person I spoke to in Derby had filled in the wrong form and sent it electronically to Ramsgate so I had to repeat the process again using the correct form, it seems there are three ways to claim JSA, Income based, Contribution based or Pension Credit based. It seems that Northern Person I spoke to in Derby had assumed that because I am over 60 I would be claiming Pension Credit. I had mulled over the various options beforehand and had opted for a Contribution based claim, again much credit must go to the Advisor I spoke to who explained the various options and which one would be best for me. As it turned out I had made the right choice and she talked me through the form.
Next was an Interview with a ‘Back to work Advisor’, he asked me what sort of work was I looking for, I explained that I was not bothered as long as it was something I felt I could do and felt comfortable with. Apparently that is not good enough, you have to be more specific, so I said I would like to become a Coronation Programme Seller or maybe a Treacle Bender, I think he realised at this point that I was not taking this quite as seriously as I should. He then asked what skills I had, now I have many skills not many of which would be good qualifications for a prospective Employer, argumentative, obstinate, obdurate, a good talker, champion of the underdog etc, etc, End of discussion really.
So we then went on to the possibility of retraining, fine I said, whats on offer? Well it seems that there are several things you can retrain for some of which are provided free but anything meaningful you have to pay for. At this point I thought it only fair to point out to him that I will be 65 this year and would be looking forward to a well earned rest, although I have tried retirement before, I retired from Ambulance Service at 60 and lasted 9 weeks before I got bored and took the job I got made redundant from.
Although I am used to folks getting my age wrong due mainly to my youthful good looks I would have thought that this Advisor would have looked at my age before setting off on this quest to get me back to work.
Anyway as the regulations require I have to prove I am looking for work I have duly sent off some emails to various companies and wait to see if I even get a response as I understand that the norm is that you only get about 1 in 10 responses from contacts with prospective Employers.

I would have posted yesterday but I had writers cramp from filling in various forms, although I am lucky that I don’t have a mortgage my house is bought and paid for ( take note Anon 22.46 ) these are from Insurers who provide Payment Protection Insurance in case of sickness, unemployment etc and you are unable to pay your credit card bills, hp payments etc, all these forms seem to be about 15 pages long and ask the most irrelevant questions and demand the most outrageous evidence that my previous employer has to provide, some of this may take weeks to obtain due to the processes he has to follow but in the meantime despite the fact I am unemployed I still have to make the payments.

As a result of this I now have my rant for another day, it seems that these insurance payments may be classed as ‘income’ and might affect any JSA I am entitled to.

Although I am now in the same boat as a rapidly rising number of people some folks reading this may get the impression that I am treating this a bit light heartedly, nothing could be further from the truth, its not the end of the world ( that possibility has gone now Bush has left the White House ) but I am not going to descend to the depths of despair and will continue to look on the bright side of life,,,,,,,,

Cue Monty Python,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Gissa a job Mista !!

2009-01-19T12:53:00.001Z

As some of you will know I have joined the ranks of the unemployed, this of course gives me the chance to prove/disprove the fact that unemployed people are raking it in and much better off than employed people.
Day one, signing on:-
How easy is this,,go to Job Centre, sign on, get money.
Well not quite as easy as it sounds, first they have moved the bloody place, second you cant actually get to see a person you have to phone Derby of all places, despite my protestations that I live in Ramsgate and didn’t want anything to do with Derby that is what you have to do, so after having made my protest and discretion being my middle name I decided to leave before I was escorted from the premises. Having got home and calmed down a bit I phoned Derby, after five minutes worth of pressing options 1-3-2-5-8-1-3- Hurrah !!, I actually spoke to a real person, now being a bit of a nerd I had downloaded the JSA Application form from t’internet and filled it in so I was ready to answer the questions this guy threw at me. How wrong can you be !! either they have changed the form or they use a different one for telephone applications, anyway I started this phone call at 11-45 am and finally got off the phone at 12-30. 45 bloody minutes !!!
The upshot of all this is that tomorrow I have to go to the Job Centre to presumably repeat the whole process in front of a person, I also need to take 2 forms of identity, proof of this, proof of that, proof of the next thing, proof of something else, what a palaver, and still no idea if I am going to get what I have paid into for my working life, you have to have the equivalent of 44 years contributions to be entitled to your full pension, etc.
I am initially convinced that the system is designed to put people off claiming JSA or indeed any kind of benefit, for example the Council Tax benefit form is 40 pages long.
My next battles will be with the folks who provide my payment protection insurance for my two credit cards, initial prolonged phone calls indicate that it will not be easy, I will also have to battle with something called The Insolvency Service as my Employer was declared insolvent and was not in a position to pay me notice, holiday money or redundancy pay.

