Lost and Found

I happen to be a non-exec of a local technology company and from time to time we have some interesting visitors to the office in Minster. 'Nasty Nick' is a friend of Vic' the MD, the voice in the background and a regular guest. You can almost guarantee, I'm told, that between them they will get up to something unusual. Some good-humoured banter caught with an iPhone.

Meanwhile, I'm in London blogging on my iPad so more later perhaps!

Going Down

I'm seeing a great many searches reaching this site for information surrounding a report of a young women being stabbed in Broadstairs and all I know about the incident is that the Police were called after an altercation between two Thanet College students, both women, at Granville Road on Friday lunchtime.

The Kent Air Ambulance flew the victim, who reportedly had serious chest wounds to the Royal London Hospital where she is in a stable condition.

I find it interesting that the newspaper story has finally broken surrounding the organised nature of Eastern European gangs and families selling The Big Issue. I came across this extended 'family business' control of the pitches in a triangle between here, Whitstable and Dover in Thanet when I was the Cabinet Member for Customer Services & Benefits and challenged an underage girl selling the magazines in Westgate. I had a very revealing chat with her and her broken English was good enough to paint a picture of how it all worked. When I contacted the Big Issue's Head Office they agreed the magazine was facing a problem but it wasn't one they couldn't do anything about because the group involved have a legal right to be in this country and a legal right to sell The Big Issue.

Last night I had dinner with an old friend, a prominent figure from the diving industry who is visiting from the States. Catching-up with what happened to many of our mutual friends over the years, I asked him if 'Captain B'  was still in business, the man who first taught me deep, mixed gas wreck diving twenty years ago.

Apparently 'B', with his world-class reputation as a wreck diver, was asked to investigate a side scan sonar anomaly, which showed a non-ferrous metal mass, 400 feet down on the seabed, a very challenging Trimix dive indeed. He dropped down the shot line onto the spot, which turned-out to be a large concreted mass of gold coins. He surfaced a very rich man, promptly sold his dive business and hasn't been seen since. I had to laugh and wish him well; a real pirate made good!

So much of the ground-breaking kit we used to wear and use in the old days - pictured - is now obsolete and sitting in my attic, pink hood included. Twenty years ago, rebreathers were an exercise in dicing with death because the software to control the gas mixture was very much in its infancy, now they are safe and state of the art and Suunto even do a Trimix dive computer that doubles as a wristwatch.

Looking at the half submerged hull of the Italian cruise liner on the news, the difficult job of the search divers can't be underestimated.

Lots of recreational divers have dropped on to wrecks lying on the seabed but not that many go on penetration dives. Some twenty years ago, I dived on the Zenobia, a 'Roll-on Roll-off' ferry that sank at the entrance to Larnaca harbour, lying on her side in 138 feet of water. I was invited by the company that controlled the wreck to go down with them through a hatch on the bow into the inner car-deck and access the ship from there and I confess that it was one of the stranger experiences of my life, much like a scene from the Richard Cameron movie, 'The Abyss' as wearing bright dive lights, we lit-up the interior and passed rows of Volvo trucks parked-up and tied down where they were abandoned.

How on earth one searches through a ship the size of Concordia, a small floating city, is hard to grasp. The difficulties and potential dangers are enormous.

The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I stumbled across a photograph of a Norton motorcycle 'John Player Special' on the web tonight and it sent me on a nostalgic trip down memory lane.

There was a time, over twenty years ago when these wankel-engined beasts dominated motorcycle F1 racing. This was  a period in my life, before I developed a passion for flying, that I had a very pleasant sideline road-testing 'Superbikes,' for a number of the country's most popular motorcycle publications, such as Performance Bike and Motorcycle International.

I remember being loaned the only available road-bike in the country and being instructed by a worried editor on no-account to bend or crash it before taking it out along the A3 accompanied by a photographer. With Pirelli racing tyres fitted we went down to Wimbledon as the tennis was on, for some shots outside the All England Lawn Tennis Club, where we got some very pretty girls to pose on it and then a little further on to Tippets Corner roundabout to catch the bike tucked right over as it attacked the bend.

As developments in engine and composite technology made remarkable strides at the beginning of the nineties, another racing great bike that appeared  around the same time  was the 750cc Honda RC30, which was unbeatable for a while on the track. I actually bought one of the few available when the road-going model appeared. It had a very radical seating position which felt as if one was perched on a bar stool.

As I lived in London at the time, I did the original road test down to Thanet as an excuse to visit my mother and can recall a couple of lads knocking at the front door that afternoon in Westgate, asking if they could look at the bike in the drive as they had never seen one off the track.

Other memorable machines were Yamaha's oval piston 'OW01' , Yamaha's VMAX, Suzuki's 750RR, which was stolen from right outside my front door, of street, one night and of course the Kawasaki beast of a  ZZR1100 which had me up to 155 mph on a straight-run test.

