The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers

The sudden disappearance of the Thanet Independent Group (TIG) website, came as a shock to many readers yesterday. Had their been a catastrophic server crash at Google's Mountain View facility or had the politically-motivated, hacker group, 'Anonymous', targeted  the TIGs in a denial of service attack?

Nobody appears to know the answer but like several John Worrow-controlled weblogs before it, TIG suddenly evaporated from the blogosphere and with it, the vital information that might be required to support at least one of the Standards complaints of many, now in the hands of Thanet District Council.

However, all is not lost and in particular, the valuable political resource and gems of personal wisdom, that the TIG weblog represented, its manifesto and position on vital elements of local policy; more important than ever before. You will have read that all three TIG councillors now hold the most influential positions, being given the Chairs on Thursday evening, of the Council's most important governance committees.

Now, I just happen to have the archive of all TIGs posts from the very beginning and I thought, as a gesture of cross-party cooperation at its finest, that I would rebuild their content for them. It may take a little time of course but you will see from the sidebar and here that we now have a new weblog, www.TIGabout.blogspot.com .

Readers will not only be able to remind themselves of those important policy commitments such as the 'Boy George look-alike contest' for this summer's Minnis Bay Pride weekend or the introduction of 'Diversity Blogging Wardens'  but will now be able to leave (moderated) comments on each of the stories. You may recall that for some strange technical reason, TIG has had huge problems accepting comments on their blog in the past but now I've solved that particular challenge.

So read on and enjoy and don't forget there's a little bit of Tigger in all of us!

How Low is Low

Tonight's annual council meeting confirmed everything I suggested in earlier predictions. So that Clive Hart can cling on to the leadership of his minority Labour administration, the renegade members of the Thanet Independent Group (TIG) have been given the three most influential and best-remunerated committee chairs- the word 'Bribe' was used pejoratively on several occasions during the debate - and no mention whatsoever was made of yesterday's personal attack on a member of the public on the TIG website. Cllr Worrow reportedly told Cllr Johnston it was nothing to do with him.

While Heather Seer was in the audience tonight hoping for some kind of apology from Cllr Worrow or even an acknowledgement of the attack made on his weblog, I have spoken with Rebecca at the Gazette and we may find out a little more about the real identity of  the mysterious TIG agent, 'David Fox', next week.

Labour, struggling under the weight of political denial and a moral deficit, also expanded their Cabinet by one post but rejected an amendment from the floor, not to increase the Members Special Responsibility Allowances, given the present harsh financial climate. What message does Labour's 'generosity', send out to a public who are struggling?.

With the cost to the taxpayer of the new positions for TIG being around £24,000, plus the cost of the Birchington free parking 'bribe' written about here before, we can add the incremental costs of a new Cabinet post for David Green. Labour, who resented the Conservatives cutting the Cabinet down to size to save money, are back to their old tricks of spending other people's money on feathering the nest. I'm sure local bloggers Tony Flaig and James Maskell will add their own cynical views but as I left the Chamber, I said to Labour's Clive Hart, that I consider myself a moral person but one disgusted by the cheap opportunistic hypocrisy of what I saw take place this evening.

Tomorrow, I'm out early flying and so I might write more when I return but given my present feelings over the entire and rather sordid night's business, it's better I think to review what happened in the cold light of day! Postscript.. an interesting analysis by James Maskell here.

Closer to Home

This being a big day for council business, the Annual General Meeting of the Council, I will start with a little Westgate information.

Last week, I was horrified to step-off the train and see a group of young teenage girls from one of our local schools , smoking cannabis on the platform. I called-up the school and told the office but yesterday, I observed a teenage boy, doing a healthy trade in single cigarettes and perhaps a more potent tobacco mixture, outside the same school the girls came from. He's easily spotted, about 16, of school age, no uniform, baseball cap worn on the side of the head and not visibly of local origin.

I've reported this to Inspector Impey at Margate Police Station and he promises to have this worrying issue investigated immediately. I did suggest they pass-by this morning at 08:30 and 'Lift' the lad in question.

