Friday, August 26, 2011

Thanet Council does the camera ever lie?–We’ll never know

itseemsto

Well when I clicked the link on TDC’s website to find the answer, it came up with this,missinglink

so I’d been inclined to say yes, still maybe Cllr Simon Moores is helping out in IT, you know how tricky these links can be, remember this incredible mistake.

I assume it will be sorted out soon.

Still if you’ve ever looked at traffic wardens, particularly in London, if it wasn’t for their uniforms you’d get the impression that they were fashion photographers as the wrestle to get the best angle’s to “prove” a vehicle is half an inch outside a parking bay.

Clearly TDC is reacting to reports focussing on the rather selfish use and abuse of taxpayers money at Mill Lane car park which, as we recently discovered has more cameras, looking after council staff’s cars and free priority parking space, than looking after taxpayers like you and I in the rest of Margate.

11 comments:

  1. Tony the camera count at Mill Lane is a consequence of the architecture and design of the car park and nothing more. These are button CCTV cameras and not the larger ones you find in the streets. Thus although you would really like to believe that the camera count was something related to TDC employees cars, it's simply a question of efficient camera coverage of a multi-story car park which includes council workers cars along with everyone's else's

    But as the old saying goes, "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story"

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  2. Two problems really Simon one the car park over run by council staff

    and secondly the suggestion by the council that they have to waste money on these cameras because the law says so.

    of course in reality Mill Lane car park does not pay its way because you and you colleagues continue to indulge staff.

    as with the disgraceful inflated payments to redundant staff.

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  3. Simon I hope the main point you will take onboard here is that we have two major tourist events on this weekend here in Thanet, and the council’s website header banner is only covering this cryptic message leading to broken link, wit no mention of the tourist events at all.

    Combined with the fact the council’s website is tagged whats on thanet, so that those words put the council’s homepage onto the front page of the major search engines, can I ask you as a local businessman questioning a council cabinet member, is this a deliberate strategy to harm local businesses?

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  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  5. As I said on Simon's blog the other day (when he asked what things I'd do to save TDC money): "I'd start with cutting their free parking in Mill Lane carpark (walking / cycling should be encouraged) & stop wasting time / money removing harmless banners."

    His reply was: "Peter
    The people of Thanet can sleep safe in their beds knowing that such decisions about budgets and services lie in other hands than yours!"

    So I guess free (& highly protected) parking for TDC employees is seen as a higher priority than cleaning our streets or protecting our public loos.

    ...and Michael, keep pushing this. Maybe it will eventually sink in to them how important tourism is to Thanet.

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  6. Whether the cameras in the Mill Lane car park are buttons ones or not is irrelevent. It just a poor get out excuse. They produce the same image as any other street cameras and as such each camera stream requires somebody to monitor it. Thus a disproportionate amount of time and money will be spent on this one car park.

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  7. Tony its a pity you cant phone the press office to point out the problem but them TDC dont want their errors made public.
    Anyway I have found the link and TDC spend £400,000 p.a on monitoring TDC's 96 cameras 24/7.
    Yes 96 in total and more than a third of them in Mill Lane car park. The installation cost may have been cheap in this car park compared with the 360 degree cameras on the streets but over 3 years it will cost £400,000 just to monitor this car park. Not exactly fair use of tax payer's money.

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  8. How many cameras combined are there in Westbrook, Garlinge, Westgate, Birchington, Minnis Bay & Acol? Just curious.

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  9. Disable the spy in your homeSaturday 27 August 2011 at 09:23:00 BST

    The camera on your computer can be used to monitor you in your home.

    To disable it,

    1] Open a web page,

    2] Find and control-click on a flash object to open the Flash control panel.

    3] Disable camera and microphone.

    4] Repeat for every browser installed.

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  10. It appears you got suckered by a utterly onesided story.

    Would have been nice to see some statistics for crime levels in the car park before cctv and after in the original article.

    Unfortunately the 'reporter' in question never bothered to look into this (surely the first point of call?) or left it out for fear of undermining his 'story'.

    Balance ? He obviously just thinks that something you lose after a few too many sherberts

    It's no wonder journalists get a bad name with sensationalist tub thumpers like this in the local press

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