Old pictures of Thanet’s shops and a few diverse thoughts

There has been a spate of old Ramsgate photos published on Facebook recently, many of which I have not seen before and I am once again wondering about some sort of better preservation than the rather tenuous world of social media.

I think the bulk of the would be copyright expired although that is a bit of a minefield, however the other side of the coin is once they are lost part of Ramsgate’s history has just gone.

I went out and took the photos of the exhibition in York Street Gallery earlier, part of the Power of Women Festival that is on at the moment. This relates partly to the 100 year anniversary of women getting the vote. I think to be more accurate some women getting the vote, "women over the age of 30 who were householders, the wives of householders, occupiers of property with an annual rent of £5, and graduates of British universities" I am pretty sure that total equality wasn't until 1928.

I suppose the whole business of discrimination is something that I find particularly interesting, having been fairly severely disabled as child. That said I am not really certain of what to say about the subject.

On the way to the exhibition I encountered a fairly irate trader who considered his problems lay with the council, the difficulty was that he was confused about which council is which and how much of his council tax goes to each council. This confusion had become an entrenched resentment that went way beyond reason or anything I could say.

Take a band D council property in Ramsgate total council tax around £1,700 Ramsgate Town Council gets £50 Thanet District Council £220 and Kent County Council £1,180 with the fire and police services getting the rest. I tend to think in terms of 50, 200 and 1,000 and even that is difficult to remember in heated conversation. Or 1, 4 and 20 pounds a week.

With Thanet District Council, council tax accounts for about half of council income the other half coming from grants and business rates.

On the way back I encountered the signwriter’s velocipede, Gary Wells, here is the link to his Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=BRUSHSCRIBE  

The sign on the bookshop is gold leaf, so is long lasting, I have added some Thanet shop pictures for the signs.

I have been involved in an email dialogue with pins (The Planning Inspectorate) about the problems with the recent Manston DCO consultation, this is something that’s a pain for everyone involved, especially the consultation website. This isn’t a for or against issue as it seems to give as much problems for the people who support the DCO and want to shape a future aviation freight hub use for Manston as it does for the people who are against the DCO and want to see the mixed use, housing, light industry and historic aviation use.

Of course, there are also the people who have arguments either way but haven’t actually read the documentation and are relying on what wosisname said about it.

Once the correspondence appears on the pins website I will publish it on the blog.

Bookshop wise the weather made book buying more difficult last week and I should stress that I am always wanting to buy good quality secondhand books. The easiest way to deal with this one is to send me pictures of the spines of the books on your shelves and I will tell you what I want to buy.

I am reading Wild Seep Chase at the moment so example photo is of the Murakami on the shelf in the bookshop.

Here is the link to the books that went out today http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/malcom-x-returns-to-bookshop.html not as many as I would like due to the snow.

After having to run away from the sound of the organ when painting in Canterbury cathedral the other day I have treated myself to an expensive set of sound cancelling headphones. I hope to test these in Weatherspoon’s when it is at its loudest before braving the organ again.