BERTIES OFF FOR SOME R&R

Have had an offer to stay in Ibiza for a couple of weeks to look after a villa, so Bertie is legging it.
My apologies to readers, but I am not good at long distance blogging so all will be quiet on Strife for the next two weeks.
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I will be leaving a team behind to look at and analyse, TDC's wasteful maladministration of Maritime Services; the costs of Housing Repairs & Maintenance and the utter contempt for TDC Contract Procedure Rules; all exposed by EKAP but not even mentioned by The Audit Commission in its report of 2008/9.
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The cost of electricity to the tax-payer , at Margate Harbour is being looked at as well as an enormous grant paid to refurbish Royal York Mansions that is connected to a TDC Councillor who declared an 'interest'.
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All interesting stuff, but late summer sunshine is now the priority. Hopefully, the latest Blog War will be over by the time I return.

BLUE FORCES LOSE STRONGHOLD IN WIKIPEDIA

Rumours of a truce in the latest Thanet Blog War were clearly ill-founded. After losing ground in last year's Blog War in Wikipedia, it would seem that Blue Forces have been expelled from the territory. The picture above shows a member of the Eddytaws striking back as Blue Forces were pushed out of the territory.
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The latest Red Forces Bulletin ( see http://www.marknottingham.blogspot.com/ ) accuses Blue Forces of breaches of The Wikipedia Convention. Blue Forces Commander, whilst being silent about this set-back and restrained about claims that Blue Forces breached any Conventions, clearly had some fire-fighting difficulties with other 'Boys in Blue' and their geographical ignorance yesterday. ( see http://www.birchington.blogspot.com/).
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We will have to wait and see if a Jedi Knight can mediate successfully and bring a swift conclusion to the conflict before The Emperor returns and calls in his Standard Bearers.
The August 'Silly Season' will soon be over, hopefully.

THE QUALITY OF MERCY AND A MAN, WE BRITISH, SHOULD BE PROUD OF

I watched Channel 4 News on Thursday evening and listened closely to what The Scottish Justice Secretary had to say when being questioned about releasing Megrahi, the only man convicted for the Lockerbie Bombing.

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As he talked of compassion and the fact that Megrahi was being released to return to his family to die, I felt proud to be British.

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The ensuing howls of rage from the USA were to be expected but let us pause and consider for a moment the nature of USA Governments and their actions. This is a country that executes its citizens, often after years on Death Rows, electrocuting, gassing, injecting or shooting them. It is a country that kidnaps 'suspects' and transports them around the world to various sordid prisons and tortures them. It is a country that holds foreign nationals in in-humane conditions for years without trial or due legal process. It is a country that for years allowed the IRA to raise millions of dollars to fund weapons and explosives used by terrorists to kill and maim British soldiers and British citizens in Northern Ireland and throughout the UK. Mrs Clinton even accompanied her husband to N Ireland and welcomed the premature release of hundreds of convicted terrorists, many who were psychopaths, as part of the 'Peace Process'.

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I do not believe a man like Kenny MacAskill, was motivated by pressure from Westminster or from his own First Minister to release Megrahi in some sort of sordid trade deal. MacAskill has always been his own man and I believe his claim that nothing other than compassion, which is an integral part of The Scottish Judicial system, motivated him to allow Megrahi to return home to Libya to die.

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I am surprised at David Cameron's present position on this matter. It does him no credit. I hope that Brown continues to maintain a dignified silence on the issue on the grounds that it was a decision by a Scottish Justice Secretary.

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We should be proud today that we have a man of principle like Kenny Macaskill in our political system and that in the face of predictable condemnation from a barbaric and uncivilised nation that the USA has become, he at least understood the meaning of these words from The Merchant of Venice:

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"The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:"

A TRUCE IN THANET BLOG WAR 2009 UNLIKELY?

It was interesting to see that Cllr Mark Nottingham has taken down a certain posting and its comments today, although Thanet's Premier Blog has a link to the original still (go and visit www.eastcliffrichard.blogspot.com )

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I cannot see any reciprocation over at Thanet Life though. At least Cllr Moores is blogging happily away still and even visiting ECR to comment. 'Blue Forces' seem to be exuding confidence by the look of things.

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I must say I enjoyed the snippet on ECR about Cllr Broadhurst 'as the member for Panama' posted by Cllr Moores. Was this deliberate or a Freudian slip?

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It matters not, as Bertie's assessment of the situation at the moment, is that 'Red Forces' may have been agreeing to a 'truce' that has not been reciprocated and are preparing to resume operations. What else is one to make of this extract on Thanet's Premier Blog this evening from Cllr Mark Nottingham:

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"Simon knows full well what is going on but is being disingenuous and misrepresentating the situation. All will be revealed in the not too distant future. Hopefully Simon will do the right thing."
6:13 PM

THE ARROGANCE OF TDC LOCAL GOVERNMENT OFFICERS

My thanks to today's Your Thanet for this item! As I was unable to reproduce their piccie, I have transcribed, as accurately as possible, a sign on the 3rd Floor at TDC, spotted by an intrepid Your Thanet reporter at last month's Full Council Meeting and photographed.

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I can forgive flu spelled as flue and singular when plural is needed ( although this tells us something about the poor level of education of the probably highly paid author, with possibly the most generous pension scheme in Thanet) but what I cannot forgive is the arrogance implied in this notice.

