Kent libraries lose £100,000 worth of stock a year

This item in The Thanet Extra (link on sidebar) caught my attention and to begin with I thought with about 100 libraries and library fines being just over £1 per week this figure seemed reasonable. I reflected that the average item would be a worth about £10 at £1,000 per library that would be about 100 items or 2 missing or totally damaged items per week per library.

Apparently the information had been gained under the freedom of information act, and Kent libraries are considering having a fines amnesty to get some of it back.

As I read the article however it just didn’t make sense at all, stock lost in 2006 was £97,000 and stock lost in 2007 was £106,000 however the 2007 figures included the stock lost in Ramsgate Library fire, one would have expected the fire to make more than £9,000 pounds difference to the figures.

Then the article went on to say that in 2007 Thanet had the most amount of stock written off at £25,000 this figure suggests that the whole of the value of the books, CDs, DVDs, Playstation games, etc in Ramsgate Library when it burnt down was less than £25,000 at £10 per item this would mean that Ramsgate library had less than 2,500 items to borrow, well there are about 1,000 shelves in my bookshop meaning that there would be less than 3 items per shelf or a value per shelf of £25 if you put all of the stuff from the library in it.

I suppose I have reached a stage where I expect local government to be somewhat economical with the truth and produce statements and accounts that don’t make sense, any one got any ideas how they could have come up with this one?

Ramsgate to lose its bang

Rather sad news reported on the Thanet Extra website the firm that used to make the lifeboat maroons is no longer going to and another supplier cant be found.

click here to read about the work of our lifeboat

Ferry fumes

Sitting outside The Lookout Café the other day, looking out over a very good and inexpensive nosh, I was surprised at the amount of smoke issuing from the ferry in the harbour. The ferry wasn’t going anywhere so presumably such engines that were running were only to keep the onboard electric generators going, well certainly what was coming out of its funnel wouldn’t have passed any MOT if it were a road vehicle.

I thought I had read somewhere that the ferries now had to pass much more stringent emission tests, obviously this one hadn’t.

Looking down on the port which frankly is a horrible ugly mess and losing a huge amount of money, compared with the marina which is pretty much full and obviously bringing considerable prosperity to Ramsgate once again why not convert the port to leisure use.

Reflections from the book trade

It being market day in Ramsgate it’s far too busy to get on with much between customers, I have already put up a couple of vague postings, in a bookshop the diversity of peoples questions is very great indeed so it's easy to get off track.

As I pointed out in a previous posting since the economic downturn started we have been a lot busier. This is mostly down to two factors, the first being that the person who wouldn’t have thought twice six weeks ago about buying half a dozen literary paperback at Westwood Cross for about £40 are coming here first where the same six books are going to be about £15, same with the person who regularly buys quality non fiction where prices are around the £30 mark whereas here I would say the average is around £7. The other thing is that people are selling their books to pay for food and fuel, so I am being offered a lot more good quality stock, meaning the prices have gone down and the quality up, the whole thing really being about supply and demand.

Having worked in both new and secondhand bookshops on the whole I would say that the secondhand customers tend to be more discerning, as they are pretty much always buying the books for themselves.

The question begged here is what is a quality book or what isn’t a quality book and for anyone interested I have written an illustrated web page to try and explain this click here to view it

Rubbish

As you can there is a great mound of rubbish on Government Acre, Ramsgate’s westcliff, it does look very incongruous right in the middle of this open space.

China Gateway Wigan Style

It would seem that another of the China Gateways has had a bit of a bumpy ride, those of you who are following the story may find a couple of their local paper items interesting click here and here to read them.

Complaining to Thanet District Council

Back at the beginning of June I complained to the council that they had restricted access to some documents, that I knew to be in the public domain, on their planning website.

I also attached a letter to this complaint explaining that once they had removed this restriction so that I could see all the documents that were there, I would further complain if any of the documents in the planning folder were missing, as obviously I couldn’t complain before I could see everything that was there.

I am coming to the conclusion that the council are delaying dealing with this complaint for some reason, and as the China Gateway application was the one I was trying to view, I am becoming concerned that this relates in some way to the unseemly haste the application appears to be coming before full council.

There is a lot of correspondence about this with the council, so I have only published the most recent, as it is emails you have to read the bottom one first and work your way up click here to read it

Granville Bomb Damage

A fairly unusual picture of the Granville just after it was hit by a bomb in the Second World War. Much less health and safety then the chaps clearing up the mess aren’t even wearing hard hats.