Fortunatly I have a bit of time on my hands now so it shouldn’t be a problem.

Day two follows tommorrow,,,,,,,,,

New Blogs and Nimby's

2009-01-13T18:18:00.001Z

I see that there are some new blogs on the scene as we get going into 2009. First new one is Cllr Mark Nottingham’s blog containing news and views on things in Northwood, well worth a visit I think.

Secondly I see that there is a new anti everything brigade that have decided to enter the blogshpere. They are known by the appropriate acronym of SMEG. As usual they seem to think that all the ills of the world can be laid at TDC’s door, well a large percentage probably can but as usual they conveniently overlook facts in an attempt to either discredit the Council or Infratil or anyone who happens to think that just maybe a thriving Airport would be a good thing and may create much needed employment in Thanet. As with all these NIMBY groups they want to hark back to the ‘good old days’. Well Comrades lets remind ourselves about the good old days, apart from poverty, rudimentary education, poor housing, jobs paying below subsistence wages, mass unemployment we had Rickets, Scarlet Fever, Diptheria, Ringworm, Tapeworm, Polio, Tuberculosis and no state funded hospitals or medicines to treat these conditions.
Had folks with foresight back then listened to the Nimby’s and Luddites we would still be enjoying those conditions listed above.
Try telling those who are looking for work at this time that we don’t need an Airport.

Another Embarrasing Shambles,,,,

2008-12-19T13:35:00.002Z

Another Embarrasing Shambles,,,,

Yet again at last nights Council meeting we were treated to the experience of none of the senior Members or Officers apparently knowing what they were doing.
Casting my mind back to the last shambles, that was the meeting where we discussed the China Gateway application, when a Member called for a recorded vote none of the Officers nor the Chairman were able to say how this should be carried out. It was left to the Chairmans chauffer to supervise the process. Now I dont know why I should feel uncomfortable and a bit embarassed about this but I do, probably because it refelects badly on the Council as a whole and as a Member of the Council I am tarred with the same brush.
So back to last nights debacle, during the course of discussion on Cabinet reports to Council Dave Green wanted to move an ammendement as is his right but the Chair then took what passes for 'advice' from Officers and a five minute delay ensued while they debated among themselves whether he could move his ammendment or not, it was finally decided that he would be 'allowed' to put his proposition. When he had finished speaking further confusion reigned as it now seems that the collective senior members and Officers are unable to understand English and couldnt make out what he had proposed, despite the fact the he had informed the Cabinet Member a couple of days beforehand.
We then moved on to the next item that was to add to the list of roads in Thanet where unauthorised trading is prohibited. A simple enough exercise you would think ! The first cock up happened when the Cabinet couldnt decide whose Portfoilio it was in, I would have thought that common sense dictated that you sort out who is speaking on what BEFORE the meeting and not at the time. The net result was that Sandy Ezekiel stood up and proposed the changes, I had agreed to move an addendum on behalf of the Labour Group and duly gave notice and stood up to move it. During the course of my speech there was sage nodding of heads from the Tory benches and murmers of hear,hear, when I had finished speaking I sat down feeling quite pleased with Myself as my speech had apparently been quite well received. Sandy Ezekiel then stood up and asked Council to reject my ammendement. I was a bit miffed at this as quite clearly the Leader of the Council hadnt understood the difference between an ammendement and an addendum although I had quite clearly said that we accepted the changes and they should happen I was asking for an additional action to happen. When I pointed this out the addendum was allowed.
After this we went on to discuss training for Members of the local Standards Board, while I have no problem with training for Members the proposal actually says that unless a Member has had the training they wont be allowed to serve on that Board.
Now in a democracy that seems to be completly undemocratic and flies in the face of the basic fact that elected representatives for better or worse should reflect the community they represent and not be forced to follow the 'training' that tells you what you can and cant do. Although there are possible legal consequences of a Standards decision they should be pointed out at the time of considering a decision. This has already been introduced for the Councils Licensing Committee, there are also moves to make 'training' compulsary for the Members of the Planning Committee.
In my opinion these moves are deliberatly designed to remove Members from the decision making process and further emasculate us. When challenged, usually by Labour or Independant Members the Officers who tell us that we " have no choice" are actually unable to point us in the direction of the peice of legislation that tells us we " have no choice" but the Tory majority go weakly along with this thus further eroding our effectivness and ability to influence events and policy.
This of course is typical Conservativism, a do nothing, make no decision, play it safe way of thinking then they cant be blamed when something goes wrong.
Every decision the Council makes should be guided by the Constitution and that is why it is important that every Councillor should understand the Constitution and more importantly the Rules of Debate that we work under so if any training is needed should be aimed at those who hold office as Members and senior Officers who's job it is to advise those Members.
What we have at the moment is a shambles of a Constitution, senior Officers and Members who dont understand it and Junior Officers who havnt been trained in its implementation and most back bench Members who havnt a clue about it either.
That is one of, but not the only reason that the Council is currently seen as a complete dogs breakfast.

