Those of you that follow me on Facebook will be aware that I was robbed sometime on Thursday. What is strange about this case is the care taken to get in without breaking anything and the fact that they locked up again after.

All that was taken was my computer. It was a neat and presise job where nothing else was disterbed.

If the break in had been for cash value only they could have carried more which has left not just a few people asking if this was because I have upset local politicians.

In a way I hope this is the case but I have to face the fact that we could be looking at a tallented professional theif who steals to order.

I am willing to pay to see the return of the hard drive with the data intact. However all the leaked documents are backed up off site and the onyl think the thief has done is slow down the release of the story I was working on.

Police have been largely indifferent and I put it to one officer that it could have been them under an abused anti terror law. He didn't deny it but pointed out I would get a letter in due time if this was the case. He also said that there was no way that an authority going so far as to envoke anti-terror laws could give back the PC so it makes no odds at this stage.

I did see a CCTV van doing the rounds after I reported the theft so I can't say they failed to react.

What are your thoughts and speculations?

Today has to rank as one of my least productive days in a very long time. Due to a clerical error an appointment at 9am at the job centre resulted in a trip to Margate followed by going to Cliftonville then back to Margate and only then home for a 1pm breakfast. The fault it seems is that someone filed a piece of paper late somewhere and in order to avoid significant costs to myself I had to spend the morning on a wild goose chase over half of Thanet. Made worse by the fact that common sense does not exist in large bureaucratic systems and the only reason people are helping you is to make you go away and leave them alone.

Now to get on the telephone and do some follow up on this mornings running around before I can freely go and do something useful. Oh wait, no... I have to do some more running arround.

It never ends.

Thanet Star was off line all day today and I was in Canturbury helping to raise awareness for the May referendum and so couldn't do a thing about it. I thought it was due to my owing the server company money but it was an unknown error. The server doesn't like being power cycled and not all the services switched back on again about the only thing that worked was email.

This was a shame because I'd hoped to drop a note onto the blog to the effect that BlockBuster Video in Cliftonville appeared to be on fire this morning. A pass by told me that smoke had been coming from the building for over ten minutes and as my bus took me away from there no sign of a fire engine was to be seen.

Aside from being annoyed that I couldn't sort out my server and get Thanet Star back on line I had a good day talking to people about the referendum and hearing from a fair number of people that they planned a Yes vote, from a lot of people that they were not very sure or did not even know there was due to be a referendum and I even found two gentleman to talk to that were planning to vote "No" and they told me about this is great detail.

Mostly though I spent a lot of time explaining over and over what Alternative Vote is and in some cases what a referendum is too. All in all a good day's work was done ensuring that people had access to enough information to answer the question of "should we have AV". A lot more work to be done yet.

Also in totally related news I spoke to a number of people about local elections and putting one's money where one's mouth is. As a result I may very well be standing at this May election and if I do I will make my position very clear and then scale back publication here in areas where I may be at a conflict of interests. Fortunately I've been getting some fantastic letters for publication via Facebook and I shall share a few of these soon. Of course this could mean an end to publishing Council secrets as I'd be duty bound to keep them, well, secret. I'm not sure how I feel about that yet.

Please feel free to ping me on facebook or via email if you have something to say. I will need your name and contact info but I don't need to publish them.

Finally I also have some interesting documents that could shed light on the Mark Nottingham and Clive Hart situation. I'm reading them now.

Thanet District Council have secured a fine of £10,000 for a local slumlord.

Taking from 2009 to 2011 to have the fine awarded and goodness only how long to collect the fine ten grand hardly seems a lot. It is apaprently the maximum fine the court can impose which suggests to me why Thanet has so many slum flats.

Cllr Chris Wells (Cabinet Member for Community Services) has according the the thanet District Council website said he is pleased that the magistrates decided to fine Sandwich Properties Ltd the maximum amount. Cllr Wells went on to add This company was clearly unable or unwilling to look after their property, and did not have any regard for the safety of tenants.

Over the two years that it took Thanet District Council to get a fine of £10,000 four flats would have netted £37,440 (more before TDC started to the process) so with minimal remedial work the £10,000 can be seen as simply a running cost.

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» Continue Reading: Thanet District Council vs the Slumlords

Thanet District Council claim endlessly that the Turner Centre is going to be a massive success and yet I do not see the actions that go with that claim.

Surely if the Turner Centre was going to bring so many art interested people into the area then the Margate Museum, The Margate Caves and every Historic Point of interest would be under review for a budget and feasability study to ensure that they are open for visitors to visit after departing the Turner Centre.

Cllr Simon Moores claims in comments on Big News Margate that the budget simply is not there to make the caves safe. I put it to you that if the council is so short of cash they should not be giving massive pay-offs to thier favourate members of the funny handshake brigade.

