I try to sketch Neil Gaiman, Manston, the council, the leader's resignation, another fine mess we seem to be in ans some old local photos.

Well the leader's fallen on his wosisname, the fumes of cars and vapes drift into the bookshop and I wonder once again what on earth to write.

I honestly don't think Chris Wells did that badly as leader of our UKIP council, his big success is that we are now leaving the E.U. and his big failure was saving Manston Airport. Obviously neither of these things which our UKIP councillors stood on and got elected on are something the council could achieve. Although there are still people saying "the king is dead, long live the airport." 

In the previous post I asked who people would like for leader of the council, given that this person has to be chosen from the existing councillors, I didn't get a list of names despite linking the post to most of the popular local Facebook groups. 

Me well I think the only thing we have left to try with our council is the elected leader system, a sort of mini version of what London has with its mayor, not a ceremonial mayor eating big dinners and opening fetes but a political elected one running the council. 

Lets try some old local pictures next to relive the wosisname, well politics is a bit boring for some people. 

 I do love it when there is writing to decode on the back of a postcard form over 100 years ago, don't you?

 On the picture front I have gone back to painting pictures of authors from their photos on https://www.fantasticfiction.com/ I haven't tried to paint likenesses of faces from the screen photos for some time and there is a sense where this type of painting isn't like riding a bicycle - once you have done it, what? O yes you can. Anyway it's partly because of this that I choose authors, I figure they understand the pitfalls of creativity and will be more forgiving. 

Gaimanish? perhaps 

On the airport front I keep getting the old justify your comments comments on Facebook - as though I have the time to write the same stuff over and over. 

I wonder whether it would really be the answer - to kill off a lot of the local oaps that is, would certainly help with the housing crisis, what do you think? 

Here is one reply from today, from me:-

"I suppose the people who would be most likely to suffer mostly in terms of death and dementia would be oaps in the Thanet towns, so if you don’t fall into that bracket you haven’t got that much to worry about. The other category fairly hardly hit would be students in the two schools that are listed buildings and therefore almost impossible to insulate in terms of sound.  

This isn’t something that RiverOak/rsp disagree with, if you care to read their 2018 PEIR document it is pretty detailed on the subject.

In terms of documentary proof the IRAC EHO 2013 study involving 312,944 people in nine European countries revealed that there was no safe level of particulates and that for every increase of 10 μg/m3 in PM10, the lung cancer rate rose 22%. The smaller PM2.5 were particularly deadly, with a 36% increase in lung cancer per 10 μg/m3 as it can penetrate deeper into the lungs.

When it comes to airports the main study was done by the University of Southern California and showed that the particles from the fuel burn travelled further than was previously thought. I have added a picture from the study for your consideration.

I haven’t put lots of links to the evidence in as you have google and can look for yourself, from my point of view the research showing the connection between particulates and dementia is the most worrying and at the main sources are gas central heating, diesel and jet engines it does seem to fit with the time framework.

However like asbestos in schools and hospitals, I don’t believe this will result in a reduction in the amount of travel, but the research into alternative fuels for jet engines isn’t going well.

I think perhaps the issue with Manston is that in order to qualify for a DCO the freight hub has to be seen as a new project starting from an airport capacity of zero and while you can have something that you know is killing people and take action to mitigate this. Building a new airfreight facility upwind of a large concentration of people, particularly where the onshore breeze is likely to hold the pollution in the densely populated part around the coast seem a bit like building a new hospital or school out of asbestos.

For comparison the amount of fuel burnt unfiltered and without a catalytic converter on the ground at Manston for one freight movement would be significantly more that that burnt driving a family car three times around the equator."

This was to a sort of you're making it up comment, which was partly a quote from RSPs own documents which say something along the lines of- we will go off and see how many people and airfreight hub will kill and how many it will drive around the bend. 

On the bookshop front, here is the link to today's post Only restocking the local books that sold on Saturday I'm afraid, I know I should try harder, but you know how it is. 

And yes I am going to try to paint more authors, but this time only authors I have read a fair amount of, I can't paint them from life, but I sort of thought that the influence of having read their books would - well if not shine through, at least make the process of painting from a photo, which I don't like much, a bit more interesting all round. 

The whole business of painting people as opposed to buildings, I don't do natural history, trees, bunnies and stuff as it isn't my bag, give me architecture and people any day, I'm just not interested much in the other stuff.