p.s. I have just got off the phone to TDC's Planning department who tell that although I want a planning application in my Ward to come before the Committe I have to have 'planning grounds' for that to happen. As I understand my role as a Councillor it is to represent the veiws of my constituents regardles of their race, colour, creed, voting intention, background or expertise in planning grounds, I just want to go to the Planning meeting and say my bit on their behalf but now apparently I have to be an expert in planning law as well.

In the Public Interest

2008-12-05T11:59:00.001Z

I am not normally given to commenting on national issues here but the furore surrounding Damien Green MP, or Adrian Green if you read the local rag is getting very confusing.
Plod invaded his offices and home allegedly because of a 'leak' and it seems that they didnt have a warrant to enter his Westminster office although they did have for his Constituency office and house. It also seems that no-one knew the procedure for entering and searching Palace of Westminster premises or if they did they chose to ignore it. It also appears that no-one had any advance knowledge of this apart from some Tory wallah who just happened to have his video camera with him !
So there are several issues here that need looking at, firstly should the Police inform senior politicians when a high profile arrest is about to take place. Is it right that the Press should also be informed in advance as has happened on several ocassions and appears to be a deliberate attempt to cause maximum emabarrasment to the Government of the day. Should the Police have been involved at all as the information leaked is not about National Security or confidential in any way.
Was the Civil Servant merely providing information in response to a question or was there another motivation.
The Police will have access to a lot of confidential personal information about constituents on the MP's computer, what gaurantee is there that this wont be used in connection with any other investigations they may be carrying out?
These are just a few of the questions that arise and the media in their semi sexual frenzy of trying to discredit Ministers are as usual overlooking the facts.
Speaker Martin is going to set up a Committee of senior MP's to look at the whole debacle and lessons that can be learned from it, one of the things they should seriously look at is the question of the impartiality of the Civil Service, we in the Labour Party have long known that the system is loaded against us and the people we seek to represent being loaded as is it is with the old school tie brigade so representative of the Tory party, the Civil Servant who leaked this information is a Conservative Party activist having tried several times, unsuccessfully, to gain employment in some form with the Tories.
Perhaps he thrashed the wrong bottoms at school !!
Of course the usual excuse for leaking information is that 'it is in the public interest' that is the same lame excuse used by newspapers to hound politicians and other public figures, the only interest it serves is the one of self publicity in the case of low ranking politicians or the sale of newspapers.

A Man with a Plan,,,no not that man.

2008-10-05T15:29:00.003+01:00

So at last we have seen some concrete plans from G.O.D. and he has what appears to be a plan, although the similarities between G.O.D. and David Cameron are not lost on me as both plans appear to revolve around the majority funding improvements for the minority.
we now have proposals for,
re-opening the public toilets in Elms Avenue, ( now a snack bar )
re-opening the public toilets in Boundary Road, ( up for sale and made from asbestos )
re-opening the public toilets on the Eastcliff ( now closed and are a storeroom I believe )
re-build the public toilets in Ellington Park and Pegwell.
'Gentryfie' the High Street and Harbour Street with new paving, street furniture, Dickensian style street lights and effective traffic calming.
grants to businesses to 'improve shop fronts'
Buy the old Customs House to use as a museum.
Move the VIC.
Employing an entrepeneur to head up the Town Centre Partnership.
Grants for children to clean up the Town Centre.
A quick look through that list again reveals O'Donnells complete lack of knowledge and understanding of anything. For example the Elms Avenue toilets are NEVER going to be toilets again so where is he going to put his new ones?
The Boundary Road toilets will need expensive stripping out and refurbishing before they can be used again.
The Eastcliff toilets are now in private ownership I think and are unlikely to be available as toilets in the foreseeable future.
Where and at what cost are the proposed toilets in Ellington Park and Pegwell going.
Maybe he hasnt noticed but the High street is already pedestrianised so traffic calming becomes unwanted, has he costed the proposals to revamp Harbour Street and the High street ? if so will he reveal the cost ?
Buy and refurbish the Customs House, that again will be a very expensive project and again, no costs,,
Employing an entrepreneur,,,yeah,, right,,does he have anyone in mind and if so at what cost?
Grants to children to clean up the Town Centre and keep it clean and tidy, has he even considered the Health and Safety implications of this ,never mind is it right to pay children to clean our Town when there are cleaners employed to do this, again his focus is on the Town Centre only and nowhere else.

