I recently lowered my standards and had a McDonalds. This is my experience of the McDonald's (drive through) in thanet near Westwood Cross.

For reasons I'd rather not go into I found myself at Westwood Cross in an entirely unsuccessful quest to find a solution to a household requirement. Having had a light breakfast and it being well into the afternoon I caved into temptation and had a quaterpounder.

The drive though was supprisingly full and despite the dirty nature of the carpark that surrounded it was reasonably clean. The staff were about all you could expect from people that are paid basic minimum and I personally witnessed a large number of freshly cooked fries encounter the floor. This was swept inefficiently and slowly away but to their credit this was done almost right away.

The staff member that sureved me had all the freildiness and warmth of an indifferent rattlesnake and it was clear that I was one more demanding irritation between her and knocking off time. My food was swiftly dumped upon a try and handed to me and it was made clear that I was no in the way and goin to get no more attention.

So bereft of a member of staff I was forced to that age old trick of using my eyes to find the source of straws. This took a small amount of time and left me standing there feeling like a twit.

A straws, ketchup and so forth located I retreated outside to eat.

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» Continue Reading: Review: Westwood Cross MacDonalds.

Excuse me for being just a bit sceptical about the Turner centre's latest announcement regarding it's success.

Should the statement be believed that the Turner Centre has added £13.8m and 130 jobs to the economy. That's £13,800,000 or an ecomic boost to the value of over 50 pretty good saleries.

The problem is that the gallery actually paid to have the study done so it was highly unlikely to find that no change has resulted. If you paid me a ton of cash to do a study I would be tempted to look for a positive too.

I think their assumptions used to turn 495,000 reported visitors into £13.8m bares some closer examination.

Or rather it probably doesn't. I suspect that on closer examination that rather grand sounding number might proove to be so much smoke and mirrors.

The gallery has to justify it's existance and funding a study that says "yes this is all good" is probably the cheapest option.

Just because a study says something is so no more makes it true than if a newspaper announces it.

Even if it was true that's stil a long way from value for invested money.

Do you trust the gallery's study?

I have just spent the last three and a half minutes (an age, I know) setting up a TumblR account for Thanet Star.

There I will be taking a lighter look at Thanet Stuff. But also you will be able to post questions to me and, very important methinks, share links, photo's and articles that might end up here at Thanet Star HQ or at least on Thanet Star's Other Stuff.

Enjoy.

See the towers come down on Thanet News Network.

Edit: It has been drawn to my attention that I may have misunderstood the information I was presented with. I'll get back to you when I have more.

Tesco and Sainsbury's have began recruiting for roles in the yet to be granted planning permission new buildings.

In a bit of a Thanet Star exclusive I can tell you that the two potential new supermarkets are expectantly seeking workers for the stores that they are planning. I know this as the Job Centre in Margate has provided me with application forms to fill out for these yet-to-be-built stores.

Does this suggest that regardless of local protests and official objections the supermarkets confidently expect to force their way through to planning permission?

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» Continue Reading: Tesco and Sainsbury's recruiting already.

About 11:30 last night it began to snow. The snow was the light powdery type that fell quickly and got blown about all over.

That is all.

Another dubious honour as Thanet tops the list of poorest areas in Kent.

When it comes to child poverty Thanet is well ahead of the pack with a quarter of all children coming from deprived backgrounds. The two worst areas being Newington and Margate Central.

According to one source (poverty.org.uk) more than half of all the children in low-income households have someone in their family in some form of paid work. Which goes some way to explaining that while the figures for poverty in Newington are higher than the figures for families claiming out of work benefits the area continues to suffer with households stuck with insufficient incomes.



One of the issues being fingered for this failure is the lack of quality employment opportunities for younger people (teens and twenties) which would have otherwise helped to break the cycle.

The simple fact is that a child growing up in poverty in more than twice as likely to continue to live in poverty in their adult life regardless of weather they are able to find work or not.

Now that Thanet Labour have a grip on the local authority (albeit a tenuous one) have they got the chops to make a difference?

Our Council promoting the adult activities but probably meant activities for adults.

