LD and Thanet sinks

LD lines goes bust on the Dover-Boulogne route today. One ship will be withdrawn and the remaining one possibly freight only as the Channel ferries consolidate.

Not good for Ramsgate Port – a council review tomorrow – as the passenger service never materialised as the ship didn’t fit and apart from c.20 HGV’s per sailing there are few Port jobs not funded by the taxpayer.

Weeds on the ferry terminal roof say it all.

The Marina should go from strength to strength but without a passenger service to Ostend or Boulogne then Ramsgate Port is pointless. The air pollution form the ships looks heavy and presumably the warehouses are largely empty. And Pegwell Bay carries the scars of the failed Hoverport and is in need of extra pollution attention.

Yachties complain about cold showers in the toilet block compared to other marinas.

The first new Vattenfall building is bizarrely built into the warehouse whole the 2nd new on is a Portakabin with more car park near the empty NCP. The suggested new Vattenfall building makes little sense as it’s simply offices when there are empty office parks and warehouses nearby. And again presumably more tarmac.

For a Port we have office parks, car parks, business parks, lorry parks but no boats – all on the rates.

Vattenfall have only paid £175k to TDC for the world’s biggest windfarm which has disappeared into the tax-wages, tax-benefits and tax-pensions and fraudulent 0% payrises of the Toxic Three.

And why with public sector cuts was the Deputy Chief Executive appointed with a bloat payrise for one of the UK’s worst councils? Our pensioner-councillors seem to be led by the nose by our civil servants.

Windfarm repairs will only be adhoc contracts and forecasts of 20 jobs – or is further expansion expected?

Our councillors seem to have at best done nothing and allowed fraud, waste, mismanagement and deliberate deception of the public with false public statement and fake consultations as they ride the decline down.

Ramsgate faces the Margate-isation of dereliction: the litter and filth along the railings has been there for years - as have the broken benches and beach shelters full of urine and dog shit but no benches or windows.

Yesterday Thanet’s towns were both the warmest and sunniest in Britain - hotter than LA or Nairobi or the Algarve.

Yet our museums and tourism offices are closed, derelict bandstands, fountains filled with concrete, Dreamland derelict, rubble and litter in the streets, dozens of empty shops, 3,000 empty houses as the pensioners are hastened onwards, council fraud and waste (was it really £1M of tax funds for EKO to fund ChinaGate and our own council officials?) and banned overflights by cargo planes.

Xmas beckons with no festivals, lightshow details and presumably sand from the beach instead of grit on the High St - all from a £60M council tax budget and £22M of civil service costs.

Silencxe from 56 TDC councillors. Silence from 86 KCC councillors. Silence from 750 TDC civil servants. Silence from 30,000 KCC civil servants. Silence from 200 top Whitehall civil servants.

Silence from Gale. Silence from Sandys.

Just the creak of our towns swinging like a corpse on the end of a rope.

And with an 18 year cancer mortality rate we seem to have built ghost towns.