What has been overlooked in the euphoria about getting a Parish Council is that the figures quoted are for RUNNING COSTS not money that is to be spent on doing things for the Town, O'Donnell is happily spending Taxpayers money but has yet to get elected and is very carefull not to commit to how much he plans to actually spend and so reveal the real cost to Ramsgate Taxpayers.
The fact is that this will ultimatly be an expensive disaster for Ramsgate as the whole thrust of the plans he has seem to revolve around the Town Centre and nowhere else.

Ramsgate Council or G.O.D's dream

2008-09-30T20:08:00.003+01:00

So at last its official, the expected cost of a Ramsgate Council is anticipated to be up to half a million within three years, I suspect that that figure will be reached a lot sooner than that. G.O.D. and his little band of sycophants have completely overlooked several factors in their calculations, for example they still seem to think that Ramsgate Council will be based in a building provided by TDC this is not the case and they will have to stand on their own two feet from day one. I also notice that there are still no firm plans on exactly what they propose to do other than "Ramsgate could not get worse"
Along with others Town centre Councillor Peter Cambell has warned of the possible consequences of a Town Council he said " There is no cap on the precept that Parish and Town Councils can charge their residents."
I have been warning ever since this was first raised that this could mean that the Town Council could raise the Council Tax for Ramsgate as much as they wanted to fund the madcap schemes that they are no doubt hatching. Of course at no time has G.O.D. ever mentioned the bulk of Ramsgate ie Newington, Northwood, Dumpton, Nethercourt and all the other parts of Ramsgate, what are his plans for lets say Ellington Park? what are his proposals for street cleaning in Newington, how do his plans fit in with TDC's warden scheme? What ideas for maintaining Ramsgates cemetaries? As usual we have nothing of substance from Ramsgate First only vague statements about how Ramsgate has been let down, if only he had got off his bum and attended a few Council meetings he would know that all Ramsgates Councillors are vociferous in their defence of Ramsgate and unrelenting in trying to obtain a better deal for the Town.
Below is O'Donnells map of Ramsgate.

Big is beautiful,,,,,,,or is it ?

2008-09-03T19:14:00.001+01:00

At a recent TDC Cabinet there was a proposal for something that is loosely termed ' Better Two Tier Working '. This is probably not widely known about but Thanet Council is in the throes of joining with Dover, Canterbury, Shepway and Kent County Council to seek to provide joint services. You can see the full reports HERE

This has now been set up and has not really got off to an auspicious start with meetings being cancelled due to lack of business, or interest maybe?
Anyway one of the first things to be talked about is a proposal to join together all the waste collection services in East Kent to create a better, more efficient service. While I have no problem with better and possibly cheaper services the whole proposal is fraught with problems not least of which is the fact that each District currently has a different collection method and different contractors, also recycling is dealt with differently as well as each Council offering different recycling methods and types of recyclables to be collected.

For my past sins I have selected to serve on something rather grandly called EAST KENT (JOINT SCRUTINY) COMMITTEE, WASTE MANAGEMENT WORKING SUB-GROUP. The first meeting of this group takes place next week and I suspect it will be the first of a very long series of meetings culminating in some kind of recommendation on how to achieve a joint service.
What, if anything, will come out of this I have no idea but rest assured that I will seek to ensure that Thanets best interests are served and we are not swallowed up by the representatives of the leafy green countrysides of Canterbury, Shepway and Dover.

Where do they get these pictures ?