There is a difference guys

My mind truly was boggled at the headline in my feed reader "free adult sport activities".

Okay so I know what they mean is they want to offer sports for grown ups (at least grown up in body) but I also think they might want to rethink that page title.



The imagination runs wild as to what Adult Football might be. It sounds painful although Adult Rugby might be... best not thought about too much.

As I sit here, drink in hand waiting for the year to end I thought I would join in with the current trend and enjoy my yearly game of guess what happens next.

These are my twelve predictions for twenty-twelve.

1. There will be more wrangling over Margate's amusement park and the scenic railway, cinema and other part collectively called dreamland. I can't see the likes of the developers who have sunk quite so much capital into the land giving up without trying everything they can to build houses there. For their part our council will probably light some bulbs and put up some signs with very little if any visible progress by the close of the year.

2. Thanet as a whole will continue to feel the worst of recession and credit problems with further shop closures and dereliction something that we continue to have to live with. However some small enterprises will start to buck the trend prospering where others are failing. When a bomb blast, drought or a fire wipes out life in a woodland the trees do not "just grow back". There is a process whereby different groups of plants and animals move into the niche and in doing so make way for the next stage. Eventually all is trees again. We will see innovation in 2012 and people will be cynical and then surprised.

3. At least one more member of the two leading parties will defect to the Intendants. Given the unity that Labour members appeared to show during the count (I was there) the smart money should be on Conservatives shedding another member. The cracks will continue to show in the Conservative party for some time to come I think. It's all part of the healing process and something that they need to get over with as fast as possible to they can provide a decent balance to Labour's new leadership (under license from the independents).

4. The independent council members will remind Labour several times that they hold the balance of power. As such expect Labour to answer to her new master. Which leads me on to...

5. There will be renewed calls for a Mayor and Cabinet model of Council as both parties have little to loose and the electorate has much to gain (if only in terms of a stable council).

6. There will be calls for Margate to become Parished as are all other areas of Thanet (and almost all of Kent). Margate is crying out for a hyper-hyper local body committed to addressing her problems and her problems alone. Our district and county councils are simply not set up for that level of attention to detail.

7. One or more newspaper titles for the area will end or change considerably (from paid to free or from weekly to monthly for example). I would be very surprised if the titles that KM tried to buy do not find another home this year.

8. The turner centre will perform uncannily to projections sagging in only a few places. There's too much pride at stake for the centre to not hit visitor numbers in 2012 but only the old town will see much benefit. Indeed all of the regeneration effort will be invested into the old town with Margate high street left to rot.

9. Someone will attempt to turn a high street shop into a house. The blogs will object with a certain dry cynicism and not much passion to oppose.

10. There will be at least one public falling out that will spread across the blogs. At least one blogger will ask themselves "why bother?" Although to be honest those of us that are left are fairly fire proof so I don't expect to see anyone quit this time.

11. Thanet News Network will shake things up a little. Not in necessarily big ways but it will set the bar a little higher for those of us that consider ourselves "news" sites. I think people might be surprised.

12. Labour bloggers will start to come out of the woodwork once more as the anti-blogging attitude dies with the change of party at the top. Some people might be quite bitter about this but on the whole I think the community will be richer for the diversity and the debate.

Have a happy new year folks.

What can you see in our future?

I am forced to wonder if our council is being wilfully ignorant of it's use of IT or just incompetent.

I have just read a Freedom of Information request Use of Internet by Council staff and what I have read is slightly alarming.

Sophie Chadwick, the Contracts and Partnerships Relationship Manager, writes that our council does not have the means to monitor external network communication and so since 2005 has never had to discipline a member of staff for misuse of the internet. As unlikely as this voluntary compliance seems it is fully explained by the admission that our council has no way of knowing if their Internet connection is being abused.

On the face of it this seems to be the sign of an employer that is prepared to look the other way if staff browse porn or generally waste time. It also means that staff can read Thanet blogs at work which is good I think.

However there is more than just a whiff of stupidity here. Our council (and our tax money) is at significant risk due to th lack of good monitoring processes.

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» Continue Reading: Has Thanet Council been negligent or did it lie?