News, Local history and Thanet issues from Michael's Bookshop in Ramsgate see www.michaelsbookshop.com I publish over 200 books about the history of this area click here to look at them.
Two new magazines in the bookshop today as you can see from
the picture.
Frankly as secondhand booksellers with the only new
publication part of our stock being local books, we don’t aspire to large
volume sales when a new book or periodical comes out.
What I do however try to achieve with local mags is having a
stock of previous issues, which is much more in keeping with the role of a
secondhand bookshop.
I notice that we have now run out of back issues of Thanet
Watch and will have to order some more.
I also noticed once again it is councillor Ian Driver taking
the council to task over long term failures, in the new edition of Thanet Watch
he says he is getting the Audit Commission to investigate the Royal Sands
development on the Pleasurama site in Ramsgate. This does beg the question of
where the Conservative opposition figure in all of this and why it isn’t them
talking to the audit commission.
Webwise there seems to be a bit of a north south divide
amongst the local Conservatives with Thanet South getting to grips with the
internet, see http://www.souththanetconservatives.org.uk/
and Thanet North Conservatives lost in hyperspace, see http://ntca.org.uk/
In my own way I have started to try and grapple with Twitter,
however the various blogger gadgets that are supposed to show your tweets on
the sidebar of the blog don’t seem to work.
Lunchtime, not many photos as it was too cold to
hang about for longer than I had a handful of baguette. As you see a new taxi office in King Street Ramsgate but this replaces a real shop selling mind body and spirit stuff, presumably crystal balls are now bought online.
Pumpkins are still available on the town as presumably they would be difficult to post.
Back at work and this book with enclosed floppy disk is apparently worth selling on Amazon
Whereas in the shop Windows 98 for Dummies isn't selling for 5p and will most likely go for paper pulp.
Various
messages coming from the council about money are difficult for the average
resident, who has to pay for what the council spends, to interpret.
With
a Labour council in power, the Conservatives won’t be much use apart from
saying that Labour have lost their grip on the purse strings.
Anyway
the council seems to have linked together the business of asking for a council
tax rise with a consultation asking us locals what we want the council to spend
our money on.
Economic development and regeneration (including business advice and the creation of jobs)
Benefits Service and Advice
Landlord services (support to council tenants)
Planning
2.
You have space to provide a response of up to 1,000 characters.
Is it me or are the council now asking us not what to cut but what to spend more on. I will carry on wiht this if blogger lets me publish the tables.
Hot Diggery Dog not only have both tables published
but you can even dot your preferences enabling you to play a pointless game. You may have noticed that the choices in the
second table don’t seem to relate to the grey (marked in red) areas in the
first table.
So if say you had a preference here for the
council to spend more money on lawyers and bureaucrats, it is going to very
difficult for you to express this. While if say you want them to spend less on
street cleaning and public toilets it is dead easy.
The next page asks if you want to reduce the number of councillors, however it strangely doesn't ask if you want to reduce the number of council officers earning over £1,000 per week.
The next page is much easier it asks
4.
Where possible, please tell us which of the following Thanet District Council services YOU have used in the last 12 months. Please tick all that apply.
Electoral roll or local elections
Benefit services and advice
Business advice
Commercial property advice
Council-owned car parks
Council-run sports activities/events
Council website
Environmental Health services
Housing services
Planning services
Public toilets
Telephone switchboard
At this point I should point out that ticking
the boxes won’t effect anything on the council’s website and pressing the F5
button on your computer will clear them all so you can do it again. there are then some pages asking how satisfied you are with council services, followed by a page with equality and diversity questions on it, strangely although it asks me what sex, age, religion I am and has a complex area to do with my ethnic group, it doesn't ask me if I am homosexual, bisexual or transgender.
The pictures in the post were taken with the camera in my
mobile phone during my lunch break today, which I think I am finally beginning
to master and should expand if you click on them.
Going out at lunchtime when I only get an hour to eat my
lunch, take any pictures, do any shopping and so on requires an eat on the go approach.
I am painting with watercolour today so my view of, my view
of, the world looks a bit like the picture above.
Anyway a question about modern and contemporary art here,
the answer (which I will get to in a bit) is which Thanet art gallery is
displaying art by the following artists during 2013, Francis Bacon, Ian
Davenport, Richard Hamilton, Damien Hirst, Katherine Le Hardy, Ben Nicholson,
Piers Secund, Henry Moore, Cedric Christie and Andy Warhol?
It isn’t The Turner Contemporary, apart from
what’s on now running into 2013 I only know of Rosa Barba, JWM Turner Selected
by Rosa Barba and Carl Andre, exhibiting there next year. With the blog and technology the whole situation
has changed so that the process of adding pictures to posts is much quicker and
easier, as I said in the previous post the pictures I take with my mobile phone
automatically save to the internet now, so I don’t have to wait for any uploads
I will probably be adding more pictures to posts.
Here is the watercolour I painted while having
my breakfast, perhaps influenced by a dream I don’t know really, just that I woke
up with the thought of a long person putting on a pair of stripy trousers.
Tentatively wondering what Francis Bacon would have made of Ramsgate I have bent the lighthouse a bit but don't think watercolour is the right medium here.
I guess I would have to buy a rigger brush for doing even stripes to get anywhere near Ian Davenport's view of Ramsgate
I don't think I could get anywhere near Richard Hamilton with watercolour.