2008-08-11T21:42:00.003+01:00

I found this while flicking through MSN and found this for and against about British seaside resorts out of interest I started looking then I came to this place, at some point I must go there for a holiday it looks enchanting. The blurb underneath reads:-

Rough diamond
Margate exists on a gorgeous stretch of the Kent coast, with biblical skies, stunning sunsets and a traditional beach. It has many art connections – Turner Prize nominee Tracey Emin grew up here – and a permanent Turner Contemporary gallery is planned for the town. It’s also rich in maritime history and home to a unique underground shell temple. The annual visual art festival, Margate Rocks, is making waves on the UK scene.

Rubbish resort
Margate is on the tip of Kent, dangling precariously into the sea and miles away from more civilised urbans-capes. To put it bluntly, it is full of tracksuits, greasy spoons and breakneck pubs. That Tracey Emin is from Margate is perhaps less important than knowing Tracey Emin left Margate and lives in London instead. And now, according to recent news reports, there are no donkeys there either.

Under the Radar

2008-08-11T19:03:00.003+01:00

Reading through the list of properties to be flogged off to get the Council out of the financial hole they have dug for themselves two words leap out, Albion House, there were 16 possible sites up for sale after being deemed as surplus, it was agreed that Northdown House should be looked at again and Knockholt Road in Cliftonville was removed from the list ( I wonder who's Ward that is in? ) the remaining 14 sites are to be sold 6 after further 'consultation and the rest are to go.
Given that John Kirby threatened to resign if Albion House was sold and publicly stated that he would oppose the sale we hope that even now his resignation letter is winging its way to Richard Samuel, but we wont hold our breath.
So it seems that by making a big hoo hah about the other properties and only referring to Albion House once it is hoped that the sale will slip through unopposed.
Of course given the neglected state of that building it is unlikely that any one in their right mind would take it on as the amount of money that needs to be spent on it before turning it into millionares flats would make the cost of the exercise prohibitive.

Ramsgate Parish Council

2008-05-19T20:15:00.002+01:00

It seems that the erstwhile supremo of Ramsgate ( Gerry O'Donnell )is getting hot under the collar about the lack of action from Cecil Street regarding the setting up of a mini Council for Ramsgate and has fired of a series of emails to anyone who will listen.
On Michael Childs Blog Tim Garbutt has joined in as well. From his incoherent ramblings it is very obvious that neither G.O.D. or T.G understand the first thing about Councils and Local government. reproduced below is my reply to Tim Garbutts post,

An interesting if somewhat off the wall post by Tim Garbutt, like most of the remaining members of Ramsgate First, (those that haven’t left or defected to the Tories) his proposal is full of holes.

1, You cant just vote off Charter Trustee’s they are appointed automatically by virtue of being ELECTED to Thanet Council, and incidentally don’t have the powers that Ramsgate First seem to think they have. Having a small ‘Council’ of 6-10 Members is not very representative is it, no prizes for guessing who would be on it.

2, Why not establish Monthly OPEN meetings of Ramsgate First, also no mention of how this is going to be paid for, Albion House is in the ownership of TDC at present.

3, Any Constitution would be subject to several Acts of Parliament and approval by the Secretary of State. You cant operate as a Council without Statutory Powers.

4, You cant have elections until you appoint a Returning Officer, again no mention of who is going to pay for these elections, estimated cost £60,000.00 about a pound per elector.

5, In the unlikely event that Tim Garbutt ever gets elected to Ramsgate Council eventually he will soon come to understand about Exempt Information and peoples salaries with few exceptions are deemed exempt, unless of course he would like to publish his earnings and exactly how he earns his money for all to see.

6, Fine, but just ask those unemployed in Ramsgate about stopping the prospect of jobs coming to the area. In fact it shows a myopic attitude to taking Ramsgate forward.

7, Again this demonstrates a fundamental lack of knowledge about how Local Government works and who funds what and how the money is raised.

In short it is an ill thought out argument and takes absolutely no account of how any of this is going to be funded, a Town Council will need a Chief Executive, Staff, both office and white collar, accommodation, vehicles, not to mention a lot of money to undertake the various projects that RF seem to think will regenerate the Town.
And how is this going to be paid for?
Well the current precept for Ramsgate wont cover it !

Another nail in the coffin of democracy.

