Violence in Whitstable - What has happened to our town? Earlier this week a Chef at one of Whitstables famous restaurants was walking home with some female friends when he was pursued from the bowling alley to Tankerton Circus by four men and a woman in a car and beaten up in an apparently motiveless attack. Fortunately a man walking his dog intervened otherwise the assault could have been much more serious. Allegedly the man sought sanctuary in a nearby snooker club and was locked out and told to run No good samaritans in Whitstable then! I have been led to believe the Police will take no action other than a possible caution. In isolation not an uncommon thing. However, several months ago my godson was set upon/ambushed by four men and around the same time another friends son attacked and beaten. I suppose you could infer teenage high jinks until today when I crossed from my neighbours house to mine to be challenged by one of a pair of young men walking on the footpath '' Do you think i'm f***ing funny? Pardon I said only to be greeted by the same refrain I'll f***ing have you _ I walked into my house and closed the door. I Reported the incident to the Police who basically advised 'Run away' i.e. stay in your house. I wonder what sort of society we will have in Whitstable when we are all looking the other way, deferring to thugs and locking ourselves in our houses If the Police are unwilling or unable to take action against these thugs perhaps someone else should - After all if you get caught you'll only get a caution.......................................

Whitstable has become the victim of it's own success and all the media news naming Whitstable as a MUST place to visit, has attracted some undesirables from other areas. As far as the authorities are concerned, they are NOT prominent enough around the town during the day or night and when you ask for assistance you are at the end of the queue.......

Plenty of Kent Constabulary out on the seafront on a sunny morning last week - three police officers sitting in the shelter by the tennis courts apparently having a "meeting" and separately two PCSOs wandering down the front with two CCC officials. When I stopped them to report that my dinghy trailer tyre had been slashed to pieces with a knife I was told "they would report it" - not that either got a note book out of their pocket. Given, I believe, all police pick up 9% shift allowance in their pay it would be good to see a few more out at night.

You wonder whether our Whitstable councillors ever monitor if the town gets an appropriate share of services from KCC/CCC/KPA? One has a sneaking feeling we don't - no council office, no tourist office, no CAB office, insufficient local secondary schools, few parks/gardens cf Canterbury/Herne Bay, dreadful road surfaces cf Maidstone or Ashford , no publicly provided cinema/theatre/hall, little parking enforcement on summer Sundays when town is busy....the list seems to go on and may extend to policing resource.

Surely the 3 questions our representatives must ask every time they comment on a report, speak to an officer or vote in council or party meetings are "Is this the right service to provide?", "Is it efficiently provided?" and "Are my residents getting an equitable service and an appropriate share of the inevitably diminishing resource?". We need redistribution of resource to Whitstable and other small towns not cuts in service lazily/self interestedly directed in order to avoid difficult decisions and keep centralised HQs in place. This need not increase costs - if it is not appropriate for Whitstable to have a CCC public council office then this surely also applies to both Herne Bay and Canterbury? - they too can have a two day a week front desk service at their library and the saved money can be spent on other better things.

Shouldn't believe everything you hear..

Fact: The chef kicked one of the "well known to police attackers" in the face several times and and then the "victim" sort sanctuary in the snooker hall in which he was turned away from for the simple reason that he initiated the violence that evening.

Secondly, the police couldn't press any charges on the "attackers" because the "victim" was to blame for the incident.

It really drives me to insanity that people in this town think its acceptable to post long winded factless dribble on sites like this.

In future maybe you should look at both sides of incidents before quoting them in your posts becuase in some cases and especially the one you have used in this post have two sides with right and wrong on both sides.

Regards,