On another issue, Ethelbert's Homes has reared its head again, with anti-social behaviour from at least two of the troubled teenagers in its care, causing concern to traders in Westgate's Station Road. I've been in touch with the home after the last incident this month and I'm told that the ringleader has now been 'moved'. I'm sure much to the relief of people in Westgate but perhaps not to his next port of call. I see that as summer approaches, we are once again seeing an increase in anti-social behaviour around the station and outside the Piggy Bank nursery and I am keeping an eye on it.

On another and even less attractive note, many readers have shared their disgust at the response by John Worrow's Thanet Independent Group (TIG), to Heather Seer's letter written to the Thanet Gazette, published in the comments section of my last weblog entry. This veiled personal attack on a leading member of the public and the members of Minnis Bay Watch is beyond any pretense of satire, quite outrageous and exceeds any decent standard of responsible public behaviour. I will be taking copies of this with me to Council tonight, for those Councillors who don't read weblogs to see.

Whether this will prevent Clive Hart from giving TIG the keys to the Council's key committees in return for their vital votes remains to be seen later this evening. I'm told that some Birchington residents may be attending to demand Cllr Worrow's resignation as both Councillor and 'Diversity Champion'..

Nobody Expects

The wind is strong enough this morning to get me home from west of Bournemouth in an hour and twenty minutes; bumpy is an understatement. It wasn't much better getting over there yesterday afternoon either, as I ended-up following the coast, low-level, from Bognor, just to stay visual, below the cloud and rain before heading north briefly across Sandbanks and Poole to land at a small grassy spot in the hills in a violent rainstorm.

Today was a sudden reminder that I'm in a risky line of business, when the banner I was picking-up failed catastrophically 150 feet or so above the ground as I was climbing away. The first sign of this was a lurch and a sudden bleeding-off of airspeed as my nose came-up and the weight and drag of the bundle of washing behind me, pulled my tail down. At this point everything happens quite quickly but seems to be moving in slow motion. A glance at the air-speed indicator shows I'm at the edge of a stall and there's a line of trees ahead. There's zero chance of getting over these and so the decision is an unconscious one while there's still time to recover; My left hand reaches for the emergency release and my right hand pushes the nose down to pick up enough airspeed to climb away and miss the trees.

As for the banner, that drops safely into an adjacent field, which turns out to be a half mile walk to avoid a series of streams and barbed-wire fences. Ironically, I almost filmed the entire affair with my GoPro camera but being short of time, didn't switch it on. Here's the departure towards home instead. You can see the trees that caught my attention earlier.



I was speaking to the manufacturer in the States earlier and this kind of thing is very rare, the last being in about 2006 when a huge Corona Beer advertisement, did much the same thing at Rochester, en-route to Brands Hatch. Statistically, you know there's going to be a problem either with the aircraft or the banner, every thousand hours or so and it's experience that determines whether the outcome is a happy one or not.

Meanwhile, the post brings me even more excitement today, with a letter from Thanet District Council, informing me that Cllr John Worrow has issued a 'Standards Complaint' against me, this weblog and the comments that appear here. This  alleges a 'breach of conduct' and was delivered by hand by a diversity blogging warden in a rainbow-coloured pointy hat!

I'm rather looking forward to this trial by the council's own modest version of the Spanish Inquisition and I'm hoping that sympathetic readers will send messages of support to my cell in Newgate prison while I await the verdict. I should add that I am unable to offer any evidence in my own defense and this includes the complete and unexpurgated political works of Cllr Worrow, on his different weblogs, old, new and discontinued. Once the independent sub-committee has properly assessed the alleged offense, I will be informed of their decision. But who, might you ask, sits on this committee? That's another story of course, and I expect to find myself standing on a scaffold, opposite the magistrates' court in Cecil Square quite soon!



To finish-up for today, the results of my last poll, show that 66% of readers are in favour of the UK leaving the European Union and reflects a level of public disquiet over a failed or failing European project, the politicans in Westminster really need to wake-up to. With forty-eight hours until the annual meeting of Thanet Council, I'm putting a new poll up which offers readers the opportunity of guessing how much it will cost the local taxpayer to keep Clive Hart and Labour in control of the council, in terms of special responsibility allowances to three well-known independent councillors for their vital votes?

The New Statesman

According to an exclusive newsflash on the 'TIG' website this afternoon, not only might I be challenging Bob Bayford as Leader of the Conservative Group next week but I harbour secret ambitions to become an MEP as well!