2008-05-02T20:08:00.002+01:00

I was at the Cabinet meeting last night and they were discussing among other things the Audit Commissions report on Thanet Councils Housing service. this was a mixed bag of fair, poor and abysmal and Cllr Michelle Fenner was pointing out the fact that the fair bits had been cherry picked from the report and spun to create a good immpression, she then went on to highlight the shortcomings in the report at which point Ezekiel and Martin wise in particular completly lost the plot and started interupting Michelle and shouting at her. Wise was going quite scarlet with rage and was screaming in an uncontrollable manner while Michelle Fenner was still speaking. Frankly the attitude of Ezekiel and Martin Wise in particular was appalling. whilst I accept the Tories right to disagree with what we (Labour) are saying at least they should do us the common courtesy of allowing us to speak without being interrupted by a senior Tory shouting like an out of control football hooligan.

Reproduced below is a press statement on the matter.

COUNCILLOR EZEKIEL, LEADER OF TDC, TRIES TO GAG OPPOSITION

At last night’s Cabinet meeting, Councillor Michelle Fenner, Shadow Cabinet member for Housing, was prevented from finishing the comments she had prepared on the Housing Inspector’s report.
What she had to say was obviously hitting home and Councillor Ezekiel couldn’t bear to listen to it all.
Councillor Michelle Fenner tried to make the points that she was disappointed in the way that the actual Inspector’s report had been cherry-picked by TDC. The Inspector’s report commented that “TDC’s plans do not always have clear, consistent and stretching targets in place2.
Councillor Fenner stood up at Full council in December 07 and said just that but, at the time, her comments were dismissed. According to a Tory Councillor “it is better not to have stretching targets so that you can be sure to achieve them”. (!!!)
Councillor Fenner intended to point out that the action plan produced as a response to then Inspector’s report needed to be more stringent.
Councillor Fenner also expressed concerns that complaints from TDC tenants did not always appear to be taken seriously nor acted upon. A recent example of this was the fact that a council tenant had to wait 2 weeks and the strong intervention from his Local Councillor to the Acting Chief executive to have his toilet mended which had been condemned by the contractors.
On the issue of affordable housing, Councillor Fenner pointed out the Inspector’s comments that not enough of it is being built because of TDC’s slowness in negotiating Section 106 agreements with the developers.

Ex Cllr Charlie Young

2008-05-02T10:53:00.002+01:00

It was a sad day for me yesterday as I attended the funeral of former Councillor Charlie Young. Charlie was a lifelong member of the Labour Party ( 82 years )and was an example to all of us. Much is written and spoken about local Councillors most of it not very complimentary but just ocassionally someone comes along who sets the standard that we should all seek to achieve, Charlie was such a man. Although he was passionate about his beliefs and politics and spoke with a quiet authority he rarely raised his voice in anger. He was a champion of the underdog and right up to 2007 was fighting for the residents of Salmestone Ward that he represented on TDC.
I learned a lot from Charlie by just watching and listening to him, like him being of the old school I dislike the modern way of politics that seems to be dominated by hype, spin, bluster and image coupled with a reluctance to be honest with the electorate, as he always used to say if you have cocked up just say so and apologise rather than try and cover up your mistake, people will have far more respect for you if you admit to your mistakes than try to hide behind blaming someone else.

We all have to learn from the likes of Charlie Young if Politicians are to become respected again.

CRB Checks for Thanet District Councillors

2008-04-02T18:48:00.002+01:00

Local Labour MP, Steve Ladyman, has asked what Thanet's Tory councillors have to fear from Criminal Record checks following their decision to turn down a request from Thanet District Councils Labour Group that all Councillors should be automatically checked.
Speaking from Westminster, Steve Ladyman said "I am astounded by the attitude of the ruling Conservative Group and can only ask what they have to hide?
Councillors are in a position of trust, they are responsible for our council taxes and for making important decisions on things like planning where their probity has to be guaranteed. If someone has a minor misdemeanour in the past then that shouldn't disbar them from public life but the senior officers of the Council and their Group leader ought to know about it.
Of course, if the misdemeanour is serious, involves major dishonesty, violence, indecency or offences against children then the public should be told and such people shouldn't be councillors."
"One of their excuses for avoiding these checks is that Thanet Council doesn't have responsibility for children in schools. But they do have responsibility for sports and leisure facilities like swimming pools and playing fields and will often find themselves visiting those facilities. Someone with a perverted interest in children would have a perfect excuse to use their position as a Councillor to hang around changing rooms and places were children play and they will, as people with a respected position in society, be invited to events with children. It's just a sensible precaution to have people checked in these circumstances."
"The Tories really need to think again, and I am grateful to Richard Nicholson and the Labour Group for raising this important issue. Richard has asked that members of the Labour Group are checked - the Tories and the Independents should do the same - and if that means we find some skeletons in the closet then so be it."

