Wednesday 31 October 2012

Trickle Tweet a midweek ramble


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.



I will ramble on here as the day progresses.   

Tuesday 30 October 2012

Thanet District Council asks us how to spend our money or do they?

 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.

If you go to the council’s website homepage this starts with a link called “Cuts to the Council’s budget for 2013-14” this takes you to a page telling you the council are going to charge us more money, at http://www.thanet.gov.uk/news/latest_press_releases/council_tax_announcement.aspx with a link on it taking you to a page telling you what the council spends our money on, at http://www.thanet.gov.uk/council__democracy/consultation/budget_consultation_2012-13.aspx this page says:
 “Budget consultation 2013-14
Your views wanted!
*Consultation now open until Friday 7 December 2012*”
Here is the table form this page:

Service
Cost per Band D per year
Cost per week

£
£
Clean Streets (including waste & recycling)
49.80
0.96
Parks & Public Spaces
21.94
0.42
Community Safety (including wardens and reducing anti-social behaviour)
01.36
0.03
Promoting Thanet as a tourist destination
03.28
0.06
Sports Development
02.02
0.04
Culture & Events
01.83
0.04
Museums, Theatres & Galleries
04.25
0.08
Leisure Centres
03.29
0.06
Beaches (including inspections and water safety)
01.51
0.03
Planning Services
05.62
0.11
Public Conveniences
05.01
0.10
Environmental Health
10.52
0.20
Housing Regeneration
06.11
0.12
Economic Development & Regeneration
02.47
0.05
Services provided by East Kent Services (revenues and benefits, customer services and ICT)
40.14
0.77
Members services and democratic processes (including electoral registration and elections)
09.07
0.17
Support functions (including accountancy, legal services and business services)
37.92
0.73
Other
03.83
0.07
Total
209.97
4.04
 There are two grey areas that seem to mop up loads of money in this table I have marked them in red for clarity.
 Anyway there is a link to the consultation at the bottom of the page taking you to this page http://www.thanet.gov.uk/files/budget_consultation_2013_14.htm with a table rather similar to the one above

1.Please tell us which of the following services you value the most by rating each of them as either high, medium or low value.
HighMediumLow
Street cleansing
Waste and recycling
Parks and public spaces (including provision of facilities e.g. public conveniences)
Community Safety services (including wardens and reducing anti-social behaviour)
Promoting Thanet as a tourist destination
Beaches (including beach inspections and water safety)
Sports and Leisure facilities
Museums, Theatres and Galleries
Locally run events and the provision of grants to support events
Environmental Health (including dog warden, pest control, food safety)
Private Housing (regenerating housing estates, homelessness support)
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 went to Rooks to get a bacon roll but the queue was too log to I opted for a ham salad baguette £1.99 from their deli counter, passing a greatly increased number of mostly empty cafés and restaurants I did ponder how this works.     

Sunday 28 October 2012

Sunday ramble about art and stuff


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.

Saturday 27 October 2012

Thanet schools and the learning curve

 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. 

Thanet secondary school GCSE exam results 2012

I think this table is correct


School Name
5 A* to C or equ inc  maths + Eng
Value added measure
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.

This next lot are from the department of education website at http://www.education.gov.uk/cgi-bin/schools/performance/group.pl?qtype=GR&f=Py2oADcOrE&superview=sec&view=  and show the previous years 2008 to 2011


% of pupils making expected progress% of pupils making expected progress% achieving 5+ A*-C GCSEs (or equivalent) including English and maths GCSEs% achieving 5+ A*-C GCSEs (or equivalent) including English and maths GCSEs% achieving 5+ A*-C GCSEs (or equivalent) including English and maths GCSEs% achieving 5+ A*-C GCSEs (or equivalent) including English and maths GCSEs% achieving the English Baccalaureate% achieving grades A*-C in English and maths GCSEs
SchoolTypeEnglishMaths201120102009200815.40%58.70%
Chatham House Grammar School for BoysFoundation School90%76%95%94%95%94%42%96%
Clarendon House Grammar SchoolFoundation School94%90%95%97%96%95%44%98%
St Lawrence CollegeIndependent SchoolNPNP63%75%77%68%4%63%
The Ellington and Hereson SchoolFoundation School50%53%36%32%NANA3%36%
The Charles Dickens SchoolFoundation School69%57%47%28%33%30%0%51%
Dane Court Grammar SchoolFoundation School86%89%94%97%96%96%56%95%
St George's Church of England Foundation SchoolFoundation School55%65%48%41%27%21%0%48%
The Marlowe AcademySponsored Academy32%39%20%14%12%13%0%20%
Hartsdown Technology CollegeCommunity School54%48%44%43%32%20%0%44%
Sir Roger Manwood's SchoolFoundation School94%97%95%95%99%99%70%98%
Ursuline CollegeVoluntary Aided School52%69%45%57%54%50%6%47%
King Ethelbert SchoolFoundation School60%48%28%34%34%14%0%28%
Sandwich Technology SchoolFoundation School64%44%41%38%38%31%0%41%


Here are the 2011 figures in a format that I can understand and i will attempt to add the 2012 figures




School name


Three A-levels (%)

47
0
 33
969.3
NA
NA

95
42
91
994.2
878.7
99


95
44
95
995.5
795.5
87


94
56
92
997.7
963.6
97


36
3
23
969.7
NA
NA

28
0
19
978.6
NA
NA

20
0
4
958.8
NA
NA


41
0
33
993.1
552.1
71


95
70
95
1013.5
1017.4
100

48
0
16
1051.7
780.8
85

45
6
39
1002
498.5
44

Here is the Isle of Thanet Gazette article http://www.thisiskent.co.uk/Results-GCSEs-schools-Thanet/story-16760813-detail/story.html

picture relates to comment