Consultation opens on PSPO plan to combat antisocial behaviour in Broadstairs, Margate, Ramsgate and Westgate

61 Comments

1. All on or near the route of The Loop! Coincidence or not?

   • You really are a very unpleasant insensitive person, Checksfield. Not funny. You should be banned from writing anything on these comment threads.

     • Do you ever comment on the actual articles? All you seem to do is whine about other people’s comments instead of contributing anything constructive.

     • You would fit in well at TDC-trying to ban anything/punish people. Though in their case it is just for financial gain under the guise of keeping law & order-though anybody with a brain would challenge this arrant nonsense, after the exposure that what they were doing wasn’t legally enforcable last year.

       Yours it just seems is wanting to ban people who don’t agree with you, or you have an issue with them like Peter. Equally ridiculous.

       • SGNA – if someone had called you an “English whore” (assuming that you’re an English woman) I daresay you’d have “an issue” with them.

         • I am an English male & I haven’t seen you called that in this thread. I have seen you & others call him some not complimentary names as well-so likely it is six of one, half a dozen of the other.

         • What are your chosen pronouns?

     • Someone says something with which you disagree; therefore, in your view, he must be banned. Are you certain that yours is the right approach?

       • John Holyer -I’m certain that his is the wrong one. That’s because I don’t think misogynists and racists should be allowed to make such comments here.

       • Fortunately, this isn’t NNR’s site. If it was, they’d be news headlines like “Ramsgate: Paradise on Earth” and “Where is Birchington?”.

2. Ban drinking in the streets

   • And drugs! Thanet stinks of weed.

   • What about dancing in the streets?

     • Leave that to Martha.

   • It was Peter Checksfield who called me a “Welsh whore”. No wonder I really dislike him.

3. Pointless exercise and, in typical TDC fashion, poorly thought through. Pretty sure there are already statutes to address things like defecating in public and taking psychoactive substances, while the rest are far to nebulous and subjective to be easily enforced. Just another attempt to appear to be doing something while actually doing nothing of any worth.

   • The most effective part of previous orders was the ability of the police to seize and pour away the contents of open containers of alcohol. It was a very effective measure in terms of moving problem drinkers away from their preferred haunts. Would have been a very handy tool in cliftonville this last year.

     • Could have just taken their tents away & rubbed their faces in the brown mess they left on the pavement.

   • Police trying to look accountable but not doing anything

     • Bingo Top cat! Will this include police seizing e-scooters that are all illegal? I doubt it, although e-scooters (& bikes on pavements) are a dangerous menace, I have a near death experience from them most days in Ramsgate!

       • I find having situational awareness helps.

   • I am sure the Free Speech Union are keeping a close eye on this & again will not be impressed at TDC returning nearly a year later with the same old money raising, vague rubbish that will fall down in court again.

     Not surprising seeing the arrogance & gaslighting behaviour of politicians, that they just thought that people would forget that this stuff fell apart a year back.

     • The FSU are Toby Youngs latest alleged grift after his alleged misogynistic attitudes saw him allegedly shut out of the press orgs he used to work for. I love how he charges supporters a subscription fee for free speech too. It’s weird, also, isn’t it, how those who champion him all see to be either far right, or ultra libertarian?

4. i agree with mr checksfield . does this person actualy take any notice of the news articles , or is she just on here to criticise good up standing folk like myself and mr checksfield , and as regards the plan = good luck with that !

   • Good, upstanding folk don’t align with punch down policies of the far right…

5. Ban alcohol from public spaces especially beaches!
   Broadstairs and Margate had really suffered with youths being antisocial in towns, beaches and on the trains. Please don’t just talk about it, Enfoce it!!!

   • Aren’t benches outside pubs public spaces? How about the police actually do their job & arrest those causing trouble with excess drinking, rather than just blanket banning alcohol-when most people use it responsibly?

     A lot of people causing issues are drinking their alcohol in the home & then heading out looking for trouble, or go onto the pubs & clubs to get totally bladdered-before spilling out into public spaces to cause problems. How do you suggest that is rectified?

6. Having got the bus for work, I have witnessed loop bus drivers allowing people on drinking cans of beer and drunk.

   why do the bus drivers let them on? They go on to be a nuisance to the customer.the elderly,school children,mums and children.

   I have had to intervene several times with these drunk thugs picking on innocent people.

   Are you listening stage coach!!!!

