Congratulations to Tony on being able to put in a good showing for all of us bloggers. Read what Tony has to say here. The short answer is that it seems to have gone over very well at home.

For this and other updates visit the Thanet Star Twitter page.

Even though he previously said that he could not do it because he had to be in the Middle East for some reason Bob Geldof has arranged to do it a bit earlier so he can catch a cab up to London to get a flight out for his what-ever-it-is out in the Middle East.

So he will be doing the deed at 4.30pm now and then legging it afterwards. Hopeful bloggers are unlikely to get a tweet out of him. However, massive amounts of well due praise for anyone managing to get photo's up within a few hours of the main event.

Brian Sullivan has even managed to get his name in the press as a result.

Read more here (MSN) (or here where MSN probably "nicked" it or here (BBC) or here for deja vu. Yes Press pundits only the BBC wrote their own article but that's just a private grip.

So how do you feel about Saint Bob coming to Margate?

The use of Manston rather than the Thames estuary proposal have been rather hastily reported (not by us though). It seems that, according to The Guardian that Boris Johnson has agreed to no such thing.

So Paul Carter's words as reported by the Kent Messenger are wrong. Really the KM should do more fact checking (especially as I have heard that they often do none at all). Paul Carter is, by the way, the leader of Kent county council. So he too should have known better.

The short version of this story is: don't hold your breath over getting anything big in at Manston Airport and time soon.

If you happened to be looking out of your window you might have noticed a flurry of snow this morning. I'm sure that's not the last of it but for now that might be "it".

Very British of us, talking about the weather. So while we are at it - do you like snow?

Going back through my emails to clear them out a bit I noticed three things (1) I get far too many system notices from accounts I have in different parts of the web. (2) I missed an astounding opportunity to attend an interesting event on the future of newspapers and (3) I failed to notice a press release.

Apparently Thanet District Council have the meeting where they rubber stamped the China Gateway planning application on DVD. I imaging that all one would need to do is write to them and ask for a copy. Let me know how you get on.

Thanet Under Threat by Independent Media Society is now available on youtube.com - but you don't have to go looking for this film because here it is along with an opportunity for you to share you opinion.



What is your opinion on the development going on in Thanet?

Do we have a democratic voice?

Has Thanet's local council become nothing more than an administrator of Central Government?

What can we do?

The site at Thanet Earth made the news recently because a rare archaeological find was made prior to the concreting over of the land. Rather than repeating others with this one here is a video that tells all.

MIGHT NOT WORK



I apologise for the prior lack of usefulness in this video. But KentTV seemed to be having problems with stuff. But that's all fixed now.

Caroline Lucas, Green MEP for the South East (and a blogger), will be leading a public meeting as he principle speaker on 12th December in Ramsgate to discuss "the future for Thanet". On the agenda will be the China Gateway and Thanet Earth as well as topics touching the local airport and Phase 2 of the East Kent Access road.

Caroline Lucas is proposing a "green New Deal" although I have no details as to what that might be. Also speeking will be Hilary Newport of CPRE and John Stewart of Aiport Watch. Local filmmaker Norman Thomas will chair the meeting chairing.

The meeting will take place at half past seven on the 12th December in St George's Church Hall Ramsgate (CT11 8RG).

Are you planning on going? What do you think might be achieved (if anything)? What do you think?

The big buzz at the moment is that the Turner Contemporary have put together a board of directors. The thing that has a few people upset is that so few people from Thanet or even Kent are on this board. However with the likes of Roly Keating and Sir David Manning in there maybe we have a hope of seeing some Turner works in the Turner Centre.

Councillor Clive Hart is said to be "disappointed" that the members of the board have less connection to Margate. Whereas I'm just happy about the minimal influence of our local council. Maybe with actual talent involved now it might be a project of worth.

This also means that the lack of direction beyond product launches and lunches could now be thing of the past. We might even see progress.

What do you think?

Read Tony Flaigs View, the official announcements ...I'll add more as they are published.

In a recent (undated) press release Thanet District Council have announced their "plan" to "save" £4.5 million over the next three years. This plan boils down to "restructuring" so either the council has been running a sub optimal ship for years or they plan to shed some 50 jobs or so.

One also has to ask - if this is so efficient and the savings so easy to find was the council running at excessive cost before?

The biggest proposed saving is to come from a "restructure" of the council’s Revenues and Benefits services, which, they say, is expected to bring savings of around £400,000. Given that the listed savings account for only £950,000 and over four years this is only £3.8 million one must assume that this is per year. So I make that approximately 20 jobs are to go from this "department".

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» Continue Reading: Thanet District Council Stealth Announce Redundancies

David Green's post Tory Crisis at Thanet Council expands on a point he raised in an earlier post Monitoring the Council's Budget in which the short fall in Council budget was seen to be about £2M. The fact that the council has lost us £3M in bad property speculation suggests that we are now going to have to pay for a gamble that went very, very wrong.

Who pays most though?

Sure we tax payers are going to feel the bite as another slcie of our pie is eaten by the council but it is the poor that I worry most about. I have seen and heard some shocking stories of the way the benefits department have treated claimants of late. While the tax payer might loose some of their pie the benefits claimant is in danger not only of loosing the whole pie but retrospectively owing last year's and next's too.

It's all well and good for those (currently) with jobs to call all needy people lazy and wish to cancel all benefits but the truth is that we would be a lot worse off than we are now. Poverty is not an easy problem to address and no trite quickies are going to solve it. Studies have shown that even after the original causes of poverty are removed problems still persist well over a hundred years later. What the council is currently doing with the local benefits system is only making a bad problem worse and likely to last a lot longer.

As it is we are still feeling the effects of the last Conservative budget crises in Thanet and in no way do we need to have our most vulnerable people forced to endure a second one.

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» Continue Reading: Council Treatment of the Poor is Very Poor