I was back in my home town of Margate at the weekend for the now annual Dippers and Dunkers festival. It was great to see the old town area busy, even in the wind and rain. I enjoyed the evening show at the Theatre Royal, which is a fantastic theatre and one of Britain’s oldest. My hat is off to those who keep it running. That cannot be easy in a town that has spent the last 20 years on its backside, only getting up to have its teeth knocked out.

The old town area in Margate is regenerating slowly but well, though poor town planning and management by the council has seen the High Street go to rack and ruin. Like many of Britain’s High Streets, Margate’s main shopping street is suffering from the recession. But it was more or less empty even before the downturn kicked in. Poor parking, the development of an out of town mall and a lack of civic pride saw it heading for ghost town status around four years ago. It was recently reported as being the least occupied UK High Street. There seems no plan to bring it back to anything like its former glory, so it seems visitors to the new Turner Contemporary will spend a little at the old town restaurants and boutiques and then move on somewhere else. Probably Canterbury.

Years of corruption, letdown and uncompleted projects have left the people of Margate with a sense that nothing good will ever happen to the town. Even the cheerleaders for the Turner Contemporary temper their optimism with shades of doom. Given some kind of brains trust (or benevolent dictator) at the helm then the town could thrive. A few local businesspeople have the best interests of the town at heart, but as self-interest has largely ruled over the last 20 years it may be time to leave those with large business interests in the town on the decision-making sidelines. It may be one of the few ways to regain the confidence of the public. Something mixing outsiders with locals could work. There is plenty of creative and imaginative talent in the town that could be tapped. Though the benevolent dictator may make the HighSpeed trains run to Margate before Ramsgate.

Next Bank Holiday Monday (30 August) I take the short hop to Ramsgate myself, to judge a kind of literary X-Factor alongside local author Jane Wenham-Jones and Rebecca Smith, editor of local newspapers The Isle of Thanet Gazette and Thanet Times. I am not sure whether to pull my trousers up to my chest, affect an Irish accent or starve myself to Cheryl Cole proportions. But I am sure it will be fun. All you have to do is bring the first paragraph of your novel along to the event, which is part of the Summer Squall festival in the town. I promise not to make you cry too much.

I have a piece in today’s Sunday Express about the future of Dreamland, in my home town of Margate. Plans are now afoot to re-open the site as a heritage theme park and my article is about that, as well as my grandfather who worked there for 30 years.

Bill Sedgwick working by the Scenic Railway

The George Osborne saga is a great news story that probably won’t go away until Osborne gives a full and frank interview or falls on his sword, but the story is not actually the story, for me at least. The public-facing story is the portrait of the British political system that this provides: shadow front benchers sucking up to oligarchs, their best mates mostly being millionaires, the new Business Secretary hanging out in the same company (shorn of his Militant-style moustache and any socialist principles long ago), the chief Tory fundraiser being an old Oxford chum of David Cameron and 99% of those involved in the world of Westminster either having their nose in the trough (admittedly often on behalf of ‘the party’) or trying to press their snout in amongst those already feeding. Not one of them can answer a straight question with a straight answer. This is a world so far removed from the man or woman on the street that it is little wonder that election turnouts are so low.

Growing up in Margate, Kent as a working class boy I saw sleaze as the way that politics ran. The local MP, William Rees-Davies, was known among his constituents as The One-Armed Bandit, which was a delightful conflation of the fact that he did, in fact, have one arm, was representing a seaside constituency where the slot machine was king and was rumoured to like the odd backhander. One of his cohorts at Thanet District Council was Cyril Hoser, a man, if memory serves, convicted of forging everything from dollar bills to ‘O’ level certificates. As I was too opinionated and distracted at school to stay on to take my ‘A’ levels (and not rich enough to buy any of Mr Hoser’s) I attended the local college in Ramsgate. Here, my first student political action was to occupy the office of Jonathan Aitken MP. His secretary said he was not in, but as he was the man who lied and lied and lied he may well have been hiding in the broom cupboard.

Among the local populace, Thanet District Council always had a reputation somewhere below that held by the residents of the London boroughs of Hackney or Lambeth about their councils. The locals expect political promises to fade and die and for politicians to feather their nests. I have no idea of the moral state of the current administration, though Private Eye did recently describe the council as ‘supine‘ and has also commented on its activities over a recent large scale development in the area.

Anyway, a return to Tory sleaze is great news for bloggers and satirists alike. It can’t be too long before shadow ministers are telling more intricate lies or throwing themselves on prostitutes while their backbench colleagues attempt to see who can swing from the rafters while eating citrus fruits (hopefully not air freighted, as that would spoil the party’s green agenda).