   • I’m clearly not the only one who finds anti-social behavior on The Loop.

7. Years of ignoring drug use, similarly alcohol abuse, lettiing shoplifting become pretty much a risk free passtime and letting kids run riot because they’re under the age of criminal responsibility ( and parents in turn using this to absolve themselves from any responsibility) , pretty much means the game is up and standards will continue to decline.
   Too risky to remonstrate with any of the ne’er do wells, they’re seemingly too happy to become violent , especially if posturing in front of their friends.
   Long gone are the days where the right minded, local , work hardened would keep their immediate community in check.

   • When was that exactly? The 1970’s-1990’s when men would go around bashing non-whites & gays?

     The good old black & white era when the Mods & The Rockers would fight on the beaches, in pubs, in cinemas etc-while terrorising families minding their own business?

     When the man after work would get drunk, go home & belt the living daylights out of his wife & kids? Rose tinted glasses for something that has never existed. Don’t forget the media of the day lamenting the hooligan culture & moral decline & blaming Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Gene Vincent, Chuck Berry, The Beatles, Rolling Stones etc.

   • It’s not often I agree with John Major, but when he said we should understand a little less and condemn a little more, he hit the nail squarely on the head.

     • OMG I can’t believe that is where Chumbawamba got their lyric from, that is so cool!

     • Was that when he was doing his family values speeches, while having an affair with a member of his cabinet?

       It is also the prevailing attitude to appeal to voters going decades before he even got into power, up to the present day that has seen the approach of locking people up, doing little to nothing to change them & then expecting a different result when they get released, that has led to prisons finally reaching beyond breaking point & dangerous criminals being released onto our streets early.

       • Doesn’t matter why he said it or what he gets up to in his private life. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Perhaps the reason for recidivism is that sentences are too short and prison not sufficiently unpleasant. Every effort should be made to rehabilitate first offenders, perhaps even second, but if they’ve not learned after that then throw away the key.

         • Well no-the inspectortate reports were complaining about crowded jails, insect infestations & slopping out back in the 1960’s & still are. While the tabloid media might like to say it is a paradise, the reality in most jails is very different.

           If you lock people up purely to punish them & not to stop them returning, then why would you expect anything different at whatever point they are released? This has been the very point of those inspectors & the probation service going back to that time to the current.

           Of course there will always be a hardcore who will always reoffend & those that need locking up forever to protect society, but most could of & can be turned around.

           As we have seen you cannot just keep locking more & more people up without helping them & sustain it-at some point you don’t have enough spaces & building new jails is not the answer. Most don’t get any help-that is the problem, to appeal to Daily Fail, Sun etc readers.

8. Waste of time. Yet more empty words from ‘less-than-useless’ TDC who say much and do nothing. They will make a list of “offences” and then ignore them.
   How can they control anti-social behaviour when the lazy, clock-watching jobsworths who work(?) at TDC are more likely lying on their sofa’s watching TV (or working from home as they call it).

   • If it was actually about controlling anti-social behaviour then most of us would be for it. It isn’t, it is about fining people to raise money & having control over people.

     If this nonsense does pass then it is no different from the polices they were using for years that collapsed when somebody finally challenge them-anybody encountering it in the future just needs to challenge it & if possible get the Free Speech Union involved & TDC will back down right away again.

     • This is very different from the previous policy that had to be abandoned. That sought to prohibit the use of certain language, which was deemed unlawful after challenge by the Free Speech Union. These proposals seek to outlaw certain behaviours, not language. That is not to say that it is any more likely to prove effective, but the two are very different.

       • Not from reading it-again what might cause offence to one person will not to another. We also now live in a world where some people are permanently offended by anything. it is way too vague, open to interpretation & easy for abuse-exactly the problem with the original PSPO’s.

         We don’t need them, we just need the police to move people on or arrest them-as happened before they came into being. If we are going to have them then they need to be crystal clear, targeted only towards genuine anti-social behaviour & enforceable at court.

         • What does your logic say about those who are permanently offended and projecting that onto others? 😉

9. I wonder if Alex Peters has ever been a counciller or on a committee, and if so, on which.

   • Yet again, you criticise someone else’s post rather than commenting on the actual article. It is getting very tiresome, and I for one am genuinely curious about your views/solutions.

   • Have you M.M. Rees? Perhaps you could provide details if so?