Later of course motorbikes became lighter, stronger and much much faster and I finally bowed-out with the first Honda Hayabusa before settling down to more sedate and very capable off-enduro tourers such as my BMW RS1150S

Today, the roads are so much busier and far more dangerous than ever before and if any young man told me he planned to buy a motorcycle, as much as I love them, I would do my very best to put the idea out of his mind.

Of all the people I've known over the years, who shared the same passion for motorcycling, possibly more than half are dead, paralysed or gravely injured, normally as a consequence of of either careless accidents or encounters with careless motorists.

Looking back however, those 'Top Gear' days before the arrival of speed cameras and endless traffic jams on the M25 were great fun and while today, it costs me an extortionate £27.00 to fill-up my BMW bike, then it would only have been a 'tenner', tops!

Kicking Around

Last night's council meeting went-on a bit, starting with a report on the proposed and controversial QEQM A&E  service move to the William Harvey at Ashford. It moved on to a  fierce political argument over the budget for flowers and whether this should be cut or not and James Maskell offers a good summary on his blog.  What we did witness was Ian Driver voting with the Conservatives, which does rather put an end to any thoughts he might have had for a prodigal return one day to warm bosom of the Labour Group.

It was interesting, that twice in one evening Ian voted for the common-sense position of the Conservative group, to derisive howls of outrage from his former Labour colleagues, who must by now be somewhat nostalgic for the return of Mark Nottingham.

The broader principle of last evening, which is why Ian Driver left the Labour Group, is that Labour plan to spend the modest pot of money in the Council  budget that the Conservative's had put aside as a contingency against the economic situation worsening or further Government grants being cut. I suppose this is what makes the two political groups different from each other.

Labour are now a minority in Thanet but hold the council  on the whim of  two independents, each with his own unique personal agenda, Jack Cohen and John Worrow, which I'm sure many readers would agree is an unsatisfactory position for democracy on the island.

As I predicted in an earlier post, the Council voted on recommendations for the future of Margate Football Club and firmly kicked the back to our dithering Cabinet to decide the issue and the final length of any leases. The 3G artificial pitch was recommended for refusal but my argument surrounding the length of any long lease for the hotel, once again shot right over the heads of heckling Labour members.

Without going into detail, the club and the council will now 'negotiate' a long lease but the club has to produce financial documents proving why they need it. I wish the Council luck as I've been trying for many months to get the owners of the club to explain why their 'nonnegotiable' 125 years requirement was necessary while my own information suggests that a rolling thirty-five year lease might be more common practice in such circumstances.

According to my last email exchange with the club a week ago, their new deadline for a decision on the award of a lease for the hotel development, runs out on Monday but I've seen so many similar 'deadlines' over the last year that I'm sure another rabbit will be pulled-out of the hat.

I'm sure every councillor is behind the club's aspirations but as I said last night, one can't throw the proper process out of the window where the award of public land is involved. Planning consent exists for the hotel but the insistence on a 125 year lease gives an impression that there is a hidden agenda where the land is involved.

Last night Council moved that if the club wants the hotel and the lease, then Mr Piper and Mr Lever are going to have to finally produce the financial evidence that supports their position to give the Council the confidence it requires to grant a long lease. I'm sure readers would agree that this is not unreasonable and I would urge the Labour Cabinet that makes any final decision on the lease, to make quite certain that firm conditions are in place, in regard to the future use of the land and the completion date of the hotel.

I wish the fans and supporters luck after such a long game.

Between the Lines

Several of our Thanet blogs have some bizarre postings this week.

Labour's Mike Harrison appears to be sending some kind of coded message to my colleague, Chris Wells, expressing, unless I'm mistaken reading between the lines, a nostalgia for the old naval tradition of rum, sodomy and the lash. As Mike reportedly used to work for the railways, this is indeed worrying and perhaps he can reminisce for us a little more on his experiences of working in the early days of steam?

You will see that I had a waffle about insurance and Meerkats, James Maskell has dome some rather incisive work on planning, Tony Flaig looks forward to 'Tony Blair - the Movie' and this week, our diversity champion, John Worrow with his finger held tightly on the pulse of local opinion, worries about Abu Qatada and whether we are Islamaphobic and treating the preacher and anti-Semitic terrorist suspect unkindly.

You can't say that it doesn't make for interesting if not entertaining reading.

Postscript: I arrived home to read the following 'Notice' on John Worrow's weblog which came as a bit of a surprise. What a 'diversity blog warden' is I find hard to fathom. Is it a joke and would he or she have powers of arrest here in Thanet? Where can one apply?  Is it the Council offices perhaps and is some kind of official CRB  or political vetting required by Labour Group leader, Clive Hart and Cllr Mrs Fenner, (pictured further below)  who was 'Pleased' to create the diversity post for John in the first place?

In contrast the Council's modest blogging code of conduct pales to insignificance. Tomorrow's  meeting is going to be even more lively than I thought!

