Sunday morning reflections

We have a great many sparrows in our garden and there was quite a kafuffle this morning when a sparrow hawk turned up for its breakfast, I didn’t really see what happened but I think it must have got at least one, as we peered out of the window awaiting events the whole scene changed it started to snow and a robin turned up.

It’s been an odd sort of week in terms of bookshop business, a mixture of panic caused by the recession on the one hand and having bought some particularly good review copies and bankrupt book stock on the other.

With an overall shop stock of about 30,000 books it is fairly difficult to make much of an impact on the stock, right across the shop, but this batch has.

It’s very helpful to have a lot of obviously brand new books at secondhand prices with the recession and Christmas coming up.

Then there is the business of the museum closures, with The Maritime Museum we are fast approaching the deadline for the public consultation on the use of the building, if you would like to see it continue to be used as a museum please send an email to that effect to hannah.thorpe@thanet.gov.uk word is that the trustees forgot to renew the lease and that has caused the problem.

It would seem to me that The East Kent Maritime Trust don’t seem to have been particularly good at looking after the vessels in their care, one historic fishing vessel left to rot, chopped up and disposed of, another historic vessel seemingly abandoned and left high and dry for the elements to finish off and the last ocean going steam tug left to rust away.

I also noticed this little gem about the damage done to Margate Library, a lot of my customers use Margate Library and much of what they have to say about Thanet Gateway is unprintable.

Thanet Gateway Plus is one of five projects shortlisted in the efficiency and modernisation category of the prestigious Local Government Chronicle Awards, which recognises the best in UK local government.

Click here to read the press release about it

Click here for more pictures of Ramsgate Harbour

Margate Library

Since Margate library has been improved and has the new status of a Thanet gateway book lending has dropped by 40%, I can’t imagine a greater cultural disaster could happen to a town than to have its only bookshop closing and borrowing from the library nearly halved.

Possibly the Nazi book burnings of WW2 caused this level of drop in reading, but I would doubt it, certainly having council desks in the library is an unmitigated disaster for the town.

TDC and KCC need to understand that the primary purpose of a library is to make books freely available to the population, and to do to this it is necessary to have an environment that one can concentrate enough to read in.

It is time for a review of the function of libraries, I can see a good case for publicly funding the free availability of books, however is there a case for publicly funding the loan of DVDs which is the equivalent to publicly funding cinemas, or internet cafés, what do you think?

Ex Libris

One Margate had a library but after refurbishment it has a thing called Thanet Gateway, when you go in the entrance you will find queues of people paying their council tax and complaining about their houses, drains etc. once you have battled through all this, yes there is a library in there. I really despair of this stupid arrangement that must be as difficult for the council staff as the librarians. So why not two separate entrances and why waste our money in this way?
If the same thing is going to happen in Ramsgate library when it reopens they could well be best off staying in the temporary accommodation in Cannon Road car park.