This revelation comes as news to me, particularly as the Conservative group had its AGM last week and there was no change of Leader, despite the wishful thinking or equally fevered imagination of  Councillor Worrow.

Better still, in order to become an MEP, one has to be rather high-up on on the candidates list - as well as being on it - and in pole position to knock-off one of the sitting MEPs, who won't be that keen on sacrificing those long and tedious lunches in Brussels, together with one of Europe's most generous public-sector pensions, regardless of  which political party you happen to represent.

I see that I'm lucky enough to be parodied in the video clip below, with that 80's Conservative icon, Alan B'stard. I'm quite certain, that given the confused state of Westminster politics and with the LibDems sharing a seat in Government, rather a lot of unhappy people in this country, might vote for him today, if that is, he happened to be a real political character. Maybe next year!

Sunday Ramble

I had lunch on Friday at a restaurant opposite St Paul's cathedral and looking at the other diners, mostly it appears from the surrounding city banks, that the recession that we feel so sharply along Margate High Street, remains quite invisible in some places.

With a little time to spare, I wandered around the great cathedral's grounds, which had of course been cleared, most recently of the 'Occupy London' group that set-up camp there during the winter months but it seems they had another attempt at returning this weekend in advance of the Dalai Lama's visit to collect the Templeton prize.

Returning home later that same afternoon, I made a point of watching who got on the train at Bromley South. I have a theory, I've written about before, that the station, a short bus ride from Lunar House, is a starting point for what one can only describe as welfare migrants, single young men and sometimes women sent to find cheaper temporary accommodation in Margate and Cliftonville, very much against the requests of our own Council.

With only the front four carriages of the train going as far as Ramsgate, it's not hard to guess who might be heading my way in ones and two's because unlike the other passengers, they look very much like people given a one way ticket to nowhere, with their belonging crammed into cheap sports bags.

Is there absolutely no way, I ask, that we can control this flow into our most vulnerable areas of Thanet for the greater good of the majority, who deserve the much wider economic and educational opportunities that go with a properly balanced community and not one constantly weighed down by demands placed upon us by other local authorities and agencies? Perhaps it's not politically correct to ask or perhaps our new 'progressive' Labour administration has some ideas but as the downward process of decline and inward migration in several wards accelerated under a previous one, I'm not holding my breath that any local Party has an effective answer to the mounting pressures of London's homelessness crisis..

I had to call BBC South-east news on Friday night, as they were busy writing Manston's obituary based on what they thought had happened during the previous evening's Cabinet meeting. The 'Beeb' apologised and agreed to correct their piece in the next bulletin but even with a forthcoming Council meeting, this month, to debate the Manston night flights issue, the damage is being done to the airport's prospects as it appears clear that Labour has taken a vigorous anti-airport stance. All this at a time when County and Government are talking-up the need for greater airport capacity, if only to head-off Boris' wild dreams of an island, estuary super-Heathrow within sight of our coast.

Sir Roger Gale, our Thanet North MP, has sent me a letter to publish in regard to Clive Hart's stance on the airport:

He describes as “contradictory nonsense” a letter sent by the Leader of Thanet Council, Cllr Hart, to the Chief Executive of Manston, Charles Buchanan.
“This letter” says the MP “which has been widely circulated by TDC to the press, purports to support the development of Manston for commercial purposes.

In fact and Hart is of course well aware of this, the position taken by Thanet District Council at its Thursday meeting and the disingenuous nature of his letter, fly in the face of the recommendations of TDCs own commissioned report and pays no attention whatsoever to commercial reality.

In pandering to the rump of his party and to a handful of motley “independent” councillors Hart is placing at risk the huge employment potential of one of our greatest available job-creating assets. At the very moment when the Department for Transport is looking seriously at Manston for Olympic and post-Olympic potential development and is considering a further upgrade of the rail links between Manston and London Hart is effectively saying 'We do not want this business'. We all recognise the need to strike a balance between the environment and job-creating development but TDC is not seeking to strike that balance in any meaningful way based upon the evidence of their own report.