While it is clear that on it's own the Margate Caves will not make a huge Return on Investment (ROI) but the value to the area far outweighs just the yearly ROI. And anyway - for all these visitors that TDC has utter faith will show up (when the Turner Centre opens) the Margate Caves would be an ideal upsell along with The Margate Museum, Shell Grotto and the more interesting parts of the Margate Old Town (assuming that they can be kept open long enough).

A struggling business would not, if it wishes to remain solvent, give massive golden handshakes to near retired members of staff. It would be looking of ways to increase revenue not by starting new product streams nbut by adding and upselling on current and projected successful lines. Why should the Council be any different - success results for a council in Tax rather than Sales but the principle is extremely sound. If Simon Moores' business went around doing handing out piles of cash he would be signing on with the other 4,000 people and all the unemployed about to pour out of the Pfizer plant.

Call whatever points you can't cope with red herrings for as long as you want Simon but they are still as valid as before you spoke. If the council is short of money it should not be making unnessecary payments to staff and use the cash to keep Thanet opperational.

I'll admit Simon appears to know his stuff when it comes to eGovernment (or Thanet's lack thereof) but this claim that the caves are too expensive is utter bunk. The Council can easily find that ammount of money and more besides what they mean is that they would rather spend it on other things (like payoffs for the old boys network).

I do not pay Council tax to see old men get massive payouts because they were not qualified to keep their job after a restructure. While I don't want to see anyone go without there is a huge gape between fair pay and what we can see going on. I pay my taxes so things around here can be taken care of. As this has not happened I have a good mind to demand my money back!

It seems that The Council have finally gotten around to announcing the planning application for the Tesco at Arlington House.

The application which they have only stated is for a superstore is to be built on top of the car park. The press release talks of a total of "409 new parking spaces" at ground floor level but is unclear if this is 409 spaces or 409 spaces than there was before (which seems unlikely).

The "store" which we all know is Tesco is to be located above the car park with a large front lobby. This would mean that the junction at Arlington House would see an increase of traffic to a rough capacity of 200 to 300 cars an hour based on the size of the car park as an indicator of Tesco's traffic anticipation. That equates to 4,800 to 7,200 cars a day or 3 to 5 every minute. Of course traffic flow at night is likely to be lower.

Apparently the total "shopping area" of the store is similar in size to the existing Tesco at Manston Road, Ramsgate. An estimated 7,565 square meters in total. So the traffic flow at Tesco Manston will serve as a good indicator here too.

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» Continue Reading: Tesco's Arlington House plans released

In a Thanet Star Exclusive we can reveal that Richard Samuels will Pocket over £230,000 on leaving Thanet District Council plus an inflated pension.

Richard Samuels will depart his post as Chief Executive of Thanet District Council in March with a "basic" redundancy payout of £200,000. This will not be the last we see of him as Richard Samuels will hang in as Chief Executive for a while longer to see through the local government elections and trouser a further £30,000 thank-you-very-much.

His replacement the Chief Executive Designate Sue McGonigal is currently not fit to play so Samuels has "kindly agreed" to stay on until May. If Sue's title sounds odd read on and you'll see why.

But that's not all the brucey bonus he'll be getting. According to a high ranking member of staff who was understandably cheesed off the Chief Executive was bumped up two further pay grades just before Christmas, in preparation for him leaving, so that he would get a higher rate of pension. Pension is based on final salary, you see.

I understand that this was rubber stamped by Chief Executive Designate Sue McGonigal.

When Tony of Big News Margate correctly surmised that the Chief Executive of Thanet District Council leaving for an undisclosed sum, ...could perhaps be decoded as Thanet council has offered an embarrassingly generous pay off, which of coarse will not be available to the lower orders he was right. And how!

Richard Samuels extra big golden handshake comes less than twelve months before he would be retired anyway. Of course if The Chief Executive made it to retirement then he'd not have access to a massive hand out for taking it a whole year early. I wish I could be paid £200,000 for not working and then do a few months work for £30,000 on top.

To be fair there is a valid excuse (isn't there always) for giving Samuels a nice retirement present. He is being made redundant due to the merging of the posts of Chief Executive, Chief Financial Officer and Electoral Registration Officer. As Richard Samuels lacks the required financial background they are able to make him redundant. It's water tight.

My person on the inside related a fairly unsurprising anecdote of typical sounding Council inefficiency. It seems that Richard Samuels is staying on because Sue McGonigal has just broken her leg while on holiday. Richard Samuels has valiantly offered to stay on for an extra two months "for the good of the council" and a payment of £30,000 while Sue recovers is recuperating.

On the same day that most council departments received "at risk of redundancy" letters, Richard Samuels demonstrated his value for money when he stood up in a Chief Executive's briefing (last week) and confessed that he "didn't know what was going on". Apparently Sue McGonigal had been dealing with the impending restructure and making notes and keeping people up to date does not seem to be a strong point for these guys.

