Sunday ramble

Starting with the other local blogs

I have added two new ones to the latest posts on other blogs wosisname on the sidebar this week although you may have to click on the “show all” link at the bottom of it to find them now.

The first one was “the wonderful world of me” this has some close-up pictures of the whale that died and was washed up at Pegwell Bay. The pictures are a bit gory and not for the squeamish, see http://whalepegwell.blogspot.com/2011/03/truth-about-whale-at-pegwell-bay.html

The other one is called “From One Arse in Kent” http://onearseinkent.blogspot.com/ as I assume this is a parody of “From One End of Kent” it could be an offering from the Tory party at crypt, but who knows.

This blog asks a question about the significance of being a lifetime member of The Campaign for Real Ale at £360 I suspect the answer may be well healed.

On to the longer established local blogs.

Councillor Simon Moores’s Thanet Life

Having had a bit of a handbags at dawn with our local aviator that seems to have left me, persona non grata there, but not really knowing why, I haven’t commented there since the event.

I suppose I should have remembered the words of that other well known pilot, Pussy galore who said “I’m immune to charm.”

Here is quote from his last comment on his own blog. “A council exists to provide services, collect taxes and encourage development etc where grants and such like allow. It can force any business in a particular direction if it doesn't wish to trade there.” One wonders if this a typo and he meant, [the council] can’t force any business in a particular direction. Or if this relates to something he knows and we don’t.

In the secondhand book world Biggles typos are quite important as the way one identifies a first edition of the first Biggles book “The Camels are Coming 1932” is by a typo in the first chapter where it says, agent 2792 instead of agent 2742, as a nice copy recently sold in auction for £10,920.

Typo of the month has to be the bookseller who was emailed and asked if he had a copy of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Nurses.


Well the spat is on both our blogs at http://birchington.blogspot.com/2011/02/lost-in-translation.html then http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2011/03/thanet-life-simon-moores-moves.html then http://birchington.blogspot.com/2011/03/freedom-to-debate.html and certainly attracted a lot of interest if my blog stats are anything to go by.

Staying with the political blog theme Mark Nottingham’s From One End of Kent is alive once again, with three postings last week, see http://marknottingham.blogspot.com/

Mark really has a peculiar situation as he is walking around the huge and naked emperor of the post he deleted and the subject that we would all like to know more about, the internal wrangle in the local Labour group.

With the added website http://marknottingham.net/ it looks as though Mark may be going critical. There are very few non professional conventional Thanet websites, by this I mean where the person it relates to actually has had a go at writing and maintaining the thing themselves. In the battle between Wordpress and Mark it is still early days but technically it looks as though Mark is just about winning, as someone who has their own conventional website, that I write, I have to say I take my hat of to him for having a go.

This business of councillor’s expenses that Mark is publicising at the moment is a bit of an odd one, see http://marknottingham.net/?page_id=160 I would have thought the righteous I claim no expenses is fine if you have a well paid job with its own expenses. Not so funny if you don’t and are trying to operate as a councillor on a pension or some such thing. It is a bit hard to say if Mark includes allowances in his abstinence, or what would happen if he ever became an MP where allowances and expenses could be his main source of income.

Margate Architecture http://margatearchitecture.blogspot.com/ is another blog I have had a chance to read today, plenty of posts in the last week and some of them thought provoking. The issue that MA has given he most coverage to is the housing association one.

From my position of ignorance that is just based on living in an area with a high concentration of housing association property, this looks like a huge experiment in social engineering gone wrong.
History will tell I suppose, but a large concentration of DHSS and dog, with no extra support seems ill advised.

Mustn’t forget to mention Bignews Margate, it seems like me http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2011/03/pinch-and-punch-its-first-of-month.html Tony has been measuring his thing http://bignewsmargate.blogspot.com/2011/03/blog-rankings.html and quick of the mark OAK has responded http://onearseinkent.blogspot.com/2011/03/wikio-dickio-truth.html

I am obviously losing the plot here so will change subject, if I missed your blog it was to preserve anything that remains of my sanity.

Bit of a ramble now.

Looking back over the last eight years of Conservative rule at TDC I wonder what local history will record as their crowning achievement.

Historically local government in this country started as a battle of people standing for council to prevent money being spent on essential safety issues. In mid Victorian times drainage and water supply were the serious issues, queen Victoria caught cholera in Ramsgate, the battle raged over the expense of solving the well near the toilet issue. Sometime in about 1850 the government stepped in and introduced legislation that allowed them to take over and force the issue. Our towns had become middens and there was nowhere safe to dig a well that wasn’t contaminated. Somewhere towards the end of the 1800s the councils in individual towns settled down to going beyond basic public safety and improving the towns.

Funny thing democracy, it really isn’t that old in this country I know votes for men came before votes for women but it very much is a thing of the modern world, the Spinning Jenny and gas lighting both came before even ordinary men got the vote in the UK. It didn’t come that long after income tax, taxation without representation is always an uphill struggle, as we all know local taxation means local representation.

Now to an extent, as the internet has come along and there really isn’t any long term need for representation, theoretically any private individual could put forward any new legislation, policy or proposed changes online and we could all vote on each issue from our own homes. There isn’t really any technical difficulty here and the need for representation is a matter of convention rather than one of necessity.
Perhaps concerns over elected representatives or even the majority of civil servants could be replaced by the ability to decide issues, should one want to from one’s pc.

Bradshaw's Guides

A bookselling note here relating to the series on BBC2 of 'Great British Railway Journeys' with Michael Portillo.

Bradshaw's Guide mentioned in the series is actually the monthly timetable issued between 1839 and 1960, the book Mr Portillo is using is, Bradshaw's Handbook for Tourists in Great Britain & Ireland. It was issued in four sections in 1866 and most copies sold were single regional sections.

Not an easy book to obtain and expensive if you find it.

No worries though as the whole thing is online here http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/mb?a=listis;c=509076202 you want section 1 click on the Full View link and Thanet is on pages 29, 44, 45 and 46 there is a page number go to thingy.

I will continue to add to this as the day progresses.

Incidentally something has gone a bit wrong with blogger today and it isn’t working quite like normal hence the lack of normal spacing.