Tour de France

(or Kent's tour de wealth)

Its great to see the tour de france is once again, visiting Britain and its nice to see it in Kent, but before I go to far in complementing the authorities for encouraging this the world's biggest annual sporting event. I thought prior to me setting off I'd take a look at route, and was struck by how the route missed the poorer parts of Kent.

Since the local authority has been spending big on this one, I assumed that it would some how benefit the whole community, well as with most things in life I'm wrong.

Looks like as with much in Kent's sphere of influence, that West Kent and the cosy affluent areas come first. I often wonder whether those Tories in power actually realise that those of us who live on the coast and to the east, also have to pay massive tax bills to keep Kent Council afloat.

Its estimated that the costs to Kent, are in the region of one million pounds, of which most will not be seen again, an argument is put up that much business will ensue, wild estimates vary up to 40 mill, of coarse as with the current squandering on Kent's loony investments in the State of Virginia, standing around £700,000, its unlikely that there is any system in place to actually monitor any benefit imagined or real.

I made several calls to various Kent wallahs, trying to establish whether they had any such mechanism in place, apart from “voice mail” the best I got was one of their brighter members of staff who in a moment of brilliance determined that I was “a member of the public” and inferred that for this reason I could wait till next week or until a cure for global warming had been found.

I think I might return down to the power boat thingy at Ramsgate, had a pleasant afternoon yesterday good music, but strangely didn't see to many power boats. Good range of food is available French, Polish, Asian etc as is alcohol (not cheap) from Thanet's dominant supplier, wonder why Thanet Leisure Force isn't running the beer tent? I recommend the German sausage purveyor.