A WEEKEND POT POURRI WITH STRAWS BLOWING IN ON THE WIND

What an interesting week; Bonanza pic at last of the new paint job; a bicorn/ beanie combo, indiscrete revelations on an insecure Facebook site and wheelie bin chaos.

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As Policy 25 of TDC's Core Strategy has been in the news, some news on CGI (formerly CGP), would be appropriate as they would appear to be primary beneficiaries of TDC's folly to propose to allow building on agricultural land all over Thanet, if 'jobs' are dangled in front of TDC. Share price not good yet at 15.5p but they managed to raise £148,391.74 in cash for general working capital in Dec by issuing 1,507,283 shares at 9.45p. A lot were bought by Mr Wills and Mr Prosser which indicates they have had to put their own money in to keep things rolling along. This appears to have triggered a drop notification of HSBC Holdings as a % of total shares from above 8% to 7.9%. Unless Chinese money can be attracted to buy and set up on Manston Business Park soon, the winter cereals will be harvested in Aug 2010!

Having banged on about Eurokent not being needed for housing for the 2026 traget of 7,500 new dwellings in Thanet for some time and revealing that TDC Cabinet ignores its own TDC Officers reporting this to them (Annual Monitoring Report April 2009) it was nice to get a reply sent from Planning Dept at TDC to one of the Strife Team's request for info. Here is an extract:

"I understand that at March 2009 we had granted permission for 4624
units that have not yet commenced. I cannot confirm whether these are
all on sites that have not commenced, ie it may be the case that  sites
with permission for 20 units only have 1 or 2 completed at present.


The significance of this snippet is critical to the lies about Eurokent needing to have houses on it to meet the Housing target! TDC already has 1,983 completions of the 7,500, and these 4,624 (if proceeded with) means that by 2014 alone 6,607 dwellings will have been built. That leaves applications between now and 2026 for only another 993 dwellings and ALL TARGETS ARE MET.

Whilst on the subject of Planning, a Strife Team Member followed The Planning Committtee around on Friday as it went site visiting. (Only 6 Cllrs out of 15 were able to attend) He reports that 'Our Ken' was not too pleased to see genuine Conservative Cllrs like Cllr Hayton and Cllr Bruce tagging along and that abruptness from 'Our Ken' towards his experienced and capable predecessor as Chair of Planning, verged on rudeness. Our suspicions about certain Ezekiel Party Cllrs not really knowing where their Wards are, were confirmed on Friday. About to leave Lanthorne Rd to go to Oaklands Ave in St Peter's , a person asked how to get there. 'Our Ken's response as ward Cllr for this Ward was " Up past where there used to be a pub." Perhaps 'Our Ken' needs to drop in for a pint with his constituents sometime at The Red Lion, which is still there and 50 yds away from Oaklands Avenue!
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Now to straws in the wind.
I was amazed at the pic of 'Mauwice' in  'two hat' mode at the annual Blessing of The Sea Ceremony last Sunday. Then a thought struck me. He looks very unhappy and was it just the cold?  If I had frozen my butt off as Council Leader for the 7th time at this ceremony, and I knew it was my last time, would I be tempted to say 'Sod it. Wont be here next year, so may as well keep warm'?

So Strife Team members have been tapping sources all over Thanet for past 24 hrs and it seems there may be changes coming about shortly. The straws in the wind they have caught would indicate Clive Hart and his Labour colleagues could lose their prime vote attracting ally for 2011, Cllr Ezekiel, in the spring. The question is will he retire or resign?

The next question is,  will The Ezekiel Party try and retain its position of leading Thanet's Conservative Party in the year upto 2011 by 'blessing' a successor or will there be a genuine Leadership Election and a clean up of Cabinet and Planning? Will they achieve a simple baton change or will there be a new race?

It's about time Thanet had some proper Conservatives in key positions rather than 'ex Labour chancers'.  We need the return of a Conservative Party that the traditional conservative electorate will support in 2011. We need a capable and principled new Tory Leader, a new Cabinet and new Planning Committee.Whispers would indicate that Ezekiel Party loyalist Cllr Bayford would like to take on the 'baton' from 'Mauwice'; the result would be an Ezekiel Party without 'Mauwice'!

We have now started a 'pool' in The Strife Office with the following names in the hat:  Bayford, Bruce, Gideon, Jarvis, Moores, Wells and Wise. Will have to get on to Dickie (www.eastcliffrichard.blogspot.com) to see if he can run a 'cast your vote' thingee on his blog for these 7.  Sadly we lack the expertise to set up that sort of thing but at least we still have an excellent tea-lady, in Edna.