Looking at the budget out of which I seem to come out about the same, in terms of personal finances, there were a few aspects that I didn’t like that much, however I expect those who understand more about economics or the sound of underground spirits better than I do will soon correct me on.
The first is the way the VAT rise has been handled, in as much as this seems likely to cause a minnie boom at he end of this year followed by a minnie bust at the beginning of next.
In physics there is a thing called the butterfly effect and I hope it doesn’t apply with underground spirit noises.
Another is the personal allowance thing, doling out this extran money in the same amount to everyone with an income under £101,000 per year seems a bit daft really, I don’t really think it is appropriate to be giving tax breaks to people earning over £1,000 pounds a week.
The other thing I don’t like the look of is that the wrst off of the pensioners seem to be hit disproportional hard.
The things I am not sure that it addresses that well are, the people at the bottom end of the skills bracket who are only marginally better off working than being on benefit and the public sector pension burden.
Anyway as I said I am a bit out of my depth here, and with books being zero rated the VAT increase will probably be pretty much offset by the increase in personal allowance, so I come out about the same.
Here is the link to the most recent pictures http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/610/id32.htm yesterday evening in Broadstairs, a few people dressed up in Dickens, period costume, something that only occurred to me after trying to photograph the Dickens costumes is that there are quite a few marginals in Broadstairs.
By this I mean they are not wearing clothing that relates to this period of time, but it often doesn’t look as though they are wearing clothing that relates to Dickens period of time either.
This isn’t any sort of criticism of people in Broadstairs and suppose it often most describes the group I fall into.
The rest of the page is pictures of Ramsgate today.
I heard on the BBC news there were going to protests in some towns today including Ramsgate, this seemed to be something to do with public sector pay, but was all a bit vague.
Anyway I went off to see what this was about and it did indeed seem to be something to do with today’s budget, as this was during my lunch time and the budget hadn’t been read it made things a bit difficult for the protesters.
I was a bit difficult to understand what it was that they wanted people to do about the budget that they didn’t know the content of as well. They were in Ramsgate Marketplace with a banner that read STUFF THE MARKET, their caps and indeed they were shouting through a megaphone.
Here is the link to the inevitable pictures http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/610/id30.htm Here is a little admission of mine, during the last few days when anyone from Jehovah’s Witness, Big Issue seller or political protester tries to either hand me a leaflet or sell me something, I now hand them a card with the address of this blog on it and tell them that the pictures of them will be published online later today and linked to the blog post. So far it has done the trick every time.
Click on the map above to enlarge it then click on it again to enlarge it even more.
I suppose the results of the general election are fairly high in most people’s minds at the moment, so a few thoughts on that first.
I have been an advocate of electoral reform for some time, although what shape that reform should take is something I am not certain about.
Had the election taken place with proportional representation and people voted roughly the same way, we would now be being governed by a Labour, Lib Dem coalition, or at least cooperation, of some sort I would imagine.
Is that the will of the people? Well I don’t know the answer to that one.
It does look as though, at the moment, if the Lib Dems get into bed with either of the two major parties, it will be to make a short term government, members of which are likely to have made themselves unpopular, by the time we get another election, probably in less than a years time.
Certainly at the moment it does look as though, with Europe coming unstitched economically, we are in for interesting times.
I terms of local issues, I have already forewarned our new incumbent, here it Thanet South, that I will be sending her a multitude of problems and have had a positive response.
Pleasurama is still not going anywhere much, I am pretty sure that pile boring should be well underway at the moment as I was assured by TDC planning on the 13th of November last year, that this would start early this year.
Perhaps the developer is waiting like me, for some sort of written report on condition of the cliff façade from TDC, perhaps they haven’t yet had one done and I suppose they would require some sort of reassurance that it won’t collapse on them before they start work.
My complaint about this to the local government ombudsman is coming to fruition and one aspect of this surprised me; the following is a quote from their latest letter to me.
“The Local Government Act 1974 says that the Ombudsman shall not investigate a complaint that concerns something that affects all or most of the inhabitants of the area of the Council involved. It seems to me that the situation you describe affects most Ramsgate residents to some degree.”
As when I complained about the flood risk implications, they acted on this and this produced the EA letter at http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/ea/ it raises some interesting thoughts, not the least of which, is did they act outside of the act last time?
I am putting together information about Ramsgate gasworks at http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/gas/ this is in the early stages and any help on this one would be appreciated. I have just received the land registry documents for the site and have discovered that it is still owned by two different gas companies.
That’s enough about public safety issues here for one day, so on to other things.
I am hopeful that the council will be granting security of tenure for the maritime museum, before the Operation Dynamo commemorations, so that the museum will be able to be open for them and The Sundowner take part. The promise from the council to grant a 25 year lease, in the week before lasts Isle of Thanet Gazette was encouraging, but I haven’t heard any more yet.
Update I have just noticed a sign on the maritime museum saying that it and the steam tug Cervia will be open for the two days of the Operation Dynamo commemorations.
I have had a positive response from the council that the café on the end of Ramsgate’s East Pier will soon be back on the market and hopefully open again.
I may ramble on some more, depending on how the day pans out.
The way the local politicians here are handling internet use in what is likely to be a closely fought seat is something that I find most interesting.