There is a point to what may look like rather frivolous nonsense
here, whether we like it or not Thanet’s tourist economy is becoming linked to
art, a large proportion of the visitors to the local area who are reasonably
wealthy are visiting Thanet at least partly to look at artworks.
I guess this means that those of us local who like me
have to deal with visitors on a daily basis can enhance their ability to do
this by understanding art better
The Damien Hirst didn't go so well, also apologies for the shiny patches caused by photographing and publishing each watercolour as soon as I had finished them meaning they were all pretty wet. The bogging was all done while waiting for paint to dry, so I could turn over the page in my sketchbook.
Anyway here is the answer
UPDOWN GALLERY
Satis House, 11 Elms Avenue, Ramsgate, Kent CT11 9BW
Kent's Newest Gallery Opens with:
Sir Peter Blake - 6 Decades in Print. Nov 17-Dec 22.
Sorry this blog went a bit wrong and the previous post
appeared twice while the feeds on the other local blogs read test post, I think
I pushed blogger to the limit with a mixture of posting the gcse results tables
and trying to persuade the blogger editor that my mobile phone was actually an
ordinary computer and not a phone at all.
Anyway I think I have sorted things out now but have to put
some sort of post up to see if it is all working ok. I certainly had a bit of a
learning curve there in terms of putting tables into blogger.
I guess I can only thank the Thanet secondary schools for
improving my computing skills, if you ever have occasion to put Excel tables
into blogger you need to paste them into Word first and then copy them from
Word into the blogger editor.
If you want to con the blogger editor that your Android
smartphone is actually an ordinary computer so you paste into the blogger
editor and import photos from your Picasa account into your posts then Chrome
is the best browser.
You can link the whole thing up by signing up to
Google plus and having the Google Plus app on your phone, this means that when
your phone gets a wifi connection it automatically uploads the high definition
photos you have taken with your phone to your Picasa account.
All this probably sounds like gibberish to most people but
means that I can now do complex blog posts with fully expandable images and
text with the spelling checked albeit by an American very quickly from my
phone.
Apologies for what is a test post containing the sort
of technical information that most people don’t want to know about.
Well it seems to have worked, there is now more
than one post on this page and the blog is feeding this post to the other
blogs. If there is a moral then I guess it's don't make your blog learn tables.
Chatham House Grammar School for Boys FD Selective
96%
994.2
Clarendon House Grammar School FD Selective
98%
995.5
Dane Court Grammar School FD Selective
95%
997.7
Hartsdown Technology College CY Modern
44%
953.5
King Ethelbert School FD Modern
28%
978.6
Saint George's Church of England School VA Comprehensive
58%
1021.1
Sandwich Technology School FD Modern
41%
993.1
Sir Roger Manwood's School FD Selective
98%
1013.5
St George's Church of England Foundation School FD Modern
48%
1051.7
St Lawrence College IND
63%
NP
The Charles Dickens School FD Modern
51%
969.3
The Ellington & Hereson School FD Comprehensive
36%
969.7
The Marlowe Academy AC Comprehensive
20%
958.8
Ursuline College VA Comprehensive
47%
1002
I have produced the information in the table above from the information below, hope it makes sense is accurate, please point out any errors. This information isn’t as easy to find as one would expect this first table comes from the Independent newspaper see http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/secondary-tables-2012/kent-6294906.html
Column A Percentage of pupils achieving 5 A* to C grades or equivalent including A* to C grades in maths and English.
Column B Number of Key Stage four pupils in all English Bacc subject areas.
Column C Percentage of key stage four pupils achieving English Baccalaureate
Column D Percentage of Key Stage Pupils achieving A* to C in both English and maths GCSE.
Column E Value added measure based on the best 8 GCSEs and equivalent resu.
Column F Average A-level point score per student.
Obviously the key above is wrong and I will correct it when I have worked out what is what.
I think the key figure is the Percentage of pupils achieving 5 A* to C grades or equivalent including A* to C grades in maths and English and I think this is column B.
School Name
A
B
C
D
E
Chatham House Grammar School for Boys FD Selective
75
96%
994.2
42%
878.7
Clarendon House Grammar School FD Selective
53
98%
995.5
44%
795.5
Dane Court Grammar School FD Selective
135
95%
997.7
56%
963.6
Hartsdown Technology College CY Modern
0
44%
953.5
0%
470.8
King Ethelbert School FD Modern
0
28%
978.6
0%
Saint George's Church of England School VA Comprehensive
20
58%
1021.1
7%
632.6
Sandwich Technology School FD Modern
6
41%
993.1
0%
552.1
Sir Roger Manwood's School FD Selective
103
98%
1013.5
70%
1017.4
St George's Church of England Foundation School FD Modern
0
48%
1051.7
0%
780.8
St Lawrence College IND
3
63%
NP
4%
740.6
Thanet College
590.8
The Charles Dickens School FD Modern
18
51%
969.3
0%
The Ellington & Hereson School FD Comprehensive
6
36%
969.7
3%
The Marlowe Academy AC Comprehensive
0
20%
958.8
0%
664.9
Ursuline College VA Comprehensive
22
47%
1002
6%
498.5
I intend to continue with this post until I get comparisons for previous years into comprehendable tables that one can compare, if this proves possible, any help of corrections would be gratefully appreciated.