These statements tell me that this Thanet administration simply cannot be trusted either to reflect the truth of the report to its own electorate or to put the need for regeneration and job-creating development above partisan short-term populist headlines. The Council not only has no “Plan B.” It does not have any plan at all and it is a tragedy that while the coalition government and KCC, working with East Kent`s MPs, are busting a gut to help to get the economy of East Kent moving in the right direction a bunch of political Luddites appear determined to undermine the effort that is being made in spite of them.

Even at this late stage I urge Hart to re-visit his own report, get around the table with those trying to take Thanet forward, put the party-political agenda of his administration to one side and start to negotiate a serious plan to enable not only Thanet but the UK to take advantage of an aviation asset that the Country simply cannot afford to squander or lose.”

The official Thanet Conservative Group release on the airport's future can be found here.

Next week, it's the annual general meeting of the council and many readers will now yawn and move-on. However, what takes place next Thursday evening, may come as a shock to even the most jaded cynics. Everyone knows three vital independent votes masquerading as a political party of misfits, that would do credit to the characters in the children's TV show, the 'Banana Splits' , will have to be bought, in a Faustian political sense, to guarantee that Clive Hart and the minority Labour Group stay in control. So don't switch-off quite yet!

A Future Uncertain

Some quick thoughts after this evening's Council Cabinet meeting while they are fresh in my mind.

First-off, there's real concern on the Conservative side of the floor that the Labour Group is already making recommendations on the future of Manston airport, in advance of the forthcoming, full Council debate, without sharing these with the Opposition. It strikes me that with such an important topic, some of the more basic principles of local democracy are being thrown-out of the window.

The press release that followed the meeting is somewhat at odds with what actually took place and I'm wondering if perhaps I was somewhere else or simply asleep!

Without any shadow of a doubt though and based on tonight's performance, the future of the island's airport remains a difficult and uncertain one while Clive Hart and Labour remain in control of the Council.

The Royal Sands development in Ramsgate was kicked back into touch again. In fact it never appeared on the pitch tonight and will re-appear in a future Cabinet meeting, where, who knows, it will be pushed back to Council? Anyone care to make a bet?

Margate's QEQM hospital and the future of its casualty, A&E unit was the subject of a report to Cabinet. "Yes" I can see the practical advantages of specialist care units in Maidstone and Ashford but what will go there and what will be left here in Thanet remains ambivalent and this is understandably a cause of worry to many people. For example, there is no fast road solution between here and Ashford for emergency vehicles and it's also a long way to expect families to travel in what is after all, a deprived part of the County.

We will hear more about this in the Autumn but it's true to say that all political parties here in Thanet are united in seeking the best possible emergency care solution available and protecting our hospital's services and will be watching the consultation very closely indeed. In the meantime, wild rhetoric and an alarmist Facebook campaign from one of our councillors only serves to worry the community before the full detail of any plan is available for calm scrutiny and a proper response.

I'm starting to hear how the independents are going to divide up the the key committees and the 'Special Responsibility Allowances'  that go with them, in order to keep a minority Labour Group in control at this month's annual meeting of the Council.

There's another impression of the same meeting on James Maskell's weblog but I may add more later...

A Thanet Watch

Other than offering useful gadgets and you'll see I have a new poll on my sidebar today (please vote if you have any views on Nigel Farage's speech), Blogger produces all kinds of interesting statistics on where visitors are coming from and what they are looking for. I keep a regular eye on these on a daily basis, as from time to time it can offer useful intelligence on a local story or event I'm not aware of.

Some of these can really be quite bizarre or very seedy indeed. So for example, having once mentioned a police raid raid on a brothel in the Canterbury Road in Westbrook, it stands to reason, that searches for local brothels land on my front page and simply mentioning it again here, will reinforce the search-engine traffic from both Google and Bing. So perhaps I'm in the wrong business!

Today, the 'intelligence chatter' suggests something else and that's antisemitism or more accurately, someone is putting in key words and searching through Thanet Life, trying to discover if antisemitic remarks have been made here, at any point in time, against one of our local councillors; among them, searching for any incidence of a racist phrase in a song from a Sasha Baron Cohen movie; 'Borat'.

So, to save on any more wasted energy on the part of the researcher involved, it's not a subject I would tolerate but it does remind me of something else, particularly given the somewhat light-hearted discussion elsewhere on the blogs over whether the island's latest 'Red Top' newspaper, 'Thanet Watch', is funded by the North Koreans!