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"the germs on commuters is pretty awful" seems to me to sum up the arrogant attitude of staff employed by TDC to serve us, the community and tax-payers.

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Fellow citizens who pay the wages and generous pensions of illiterate and arrogant Local Government Officers might just be offended as I am at the implication that we are dirty, unwashed and germ ridden.

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Most of us might not enjoy a tax-payer funded TDC car-loan; a generous motor mileage allowance and reserved parking in Mill Lane that TDC staff can enjoy and may just have to use the Loop, as dirty unwashed plebs but please remember TDC staff, that your status used to be described as 'public servants' and we the public, your paymasters, do not like insults being added to the injuries of a catalogue of your inept and incompetent administration.

TDC - HAS IT BECOME A COSTLY FARCE UNDER EZEKIEL?

Whilst the Blog War 2009 hots up with a disappearance on Wikipedia, Richard Card interested in RM Reservists and the old chestnut of a Ph.D from Pacific Western University being raised, it is perhaps time to concentrate on the costly farce that TDC has become in the past few years.
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(My thanks to Tim Garbutt for information gained from an FOI request and Michael Child for his picture.)
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TDC is one of Thanet's larger employers with over 708 staff (full time equivalent given as 708.27). The total payroll costs are £18,220,679.14 but with all the extras the Gross Total cost is £21, 750, 577.88. This is an AVERAGE COST to the tax-payer of £30,721.
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The Local Government Pension Contributions for 708 FTE staff costs the tax-payer almost £2 million per annum at £1,926,721.19 which is an average of £2,721. No wonder the Local Government Pension Scheme is so generous and according to actuaries, unsustainable.
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What is really interesting is the expenses bill. There appears to be a modest £15,343 claimed but the mind boggles at the cost of Total Car Expenses (£185,005.81) and leased car costs of £22,346. So despite Thanet being a pretty small place with an excellent Loop Bus Service and with TDC having its own large transport fleet, car expenses exceed £200,000 per annum. An employee can buy a car with a TDC loan and then drive it around with an overly generous allowance that will more than help pay for it.
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TDC is broken up into 'service' areas and Environmental Services has 272 FTE staff; the average cost is £25,000 per employee. There is no doubt that our street cleaners and dustmen do a great job and I do not begrudge this modest amount.
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The costliest per head areas are Finance and Services with an average of £36,582 per FTE and Executive Unit with an average of £44,599 per FTE. The obvious point is that in terms of wages in the local Thanet economy, we are paying some very high salaries for officers in finance and in the Executive.
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These are the very people who, according to TDC's own Internal Audit process (EKAP) are responsible for:
1. Loss to the tax-payer and inept and possibly corrupt management of Maritime Services.
2. Loss to the tax-payer and inept and possibly corrupt management of Housing Maintenance and Repairs.
3. A complete and utter disregard of TDC's own Contract Procedure Rules when spending tax-payer's money on goods and services to the extent where 55% of all spending is estimated as being NON COMPETITIVE!
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The latest nonsense, exposed by Tony Flaig, is that logging of Cllr attendance, which is linked to an attendance allowance for Cllrs seems to be amiss. If we can cannot rely on the attendance record of 23 July 2009, can we rely on any of the previous records of attendance?
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I am beginning to think that the present regime running TDC needs to have a very close look at what its staff are up to or not up to, get better service from them and take steps to eradicate waste and unnecessary costs and ensure that opportunities for corruption or inappropriate accounting are eradicated.
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Is there a case for Central Government to take a closer interest? One might even consider that 'Our Leader' and his 'Deputy' would be better off in Panama and thus let others take their places!

ERUPTION OF BLOG WARS AND STRAW MEN?

Oh, dear! Bertie goes into low-profile for a few days and on return to 'blog-sphere' discovers that Thanet Blog Wars have erupted again after an 18 month suspension of hostilities.
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Some readers might remember the headline from Your Thanet in Feb 2008, the disappearance of Thanetonian (One Voice), nobbled ECR and the opening of a Wikipedia Front and self suspension of Thanet Life.
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It would seem that some of the same issues have been raised again and we have Cllr Mark Nottingham at one end of Kent ( http://www.marknottingham.blogspot.com/ ); Cllr Simon Moores at Thanet Life ( http://www.birchington.blogspot.com/ ) and Matt B at Thanet Star ( http://www.thanetstar.com/ ) exchanging opening salvoes. As a keen observer and reporter of the last round of hostilities, I suspect that there is a sharper edge to the present exchanges. Int Cells and Research Teams will be busy again, no doubt!
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The issue that interests Bertie more at the moment is what is 'Our Leader' doing about our absent 'Straw Man', Cllr 'Panama' Broadhurst? One must assume that his embarrassingly low profile in Dane Valley and at TDC Council Meetings will lead to a vacancy in Dane Valley Ward very soon.

I would not be surprised to see an election for a new Cllr taking place this autumn, and I hope some 'Ind Conservatives' will come forward. If there is any-one considering this, they should get off the starting block now and follow Laura Sandys' example and start promoting themselves as 'Prospective Independent Cllr for Dane Valley'. I would also urge Thanet Labour Group to gear -up now and get on and try and win a seat back that they should never have lost.

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You can bet that 'Our Leader' is already considering and trying to influence the choice of a new prospective Conservative Cllr and I await with interest to see if we end up with another husband and wife team at TDC or a face from the past.

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Off now to look for a tin-helmet and check that no great crested newts have taken up residence in the Biggles' Bunker.