Pollution Maps

I have to admit to still being immersed in trying to properly understand the implications of various local pollution incidents, some of my dealings with both the environment agency and Thanet district council have left me feeling somewhat less confident than I would like to be that we are being properly protected.

In the case of the environment agency, I was particularly concerned when they told me that they hadn’t the resources to read the China Gateway surface drainage report thoroughly. I was also very concerned when they said. “There is thought to be some control over the quality of water used for irrigation and crop washing, although this is not regulated by the Environment Agency.”

With the council I am very concerned that they seem to have a weak attitude to public safety, combined with a desire to conceal matters from us that could effect our safety.

For those of you interested in pollution issues the environment agency have a series of pages where you can enter your postcode to find out the situation near where you live.

Click here to go there

Something nasty in the water 2

I have published the environment agency’s letter to Rick click here to read it

The danger threshold limit value for Cyclohexanone is 20 parts per million, it can be absorbed through the skin, by inhalation or ingested, and we have a spillage involving 100s of tonnes of the stuff, which seems to have been covered up for years.

How on earth could such a large amount missing have gone unnoticed? Because of its nature you theoretically are not allowed to let it evaporate, I would hope that those people who advocate heavy industrial use on the source protection zones will reconsider their positions.

Sale of One Sixteenth part of Five Messuages or Tenements in Ramsgate, 6 April 1704

This Indenture made the Sixth day of Aprill in ye third Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lady Anne by the grace of God Queen of England Scotland France and Ireland Defender of the faith &c Annoque Domini 1704 Between Georg Long of Ramsgate in the Parish of St Lawrence in the Isle of Thanet in the County of Kent Mariner and Margaret his Wife of the One Part And Silvester Spencer of Ramsgate aforesaid Mariner and William Spencer of the same place Mariner of the other Part Witnesseth That the said Georg Long and Margaret his Wife for and in Consideration of the Sum of Seventeen Pounds of Lawfull English Money to them the said Georg Long and Margaret his Wife in hand well and truly paid by the said Silverster Spencer and the said William Spencer at or before the Ensealing and Delivery hereof The receipt whereof of the said Georg Long and Margaret

Click here to read the rest of this document

Gerald has transcribed another of the package of documents relating to the Rising Sun in Ramsgate, it really is rather an attractive document and I will try to get a better picture of the original. It is very difficult to get a piece of vellum that has been folded up for over 300 years to lie flat, as I expect using a hammer is something that professional archivists frown upon, once all of the documents have been transcribed I will lay them out flat somewhere, until they settle down and do some better pictures.

Websites and what people look at.

I noticed the other day that my www.michaelsbookshop.com Web statistics had vanished, and so had reconfigure them, I don’t look at them very often and as I have been concentrating on this blog recently my other website www.thanetonline.com has got rather out of date. Anyway I found it is possible to make these statistics publicly available so you can all see details of what people look at, here they are

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/stats/

http://www.thanetonline.com/stats/

Something nasty in the water

About 12 years ago Sericol had a spillage of cyclohexanone at Porehole Lane near Westwood Cross, now I have read a few of Rick Card’s comments on this and I had assumed we were talking about an oil drum or something.

He spoke to me earlier today and said that that the environment agency have told him that so far 470 tonnes of cyclohexanone have been recovered in the 12 year long pollution clean up operation that is still going on.

Also they confirmed that part of the aquifer was damaged, I am beginning to think that we need a proper review of the activities being carried out on the aquifer and a proper assessment of what should be allowed in the future.

Click here to read about cyclohexanone

I have added a link to the British Geographical Survey report on Thanet’s aquifer you have to have a pdf viewer installed to read it.
http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/4491/1/IR05049.pdf

Mystery fireman’s funeral

Has anyone any idea whose funeral this is, Terry and I reckon it’s about 1910, from the bottom up I’m pretty sure this is St Augustine’s abbey suggesting he was a catholic, we reckon the cortège is looking up Hereson Road from the traffic lights, suggesting they are on the way to Ramsgate cemetery, next one up I am assuming is the fireman that died and the top one probably at Ramsgate cemetery.

Click here for the pictures

Many thanks to David for letting me scan them.

More old Ramsgate pictures

3 old Ramsgate pictures today sent by a customer, the gist of what she says about them is:

The brewery is I believe Cannons?

My grandfather Fredrick Rogers 6th from the left back row was a drayman delivering to T & W pubs, used to have to go in every day including Christmas day to care for the horses, lived close by with his family. Group photo enclosed, Nilce? Fredrick, Alice Florence my mother. Front Fredrick and Mary his wife.

Rogers son Fredrick was a detective sergeant in the Ramsgate police whose son was in the RAF WW2 and managed Littlewoods post war.

The street scene is Lord Mayors Day 1910. Sincerely Mary Hughes.

The handwriting was not easy to decipher, but I have done my best click here to view the pictures

Railway truck bus and tram books

This is about our stock of ordinary railway books on the shelf in the shop photographed this morning. Most of these are not listed on the internet book selling sites that I use, primarily because if I listed them we wouldn’t have a good range of railway books in the shop click here to view the books

When we set up our ebay shop see http://stores.ebay.co.uk/thanet-books to sell the local books I publish there, we wanted to start with some feedback so we put some railway books for sale there, what became abundantly clear was that if we put the whole railway section in an ebay auction most of it would sell for more than it was priced at on the shelves.

The local books that I publish obviously as I manufacture them in the bookshop there is no supply problem, so I market them everywhere I can on the web mainly at http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/ which is the cheapest place to buy them online.

Anyway coming back to the railway books, deliberately not selling them online and why I am putting up the photographs, mainly as it’s mostly local people who look at this blog and the mostly tend to come to the shop to buy books that they see. You have to appreciate that the customers that come in the shop, unlike internet customers, generate abut us much good stock as they take away, by using our exchange voucher scheme or selling us their books I the need some ready cash.

Funny really back in 1999 when I first made forays into internet bookselling, I rather assumed that I could just take pictures of the books on the shelves and people would browse the shop on the internet and email me for anything they were interested in.
How little I knew at the time, however now I have come full circle and this very primitive method is actually working.