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.

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

Did you know that Thanet has a "Bus Strategy" (whatever that might be). It basically sketches out the idea that from 2000 to 2010 TDC and KCC want to achieve a few things and are willing to pay to get there.

Should you want to you can read the Thanet Bus Plan here: http://www.thanet.go...THANET170304.pdf.

Up until now I had wondered why Stagecoach seemed to suddenly gain such a strong hold in the area and why a number of the little bus companies (such as the much cheaper "Thanet Bus") vanished at the end of the 1990s. The answer it seems is that TDC and KCC wanted it that way.

Keep reading to find out more.

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» Continue Reading: Buses - TDC's Answer to Traffic Problems (apparently)

Anxious people are difficult to be around. They don’t learn well, they’re not adaptable, and they’re obsessed with the worst possible scenario. They’re not good at seeing any point of view beyond their own distress and fear, and they become experts at raining on parades.

Sonia Simone, Three Ways to Grow Your Blog Community in an Economic Crisis

Does this sound familiar?

To me this sounds like a pretty accurate description of Thanet both online and off. I'd go so far as to suggest that Thanet as a whole is frightened and so far we bloggers have done little aside from add to the screams. What the Thanet community needs from us is a little [...] old-fashioned compassion [...] to quote Sonia Simone again. Yes, we have a minor economic crisis going on but when don't we - this is Thanet.

You, the Thanet blogger (or potential blogger), have more tools available to do this than you might first think.

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» Continue Reading: How to Blog in Thanet During an Economic Crisis

Barbara Ouddah a café owner from Birchington was given a suspended prison sentenced of nine months imprisonment and ordered to do 100 hours of community service for her part in money laundering in order to supply criminals serving time in a Kent prison with Heroin.

Barbara Ouddah for some reason apparently spent £9,000 on heroin for her foster son Wesley Adyinka (Dalby Square, Cliftonville) while he was a prisoner at Elmley Prison. In total from August 2006 to May 2007 Kent Police monitored over £14,000 being paid to an account held by one Nadia Baptiste (London) the partner of another prisoner at Elmley Prison. The full chain of events can be read on the Kent Police Website.

The sentence was given towards the end of September at Maidstone Crown Court and marks the end of two years of investigations by Kent Police’s Serious Economic Crime Unit. Other Thanet residents include Stephen and Brian MacDonagh (Bath Road in Margate) You can read more from Kent News although they echo closely the content from the Kent Police Website. (For a fresh telling of the story try invictafm.co.uk).

The life of crime: The £14,000 that Nadia Baptiste of London obtained during the investigation represents an average turnover of around £1,500 a month. As businesses go this is a very small turnover as the average enterprise is only looking to make between 5% and 20% on the cost of materials. Like in any other business the £14,000 would have to include the cost of obtaining the heroin and possibly the cost of transporting it to the prison.

Does crime actually pay? Keep reading to find out.

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» Continue Reading: Birchington Business Woman in Drugs Scandal

When we talk of the poor let's be clear that we are talking about those on benefits. All forms of benefits from council tax benefit to tax credits. Today we are going to explore the effect of not "giving money to scroungers".

Let us imagine that Gordon Brown wakes up tomorrow and forgetting that he is a member of the Labour party starts to listen to those people in Thanet that keep saying that those people on out of work benefits should "get a job".

Let's imagine that he listens so so well that he passes a new law. From now on there will be no tax credits, no JSA, no council tax benefit, no housing benefits, no income support, no incapacity benefit and no disability living allowance. In short all hand outs are outlawed. To stop himself loosing the next election the "No Handouts Act 2008" also says that only those people who have paid all their taxes may vote.

There will be complaints, of course but let us imagine that Gordon Brown uses his new found "genius" to silence complaints and suppress the riots and attempted revolution that is the most likely as around 33% to 50% loose the right to vote and the income they have been living on.

But you tax bill falls so fast it makes your head spin. You the working guy are now richer than you have ever been. Gordon Brown is now a genius right?

What would happen next? Keep reading to find out.

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» Continue Reading: The No Handouts Act 2008