I sent off the following email about the council:-

"From: michaelchild
To: sajid.javid.mp
Sent: Mon, 19 Feb 2018 16:34
Subject: Thanet District Council

Hi Sajid.

You may have noticed our council here in Thanet is in a state of leaderless disarray, the leader having stepped down and as the opportunity for a vote of no confidence didn't occur it points to a poisoned chalice situation. 

I wonder if you would consider changing Thanet to an elected leader constitution so us voters could have a go at electing a leader rather the councillors putting up a councillor into a no overall majority situation with a rejected local plan, in fact a horrible mess.

Perhaps it isn't in you gift, if not, any solutions gratefully accepted.

Best regards Michael
http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/ Pictures of books going out on the shelves in my bookshop

http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/ My general pictures and writing 

Due to the nature of Clown Computing this email has been sent to you from some sort of fruit, it may make you more comfortable to know the following:- If it makes sense, it was sent by my PineApple Device, which has an ordinary keyboard. If it contains random wrong words, it was sent by my RaspBerry Device, which has predictive text and a small screen that I can’t always see properly. If it makes no sense whatsoever, it was sent by my new BaNana Device, with which I develop the persona of a chimpanzee and hit keys randomly hoping it will produce the works of Shakespeare, or at least something coherent."

The problem there is I don't think it is in his power to do this and I don't fancy some unelected civil servant - I'm sure they would do a very good job, save the airport get a good deal with the EU, but it's the principle of the thing - democracy being bad but considered to be the best there is.    

Where we go from here though I don't really know, I do know that our council has issues, one of the main ones being that a lot of good administratores don't want to work for it and officer morale is generally pretty low. I think the council has made a very poor job of the way they engage with local people online, especially social media, which they were very late in accepting had a place in the governing process.  

I am adding this link to the TDC response to the 2018 RSP consultation, lest I forget 

My own response focussed mostly on particulate air pollution as I think it is the most serious problem related to a large fuel burn at Manston 

Ashford another art shop closes, I buy new old plein air watercolour equipment at half price, Neil Gaiman “Trigger Warning” more Canterbury painting and books.

The nature of my job as a secondhand bookseller involves a fair bit of driving around, looking at and sometimes buying people’s book collections and today I went to Ashford on this type of mission.

I didn’t do very well in Ashford on the book front, it’s a town without a secondhand bookshop, however I got into something rather surreal for which I can only blame Neil Gaiman, I am reading his latest collection of short stories “Trigger Warning” at the moment, and so far it’s very good indeed.

The first story “Making a Chair” lulled me into a false sense of security.

The second “A Lunar Labyrinth” how do I explain? Are you fairly well read? This is not an exact quote as I haven’t got time to go and look it up, however Nicholas Mosley son of the well known Fascist and writer of experimental fiction, said something like. “Art is like a bomb in the maze, that fails to explode.”

The third “The Thing About Cassandra” drags the trick in “Sophie’s World” through the hedge backwards and out the other side.

The fourth “Down to a Sunless Sea” left be feeling like you do at the end of a major and exceptional novel.

After this Ashford was encountered through a mind sensitive to what probably wasn’t there, I haven’t been to Ashford for years and so obviously I parked on top of the central multi-storey car park.

Entering the town in my heightened state of mind, which was full of classical music buskers with violins, French horn, flute, clarinet and trombone, not as a sextet but on different street corners.

 click on picture to enlarge

A lot of shops seemed to have recently closed and the music was mostly on the dirgeish side, not danse macabre but oh, four by four and not the vehicle. 

Buskers normally smile but not these, there was a sense of a funeral for the closing shops, then I got to the art shop Cross’s – closing and everything half price with plein air watercolour equipment that you haven’t been able to buy for years at half price.

I think they stopped making the Dale Rowney metal watercolour boxes with the water tank, when? Have I been through some sort of time warp?

Eventually had a snack lunch in the modern oasis of Café Nero and thoughtfully penned the normality, after which I scarpered to Canterbury, hoping my paintbox and reversible brushes wouldn’t vanish like fairy gold.

Steak in La Trappiste where I continued with my reverse vanishing point sketch of Chocolate Café.

Here are the rest of the Ashford photos, in case I wasn't there?