     • SGNA -Yes. I have been on committees.

       • Was it run by a bloke in a flat cap with a bell, similar to ‘The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club’?

10. councillor, not counciller

11. T.D.C = all talk and no action again and again.

12. Yes, came to an end because they wouldn’t stand up in court & TDC backed down as soon as somebody who wasn’t a pushover & had some resources called their bluff. Labour just carried on using them like the prior regime had. It was just a way to intimidate people into paying fines.

    Wouldn’t trust Labour/TDC with anything-they are already trying to ban smoking in public places like a nanny state, likely purely for revenue raising purposes under the at best highly dubious guise of health so they can fine people. Even as a non-smoker I find all of this appalling. They are likely to use these not for their purpose, but to go after anybody when it suits them to raise money.

    Most of us only found out last year that for six years any of us could have been in trouble for swearing in a public place, no matter whether it was a joke being told, or just recounting an experience if somebody ‘was offended’ & reported us-all under the guise of anti-social behaviour. Of course the only reason swearing should be an issue if it is being done to somebody else in a threatening manner.

    Politicians are power hungry control freaks, whatever their claims to the contrary-look how often the Tories said they didn’t want to be a nanny state, while interfering in every aspect of our lives & snooping more & more-or at least trying to. These things are totally open to abuse, prior to them the police managed perfectly well to remove actual persistent troublemakers from areas-such as drunks/vagrants accosting people, littering, being abusive etc.

    Let us not forget that only recently-until the publicity hit that, TDC, our MP & the police were all passing the buck/washing their hands of the Cliftonville tent dwelling, street defecators harassing people-I see that clause has been added in. It would be nice to know why no action was taken against clear troublemakers until it hit the headlines, but it comes off as policing on the cheap & is again dubious-just a few that are as usual incredibly vague & open to interpretation & abuse by those implementing them.

    Misuse of public spaces-what does this cover exactly? Everywhere we go is a public space. Would this allow for instance the banning of protests-like the recent ones against the disabled, or th cuts to winter fuel? We know how keen the Tories & Labour have been & are to ban all protests against their policies in recent years.

    Using foul or abusive language within the hearing or sight of another person who is likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress by this-oh dear, clearly TDC has not learned their lesson in trying to do this again-after it was proven to be unenforcable in court.

    It is like the current cancel culture situation where people report distress/alarm falsely-just because they don’t like the others point of view. A person could drop something heavy from their work van onto their foot, yell an expletive & somebody takes offence & reports them for it. If TDC are going to do this then it has to be proven to be done to that person in a threatening manner.

    Being abusive to others or behaving in a way that is likely to cause them to feel humiliated or degraded-again, this is incredibly vague & comes back to the old days of the Obscene Publications Act-where a jury without any real legal framework & from all different backgrounds & of differing opinions/morality if you like were supposed to determine whether adult magazines being confiscated from ports, mail order & newsagents shelves were offensive. You could quite easily have a woman reporting a man for calling her darling or love-as those are not PC terms any longer & does anybody really feel
    that is a good use of police time or taxpayer money?

    Using alcohol in a public space if behaving in a way that is likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress-again what is this going to cover? Somebody could well be alarmed or distressed by a happy drunk not abusing anybody falling over. If you aren’t going to be very specific about what it will cover then it is rife for abuse & will collapse as like last year when it is challenged.

    Following on from the Cliftonville clean up plans floated a couple of years back, maybe longer-when somebody could get in trouble for ‘being too noisy’ if somebody reported them. This was going to apply with zero common sense at any time of the day-not just late & with zero context-so somebody doing some DIY at 10 AM would be treated just the same as persistent yobbos playing music loudly all through the night, shouting & screaming & generally actually being antisocial neighbours. All it would take is a neighbour with a grudge, or a curtain twitcher who just likes cauing trouble for people to report the person for banging their hammer too loudly, while making furniture or whatever.

13. I don’t mind the idea of banning outside smoking as long as it’s consistent: people openly walk around Thanet smoking dope, yet that is ignored!

    What do you think, M.M.R.?

    • I am not really for banning anything, even if I don’t like it. It would surely also have to cover vapes as well? Of course the police have better things to do with their time, which is why none of this nonsense is as the police themselves say ever going to be enforced.