So here's a short public information film should you ever be tempted to buy a copy. I do realise, that several of the leading characters or is that usual suspects, may look a little familiar if you live in Broadstairs.

The Magic Roundabout

Thursday evening sees a meeting of the Council's Cabinet and there are several controversial items on the agenda that will likely catch the public's attention and possibly enjoy a little vigorous showboating from some independent quarters in the process.

The first of these is the 'Consultation response to the proposed night-time flying policy submitted by Manston airport.' The second involves a report into the future of the trauma unit at the QEQM hospital and the third is the Royal Sands agreement, where the report requested by the last Cabinet meeting will be submitted but this will again be closed to the public because of issues commercial confidentiality.

Another item, which will likely pass most people by is the new 'Neighbourhood Planning Process' which gives greater control to local communities in determining development and Sir Roger Gale recently bought this subject up in a discussion with Westgate traders, over the Sainsbury's supermarket application for Hundreds Farm.

It will be interesting to see if the now familiar 'Magic Roundabout' trend of  the Labour Cabinet kicking back its 'progressive', decisive and difficult decisions to Council will continue.

More recently, I've found one has to arrive at the meeting early or risk the Tiny Independent Group setting-up shop in the Conservative opposition seats.

Given what's on the  Thursday agenda, this is bound to be both  informative and entertaining in more ways than one, as efforts at what you or I might think of as serious debate or cross-examination, are either quashed rapidly by the 'progressive' Chair or become a little incoherent with a little shouting thrown-in for good measure. But come along and see as there's rarely a dull moment in local politics these days!

In Westgate

It's a reasonably pleasant Bank Holiday Monday and while I wait to see if Rochester airport will open, so I can move a couple of aircraft around between here and Brighton - it was waterlogged this weekend - I thought that I would remind readers that if they look down the sidebar of this weblog, they may find some interesting links and resources.

In particular, I've put hundreds of my aerial photos and almost the entire old photo library of Thanet's past online for readers to enjoy, as well as many links to other local websites and resources.

I very much enjoyed Dawn Crouch's local history presentation at St Saviour's church this weekend and look forward to the next one. The town never ceases to surprise me, which reminds me that I must make a small correction to the Wikipedia entry. There are lots of significant gaps in the online information and it really needs an enthusiastic and knowledgeable editor to populate it. You can find the complete Westgate Guide pictured left here.

I have been asked what happened to the homeless man sitting on the pavement outside the Piggy Bank nursery in Station Road on Saturday. First of all, I would like to thank Reg Bell and several of the traders for offering help and Angelo's for giving me a free hot drink for him.

The gentlemen concerned, had discharged himself from a hostel on the Isle of Sheppey and come here, still wearing wearing a hospital wristband. He had spent the night in beach shelter and was clearly on the verge of hypothermia and on investigation, also had a number of other serious medical conditions that required care.

For reader reference the Thanet District Council emergency out of hours number is 01843 292442

Bank Holiday Saturday before the FA Cup Final is not a good time to make oneself intentionally homeless and be sick at the same time but after help from my shadow cabinet colleagues and Swale Borough Council, I managed to persuade a very patient police officer to collect him, somewhat against the gentlemen's will and then have him driven back to Sheppey where he could be given proper care, rather than face the possibly alarming consequences of a night on Westgate's seafront in the condition he was in.

What happened on Saturday revealed a number of deficiencies in the system that need attention, more so perhaps in the present local government climate and I hope to raise my concerns with Cllr Johnston when I next see her on Thursday for a Cabinet meeting of the Council.

The straw poll on the sidebar on the choice of Will Scobie as Mayor of Margate ends today. So far, the results for those who voted reflect broadly what I've seen on the ground, with 59% against the idea and 26% approval, with the remainder indifferent. It's now up to  the incoming Mayor Will to prove the skeptics wrong but I do recommend that in climbing the greasy political career pole, he spends rather less of his time being a front-line Labour activist out of Thanet in the year ahead.

Brian Goodwin Passes Away

I've just been informed that Brian Goodwin, my fellow Conservative ward councillor for Westgate on Sea and Margate Charter Trustee, passed-away at the QEQM hospital earlier this morning. My wife, a hospital chaplain, was in fact due to visit him again on her Sunday rounds but it was not to be.