Notice

1, A new official Diversity Blog will be launched on Febuary 10th

2, A Public Meeting is to be held to talk about the responsibility of Bloggers regarding the Racial and Religious Hatred Act, with the aim of recruiting voluntary Diversity Blog Wardens, known as DBWs.

3. DBWs will become the blog and social network equivalent of Neighbourhood Watch Coordinators and will focus on Thanet users.

Compare the Meerkat

I have been accosted by a marauding band of Meerkats, seeking to gain control of my house insurance! After relieving me of my credit card details, they did remind me, that as a hard-working minority group in our society, they believe they are badly in need of a diversity champion to represent them, because they occasionally feel exploited by the media and misunderstood by the general public.

Anyway, I got a cuddly toy out of the deal and it was £200 cheaper than renewing with the equally appealing Churchill the British bulldog. If you don't shop around at renewal time then you can expect to be paying rather more than you expected.

In Search of A Loaf

I was in Northdown Road earlier today and could not help but notice the prominently-placed estate agent's sign, advertising local properties in Polish, which came as a bit of a surprise. Passing through, I popped-in to a convenience store to buy bread and milk and was equally bemused to discover that the bread was from Poland too, with the exception of a lonely-looking Kings Mill sliced white loaf, which was cheaper than its European cousins and which I adopted and brought home with me to Westgate.

I think it was the estate agent's sign rather than the bread which surprised me most because it made a powerful statement about the changing nature of the community in Cliftonville, The last council report I saw, told me that only 17% of the local population (Margate Central and Cliftonville West)  are originally from Thanet and over 30% of the population come and go over any twelve month period.

We have been hearing a great deal about 'diversity' over the last week but in Thanet, it's the changing population demographic that I first think of when I see the word. Of  late, we've been seeing some confusion between 'Minority' and 'Diversity' coming from one source on the island, a topic I believe, which needs to be more inclusive and rather less narrow and excitable than the argument.

In particular, we need to reflect on how we adapt locally,  to both managing and interpreting the needs and interests of so many diverse,  Eastern-European and Middle-eastern cultures, crammed tightly into a handful of wards across the island. These are resource and cost intensive for all the local and central Government agencies involved in trying to achieve positive outcomes for the communities involved.

But if you think about it, Thanet is fast becoming as much of a multi-cultural society as anywhere else in the country, it's just taken a little longer for it to happen because the road and rail connection from London stops when you reach the seafront. I've written many times before that the challenge for the future still lies in stimulating a local economy, in a way that  attracts big businesses like the offshore energy industry and offers real jobs, careers and opportunity for everyone. Instead and more often than not, we are frequently seen by cynical newspaper reports, as the end of the line for benefits claimants, exported from overcrowded, struggling London authorities.

Perhaps I'll write more later but for now I intend to sleep on it.

Seriously Speaking

It may come as a surprise but I for one, am a firm believer that one should never take oneself or one's politics too seriously. There's always room for a little irreverent satire or a sense of humour in any subject, even, dare I say it, diversity or free parking, as I'm sure readers will agree!

The last government, helped along by Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman, tried very hard to abolish the national sense of humour altogether but I've heard it rumoured that even young Ed Miliband has been seen in the company of a well-known comedian; possibly working-up some new and original material for Prime Minister's Question Time in the weeks ahead. Lord knows he needs it!

Driver Runs Off the Road

I've just read on young Will Scobie's weblog the surprise news that Ian Driver has resigned from the Thanet Labour Group and gone into the wilderness to join  the growing 'Popular Front.' This now leaves the Conservatives as the majority political  party on the island but Labour in control.

Whether Cllr Driver has actually resigned, in the true sense of registering it with the council is a moot point, as readers may recall this happened once before when he fell out with 'Reg' and the Judean People's Party - see clip - over plans for world supremacy, whether they really hated the Romans and were radical enough for Thanet. However, politics makes for strange bedfellows and  this begs the question of whether he and our new council diversity champion,  John Worrow, will be establishing their own populist splinter faction and what this might be called is anyone's guess.

This now puts Clive or was that 'Reg' in an awkward position because there's the constant risk of Ian Driver simply abstaining over critical votes and I for one think he's more likely fallen out with the Labour group over their budget plans, rather than being disappointed that John Worrow, instead of he was, given a Mr Men badge with 'Diversity Champion' written on it.

Local politics is now really and truly hung and that's not good for Thanet. All political parties enjoy their own eccentric if not lunatic fringe and the LibDems more than most. However, we now we have two well-known 'Loose canon' careering around with their own unique ideas of what it means to be a district councillor and this is somewhat at odds with the majority view of what the role is supposed to involve.



So now, in Thanet, we have Conservative, Labour, three Independents under Tom King and  now Driver and Worrow, two members of a rather bizarre 'Popular Front,' one which is temperamentally aligned towards Labour but may vote tactically to achieve their own animal diversity parking agenda objectives.

All rather worrying and I suspect readers may feel the same.