Putting up their press releases on http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/ is a continual reminder to me, today I noticed that Steve Ladyman is once again ahead of the game in that he has hosted his first video on youtube
I have embedded it below.
In the past he has just put his videos up on his own website http://www.stephenladyman.info/ this has one advantage from a politicians point of view, which is that no one can tell how many people have watched it, a bit cynical of me perhaps, but it wouldn’t look good for any politician if hardly anyone watched it as was the case with The Turner Contemporary’s videos.
Conversely this has the great disadvantage that people can’t embed the video in other websites, so far fewer people are likely to watch the videos.
On the whole Steve’s website is a pretty slick affair IT wise the only thing that I have noticed technically wrong with it, is that not all of his press releases feed properly.
Frankly the only big blunder on it is the link that says, “we want to hear from you” off you go to comment and then you find you can only do so if you are a member of The Labour Party, bit tough if you are just one of his constituents, and PR wise not so good.
Laura Sandys the Conservative Party candidates website is not so good http://www.voteforlaura.org.uk/ as it often has technical problems, at the moment there is a lot of HTML visible on the home page.
The video embedded there dates from February (Labours Death Tax) and not even Members of the Conservative Party can comment there.
As for Trevor Shonk the UKIP candidates web presence at http://www.ukipthanet.co.uk/ from an internet point of view, it as though he is actively trying to lose. It’s worth having a look at just to see how not to do it, is closest to one of those blogs that are coverd with advertising and where only one comment has been made since 2008. if it tells you anything about their candidate I couldn’t find it.
Apart from all of the poles for ages predicting a hung parliament, something that seems increasingly more likely, it highlights how ridiculous our current, first past the post, electoral system is.
What the technical explanations are I haven’t really looked into, but very roughly if Labour gets about 28% of the vote they just get the most seats, if the Conservatives get about 30% of the vote they just get the most seats and if the Lib Dems get 40% of the vote they just get the most seats.
From where I am sitting the system looks to have been rigged for benefit the main parties, if I behaved like this in business the trading standards people would be down on me like a ton of bricks.
There are several humorous election videos on the internet, below is an example.
The picture is of the tram accident is when a tram jumped the rails on Madeira Walk in 1905. I believe the building in the background with the advertisements on it is probably the old Queens Head one of the last of the buildings to be demolished on Harbour Parade to make way for the Customs House new Kings Head etc.
As I have said before I am still undecided about which way I will vote, here in Thanet South the only two candidates who appear to have a chance of getting elected are Steve and Laura and both of them have always responded courteously and helpfully to me.
I believe either would make a reasonably good MP from my point of view as constituent.
This rather leaves the decision a national one and because of the way the election is being fought, increasingly a battle between the leaders.
Previously the main two have been telling us that if the other party gets elected economic disaster will ensue, I have to say that I am inclined to believe both of them on this point.
Now they are saying that a hung parliament will result in economic disaster and once again I am inclined to believe them.
So it really is about a choice between the lesser of three evils from my point of view, I was talking to a someone who has been involved in politics much more deeply than I ever have the other day and he said that he intended to spoil his ballot paper.
I still take the stance that I will vote as I see it as my civic duty, however in a way the third option now of course is that voting Lib Dem even in a seat where they don’t stand a chance of the candidate getting elected, could help to cause a situation where they get the highest percentage of the vote, but don’t get elected.
I wonder if this could cause a situation where Nick Clegg became leader of a coalition, it is as they say an interesting point, I am certainly not that keen on having a hung parliament where the leader expects this to result in economic ruin.
If all went well at TDCIT the webcast of last Thursday’s council meeting should be available tomorrow, it’s always good to see our democracy in action.
Oh I also meant to mention that both Laura and Steve have feeds on their sites and both have got them slightly wrongly organised so only some of their new information actually feeds.
As a floating voter my estimation of the different parties goes up and down like a yoyo, the following from today is an example not a final judgment.
Labour up as Brown admits mistake.
Conservatives down as I am pretty sure they would have been leaning on Labour at the time for more deregulation of the banks, not less, so a silly one to lay into Brown about.
Lib Dems down for stupid mistake over tax threshold in manifesto.
The map above shows the constituency boundaries at the last general election. The map above shows the new constituency boundaries that will be used for the forthcoming general election.
Sorry the maps are a bit fuzzy they were the best I could find, if anyone comes across anything clearer could they send them to me and I will replace these ones.
I know this is a bit of an odd post, but as one of the youf of today asked me what the boundary changes were and I realised that I didn’t know I thought others could be in the same boat.
A major point with these boundary changes is that had they happened before the last general election, and had people voted the same way as they did then, both Thanet constituencies would have returned Conservatives.
As far as thoughts on the general election go having heard most of the major players warning us that if their opposition is elected we are in for an economic disaster I have to say this is an occasion where I find myself beginning to believe politicians.
None of them really seem to have much to say about what worries so many of us which is that our towns are becoming much more unpleasant to live in, from dangerous dogs to groups of rowdy drunks.
Looking at the budget out of which I seem to come out about the same, in terms of personal finances, there were a few aspects that I didn’t like that much, however I expect those who understand more about economics or the sound of underground spirits better than I do will soon correct me on.