Labours Deputy Leader Clive Hart added

"As a County Council Member I have been CRB checked, but as District Councillor, I have been at events where I and a number of District Councillor's were surrounded by primary school children.

There are many examples where District Councillors come into contact with children and vulnerable adults through their District Councillor roles.

The fact is, we all know that there are vulnerable people in Thanet who welcome us into their homes simply because we are Councillors and in these circumstances it is essential, both for the vulnerable people concerned, and the community in general, that there is at least an element of safeguard and a CRB check would go some way to providing this.

The report to Council explains that there would be no cost to TDC if Councillors submitted to CRB checks and at it also explains quite clearly that having CRB checks would strengthen our 'community leadership' role and send a clear message to the wider community on the values held by the council.

The comment in the report that 'if CRB checks were implemented any disclosures that may emerge could have significant implications' sums up the situation perfectly and if your Conservative administration refuses this request from our Labour Group of councillors the public will no doubt draw their own conclusions!"

Selling the family silver

2008-03-23T15:10:00.002Z

So TDC has finally come up with a list of properties for disposal during 2008/09. They have also published a document outlining proposed Staffing changes. Both these documents have become necessary due to the financial incompetence of the Tory administration currently in charge in Hawley Street.
Although the document on Staffing changes is confidential it seems that Eastcliff Richard has been shown a copy before even Councillors saw it !! You can see his comments HERE. The document showing the properties to be flogged off is currently only available to Councillors but will be made available to the Proletariat during April I will reveal there are no suprises and included are Albion House, Albion Place car park and the former Motor Museum, Westcliff Hall.

PORTAL HOUSE

2008-02-23T12:46:00.002Z

SAY NO TO PORTAL HOUSE

WHAT IS PORTAL HOUSE ?

PORTAL HOUSE IS A SCHOOL FOR CHILDREN AGED 11-16 WHO HAVE BEHAVIOURAL, SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL DIFFICULTIES.

WHERE IS IT GOING ?

ON THE OLD INFANTS SITE IN NEWINGTON IN RAMSGATE .

HOW CAN I HELP ?

ATTEND THE MEETING AT THE NEWINGTON PRIMARY SCHOOL ON THE 3rd April at 7 PM.

SIGN THE PETITION.

HELP COLLECT SIGNATURES FOR THE PETITION.

TEL 580057 OR 590119 FOR PETITION FORMS

RESISTANCE IS ORGANISED BY YOUR LABOUR COUNCILLORS

Mike Harrison and Richard Nicholson

Blogs Gone

2008-02-14T15:57:00.002Z

It seems the Eastcliff Richard who has been a constant thorn in the side of Simon Moores has had his site hacked. The rivalry between these two has been a joy to behold as Moores struggled unsuccessfully to defend the bigotted, biased, homophobic, racist posts made on his site by both himself and visitors, There are various conspiricy theories about how and more importantly who hacked his Blog, experienced Bloggers who know of Moores and his abilities will have their own veiws on this. For Myself I think it is a shame that ECR has gone and look forward to the day he rises Pheonix like from the ashes.

Appeal for help.

2008-01-30T16:17:00.000Z

Not a nice way to start a new Blog but Bob Ellender writes,

"I was wondering if you could but this up for disscusion on your Blog site appealing for any witnesses. I know plenty of people read your site and and any help finding this scumbag would be great.

On Friday morning around 11.40 my Wife was assaulted and had her handbag snatched in the alley between Newington juniors and Infant schools as she was going to work the police are involved and have taken statements unfortunately she didn't get a good look at his face but remembers he was wearing a black and white jumper and darkish jeans and trainers. He then ran up the alley in direction of the railway but there are loads of ways he could of gone!

I was wondering if you could put something on your blog site appealing for any witnesses the handbag is black and a shiny black purse, two debit cards and loyalty cards for various shops and household keys with two keyrings on a Samsung D500 mobile phone and a small black and white umbrella.

She has received a broken cheekbone which needs to be seen by a specialist at Canterbury Hospital on Friday and is in shock about the event.

Any help would be appreciated."

If anyone has any information at all please pass it on to the Police or email it to
cllr-mike.harrison@thanet.gov.uk and I will pass it on keeping your name out of it.