However there are questions left unanswered regarding Samuels' rubber stamping buddy Sue McGonigal who has the unlikely title of Chief Executive Designate. I emailed some friends I know who work much, much lower down the food chain and asked them what a Chief Executive Designate is and if the huge payout was true (understandably no one wanted to talk about the money but they did answer question about waht this title means). The short story is that it is a tile made up especially for Sue because she can't have Richard Samuels' Chief Executive title while he still holds it. Also (hugely paraphrasing what I was told) Sue McGonigal has yet to be rubber stamped into the post by the Appointments Board (which I understand is made up of councilors including the Leader of the Council).

I asked my friends how one gets such a job and then after talking to my person with the inside intel I was able to put this story together: (Warning: this might leave you feeling cross if you were not already cross).

Two years ago the title of Deputy Chief Executive was put into tossed out. Then six months ago the title was dusted off and given to Sue McGonigal. From Chief Financial Officer into a dead post and then into "Designate" with the deputy post mysteriously disappearing back into the mists.

From what I can tell from my sources this obvious playing of favorites has upset a lot of people at all levels (which is why my high up person was so talkative I imagine). It also appears to me to have enabled Sue McGonigal to set some pretty impressive presidents for the post she is about to take and rubber stamped Richard Samuels out of the door with £230,000 in his pocket.

This does not tell me how someone who works so closely to Richard Samuels was allowed to promote him (twice) up the pay scale.

This does not explain how Richard Samuels gets such a big payout given his remaining working life. I'm sure no one here believes that £200,000 per remaining year is a standard going away gift. That's more than 10 years wages for many of us.

The £30,000 Richard Samuels is getting for two months work is more than many of us get for a year. I'm sure we all wish we were on £15,000 a month (£160,000 a year) standard pay.

The thing that really hurts is that this our money they are giving him.

Please note I have no intention of naming the people I interviewed for this and especially not the person who gave me the more scandalous details.

Now they've made the important choices the unimportant ones are open to the public.

"Margate Renewal Partnership" (which, if memory serves, is the business front controlling the Dreamland site and the Scenic Railway) would like the public's input on their rainbow coloured fonts.

You know, the "important" bits. Also known as the meaningless finishing touches.

The poll is being held at Thanet's ugliest website thisismargate.co.uk (fire that designer, baby). The poll itself is to be found here according to the press release which seems to want to imply an official connection with the Turner Centre.

I could get together with a few mates in the pub and we could call ourselves The Kent Regeneration Partnership but it doesn't make it true. The only think that gives it any "credability" is that it was sent from the Thanet District Council Marketing Department...

Personally I think the colours are vile amd the "strapline" is far too safe to be of any use at all. On the other hand allow the word F*ck in there and as well as getting some people realy, realy mad Thanet will have all the press coverage, attention and funding you could unreasonably demand. Or if the F-Word is too much for you to cope with get a lesser profanity in there. Even if the ASA make you stop using it the strapline will have done it's job.

Here is an F-Bomb free version that would assure Thanet massive national coverage if officially adopted. Be bold, or don't bother.



Here it is again all coloured in to look like the seaside.



Yes the Black and White is available in A3 if you want it.

Pfizer have announced the closure of it's Sandwich base and estimates the total job loses to be 2,400 which is a gross understatement.

While it might be true that Pfizer will be shedding two and a half thousand of it's own directly employed staff an estimated 3,000 additional jobs exist because of Pfizer but on paper, at any rate, they are classed as employees of contractors. Many is the story of workers whose department has been closed but have been left in the same job as outside companies take over the risk and cash flow side of things.

So when Pfizer say they are no longer going to be investing in Allergy & Respiratory therapeutic research at the cost of 2,400 thousand jobs what they mean is that they are closing the site at the cost of 5,500 jobs and at the expense of several other companies.

In case you are wondering the closure will take place over two years just in time for the road upgrades they asked for to be finished. Of course to not appear the bad guy they have made all the right noises about setting up "partnerships" to keep the site in use. MP Charlie Elphicke has, according to other sources, been going on about setting up a "Silicone Valley of the future" showing that he clearly does not understand the lack of fibre network investment that has been keeping the IT industry away from this side of Kent and Thanet particularly. This lack of investment has kept broadband prices high and speeds low in this area and makes Thanet and the surrounding area very unattractive to high end IT investment.

Thanet is like the IT equivalent of a village with a bus that runs once a week if the weather is nice. Even Simon Moores has spent the last six or more years telling us that Thanet Council's IT push is at best laughable and in this he is right on the money.

So boys and girls roughly one in 150 people or about 0.75% of the people of Thanet are all set to loose their jobs. Of those 3,400 are highly qualified people who like the rest of us highly qualified people are going to be competing for Thanet's overall lack of that kind of work. Canterbury might be a bit more up market but I can assure you that there is not a lot going on in that job market because I've been applying for going and it is usually going on a lot further away. Too far if I'm honest.