      This will just be the usual failed, jumped up, little wannabe cops like the short-lived Covid Marshalls that gravitate to positions where they think they can have power over others-security guards, special constables, PCSO’s etc-not all of them of course, that TDC hire to try to intimidate people, fit them up like the smoking lot they hired previously & all their cases collapsed as well & eventually the company themselves were filmed dropping their cigarettes by Mill Lane I believe & lost the contract, they also lost them nationwide for similar abuse of power, corruption & hypocrisy.

      If it ever does come in then I suggest people just laugh in their face, tear up any issued fine & say see you in court chump. These things have already been found not to pass the sniff test legally, which is why TDC dropped them last year-at the first challenge they recieved. Have they returned with clearly defined policies actually aimed at keeping/making the area safe/safer?

      No, it is just the same vague old rubbish that would be laughed out of court & cost the taxpayer even more money in legal cases being purused. Such is their disdain for the public that they actually think people will have forgotten last year & apparently forgotten that the Free Speech Union is keeping a close eye on them.

14. Spitting in a public place

    Have you ever heard anything so ludicrous? If you spit in somebodies face, or on them on purpose then fine. Spitting on a pavement or in the road? What a joke-we have all coughed/choked & had to spit-without having time to retrieve a tissue from our pockets. Does the TDC leader wear a Puritan hat by any chance?

    • Spitting is more of a problem with people from certain parts of Asia. Remember “It Ain’t ‘Alf Hot, Ma’am”?!

      • Haven’t seen that on the telly for a long time, or Spike Milligan.

15. This article is not helped by the graphics on the heading.
    Do you believe that it is safe to walk the streets or not? If not have you been on the wrong side of anti social behaviour?
    Much of this is to do with the growing fear of crime and an egregious social media echo chamber, where out groups are demonised as here. Accordingly, Loop bus passengers, drinkers, cannabis smokers,those who spit etc etc. You could include dog walkers on the beach in summer, and bad car parking.
    The problem with anti social behaviour is that it depends on context.There are some who want to see total peace and quiet, no ball games, no free association in groups of 5 or more, no music etc.
    There others who are rather more free and easy.Its this conflict that causes the issues.
    On the fear of crime we need more bods on the ground, keeping an eye on things, giving some reassurance. Above all we need devolution to be able to do things locally.We need to be able to give some weight to expectations to the aspirations that young people might have. More training, more apprenticeships, more technician jobs, such as electricians , plumbers, carpenters, brick layers. We short of all these, yet we have large numbers of people who are not in work, training ,or education why?
    The way that government at all levels does business is sclerotic, and there is too much heed paid to special interest groups.
    Deprived areas are not deprived because they want to be, they are deprived because the free market economy is failing us.

    • I was once mugged in Peckham. Like many people there, one suspects.

    • Exactly & thus it has always been-Nick Ross on Crimewatch for nearly 25 years told us that crime was falling & it was national media hysteria to sell papers, now of course it is for the 24/7 news media ratings.

      Anti-social behaviour is easily dealth with by the police, this is just an excuse for TDC to issue fines for spurious nonsense & fill their coffers by doing so.

      As soon as somebody with resources actually challenged TDC they backed down last year & scrapped it-the leader making face saving excuses, while as usual being angry at anybody questioning him or his party & tacitly admitting that neither they, nor the prior administration that bought them in had a leg to stand on legally-they just wanted people to be scared into paying fines.

      These things have to be done on common sense grounds-again the wording is vague, open to interpretation & can be used against anybody for any reason-it needs to be clear it is targeting a hardcore of offenders, not somebody who swears in the street, spits on the pavement, or even holds a peaceful demonstration in a public place.

    • I hear you on the context. I’m hoping that the KFC Gang (Ramsgate) will be safeguarded against any PSPO plan. I get a lot of enjoyment seeing what they’re up to when I walk past them.

      • Who are they? Are they like the non-healthy eating version of The Garden Gang?

16. Put officers on Buses they can can travel around all day getting in and off , in hot spots , do their thing and move on , better just wandering the beat.

17. G Noakes about deprived areas, I disagree a lot of people are in deprived areas because that’s the way the are, just to lazy and ignorant, there is nothing to stop them cleaning the front garden , the windows etc etc there is nothing to stop them bringing the children up with manners and showing respect for other people and their property, all these things cost nothing however certain people in certain areas think they have a right to scrounge and get their lifestyle paid for by other members of society. Unfortunately Thanet has more than enough of these uncouth layabouts.