I recently had a fabulous journey. I was working in the European Parliament in Brussels at 4.30pm and courtesy of Eurostar and Southeastern trains I was 20minutes early at Thanet Council offices for a 7pm meeting. Even with the advantage of an hour coming back that's fantastic. The last part of my journey was courtesy of Les a taxi driver who may well be the man featured in the Independent . Tracey...
With culture minister Margaret Hodge today dishing out the dosh to the Arsonists' Playground [ Whatever happened to the £1.5m lottery funding that was meant to go on tarting up Ramsgate front? - Ed ], I thought I'd apply the old ECR brain cell to finding out a bit of background. Scouring the interbollocks, and eschewing Margate's most fatuous blog (as ever), I landed on the rival site MargateNews.net...
I knew Johnny Bird a long time as he was once a driver with Midland Red at Stafford. I remember when I was about fifteen riding on the platform changing the semi-automatic gears on a BMMO S17 for him as we headed out through Sutton Coldfield towards Brownhills and Cannock on the 104 Service which Stafford Garage did. When Harper Brothers became Midland Red Johnny moved to Heath Heyes and the later...
Despite a rumoured sighting of Samuel L Jackson in a Herne Bay barbers, it's fair to say that the Kent coast has some way to go before it rivals the Italian Riviera as a tourist destination. Anyone who, like Billericay Dickie, fancied a rendezvous with Janet quite near the Isle of Thanet would hardly be spoilt for choice when it came to boutique hotels and atmospheric local bistros.
Peter H. Donnelly's Mental Health Blog (Free subscription) | 04/11/2009
I have emailed and spoken to some solicitors, via email correspondence and over the phone, and with many mental health rights groups, and they all say, that even if it is proved by the coroner and courts, that the negligent and bad treatment my mum recieved, from the local mental health team and her CPN, was proved to be a huge factor in her prolonged extreme suffering state of mind and body, and proved...
I have had family staying this week and they kindly took me for a meal at La Magnolia . The Italian restaurant and pizzeria is situated under the Yacht Club at the Westcliffe Arcade, Ramsgate. What a superb experience it was. Friendly, attentive and understanding service. Award winning wine from Brindisi, the best any of us had drunk in a very long time. To cap it all the pizza oven has been imported...
Having a bite down at the excellent Belgian Bar last night, the references on their menu to 'Ramsgate's riviera' and the 'Millionaires' Playground' reminded me that there was something I meant to tell you. Poor old Dickie passed away yesterday following complications arising out of his motorcycle accident. He had seemed to be making a full recovery but contracted some kind of chest infection and went...
East Kent author and journalist Nick Evans has just published an expanded and updated version of his excellent book Dreamland Remembered, and has sent me a couple of photos from it. The first is from the 70s, or possibly even the 60s judging by the outfits Mum, Dad and the kids are wearing. And there's also this great photo of Norman Wisdom causing mayhem in the funpark during an episode of It's a...
Manston a.k.a. Kent International Airport is an ex-RAF base in north-east Kent, just west of Ramsgate. It passed from the RAF to Wiggins, then PlaneStation, owners of EUJet (a budget passenger airline). EUJet went bust, and in August 2005 the administrators sold Manston to Infratil, a New Zealand-based multi-national infrastructure investor. The airport is mainly used for flying clubs, testing and...
/ I sometimes think I was a monk in a past life (a contradiction in terms when you think about it) for I seem attracted somehow to the monastic life. Indeed, as a teenager, I once spent a week in a Carmelite monastery observing what happened there. This came to mind recently when I read that the eleven Benedictine monks of St. Augustine’s in Ramsgate, Kent, are to vacate the 148 year-old abbey...
The Benedictine Monks of St Augustine’s Abbey, Ramsgate, Kent, have voted to vacate the monastery in which they have lived for 148 years, and to relocate the Community. This follows a long process of discussion and discernment, and after taking professional advice. The present Abbey, built in 1861, designed by Edward Pugin, the son of renowned Gothic-revival architect Augustus Pugin, can house...
My oh my, it would be a total tragedy if the jewel in Margate's admittedly tawdry crown were to fall out and roll across the Kentish floor to destinations west. But that's what the Indian Princess has been hinting on its Facebook pages recently. Voted one of the top restaurants in Kent, and supposedly council leader Sandy Ezekiel's favourite restaurant in the whole wide world, the Indian Princess is...
A major event in Ramsgate later this month will give people the chance to learn more about fishing and eating for a healthy sea. It’s part of the line-up of events, being organised by Thanet Coast Project to celebrate Kent Coastal Week, which runs from Saturday 24 October through to Sunday 1 November. The event takes place over the weekend of Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 October from 11am to 4pm...
PAUL CONYERS-SILVERTHORN - who am I? Why do I make such a fuss about tourism? I have spent my life in the travel industry, as a tour operator from junior courier to marketing director; as cruise director in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean; as passenger officer with British Eagle airlines; as proprietor of a chain of travel agencies; as consultant to the Canadian Government Office of Tourism, to...
As an antidote to the heavily skewed, unfounded and wishful PR prattle that the ever-supportive Brazier presented to Louise Ellman (chair of the Transport Committee), we sent her the following: Julian Brazier has written to you claiming that there is widespread public support for more use to be made of Manston airport (Kent International Airport). There isn’t. Thanet County Council supports the...
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