Brian had been struggling hard against cancer for several months and finally lost the battle this week, even though he had been determined and optimistic to the last.

The Conservative Group has made its own statement through its leader, Cllr Bob Bayford, shown below but I'm sure readers here, will join with me, political colleagues of all parties in Thanet and the residents and traders of Westgate who knew him well, after many years of stalwart public service. in sending their best wishes to his family and his wife Anne at this very sad and difficult time.

Bob Bayford writes:“It is with great sadness that I have to announce the death this morning of Councillor Brian Goodwin.Councillor Goodwin represented Westgate on Sea ward since 2003 and cared deeply for the area and its residents.He will be greatly missed by all his friends and colleagues in the Conservative Group at Thanet District Council and in the wider Thanet community.”

Tom King, Independent Councillor for Westgate and Chair of the Westgate & Westbrook Residents' Association (WWRA) has asked me if I would add a few words:

"Brian was a close colleague and a former Chair of the WWRA and I knew him for over twelve years. He was a jovial character, who contributed his personal energy and enthusiasm in achieving the very best for Westgate and on behalf of the residents and the WWRA, I'm sorry to hear of his passing. He will be missed."

If we can reserve comments on this post for any personal messages of condolence and tributes, I would be grateful.

Flicking Through

In fact, not a great deal to comment on having flicked through the pages of our local 'soaraway' Thanet Gazette this morning.

There's a masked marvel in superhero costume, running around Ramsgate, artistically sprinkling silver glitter on dog poo, to highlight a prevalent problem; a gesture which Northwood councillor, Ian Driver describes as 'inspired'.  I do suspect however, that rather more than a pocket-full of pixie dust is needed to deter some of the more aggressive looking dogs and their anti-social owners I see out walking on a regular basis. I spotted one large animal on the seafront at Birchington this week. I can't recall the breed but I do recognise it as the type you would not want to have anywhere near small children without being attached to a strong chain.

Why, I wonder, are so many people in Thanet now buying what I would call trophy or status dogs? Is this for self-defense in uncertain times or simply to intimidate their neighbours? In a recession, the cost of feeding such large dogs must be prohibitive, particularly as so many of the younger owners, I see out walking 'Buster' during working hours, must be on state benefits of one kind or another.

Back to the Gazette and 'Smudger' picked on John Worrow I see and not me for once, reporting on last week's stormy Birchington Parish Council meeting where he told the Chair: "I'm not an idiot, don't treat me as one." Apparently he has placed himself in charge of the Olympic torch visit, which is nice.

Ian Driver became rather hot under the collar at a comment made in one of my earlier blogs last week which remarked: "Every village has an idiot but only Birchington managed to elect one" and I might add that after Monday's somewhat bizarre mayoral election in Margate, there's quite ample evidence that the lunatics have taken control of the asylum.

Which of course, brings me neatly back to the subject of comment moderation. While I do moderate comments here, unlike other weblogs, I very rarely use it unless bad language or libel are involved. Exceptions of course are my good friend, Michael Child attempting to pull a thread over the edge of the Pleasurama cliff-face and Rick's often wild theories about the IRA and the Deal barracks bombing,  rogue Freemasons and more.

Those readers that bother to visit Thanet (Tiny) Independent Group's rather bizarre weblog, which changes colours and fonts on a regular basis, will see that their best answer to comment moderation is to allow no comments at all, which conclusively proves that everyone agrees with them.

I recognise that some people may occasionally be offended by comments. We are, after all, a society that thrives on being offended at any opportunity and Cllr Driver more than most. However, I do retain a sense of humour and respect what little remains of free-speech when it is used in a satirical manner and I'm simply not going to switch-off comments here, because our tiny band of three local independent councillors want me to.

Finally, I have it reported from several reliable sources, the allegation that the editor of the local paper may be 'improving' Councillor Worrow's letters, because they are so poorly written. I for one, think that this is either pretty outrageous or outrageously funny, should it be true and anyone comparing and contrasting what they see in the paper and what they might read written elsewhere by John Worrow, can only conclude that the familiar childish style, syntax, spelling and use of the English language are quite remarkably different between the two.

Are such public-spirited secretarial services only available to one Party?