After the success of the Rochester People community resource site, an equivalent for Gillingham has now been started, called (naturally enough) Gillingham People. I have bookmarked the site and am adding it to the relevant section of my blogroll.
They have also recently started tweeting (though under the name @gillinghamlocal, for some reason), and I am of course following that feed as well. I suggest that anyone reading this who has any interest in or connection with Gillingham in Medway, Kent does likewise with both the website and (if you are on Twitter) that feed also.
Friday, 7 December 2012
Medway's Year of Celebration
Only looking back now at what actually has happened (no longer merely promises and hopes, as some might have thought mere months ago) can we now appreciate the sheer extent of this year's special events and what they signify.
I'm not going to go into great detail here, as there are many resources that cover one or more of these events and celebrations much more fully than I ever could – especially (though far from being alone) the excellent Rochester People website.
Briefly, though, on top of the usual Dickens Summer and Christmas festivals, FUSE, the Will Adams Festival, Sweeps, the new and traditional markets (including this and other Christmas Markets) and the other regulars, we had our first River Festival, the Dickens Bicentenary celebration, our City bid and all that went with that, various sporting specials (not just what we did here for and during the London Olympic Games) and no doubt at least one or two others I cannot recall just at the moment.
On top of those, we also participated very strongly in the Queen's Jubilee celebrations with a host of street parties among other very visible activities. Indeed, I saw the bunting still up in a couple of roads a week or more later on my own travels around the Towns...
While reading these words doesn't in and of itself mean much to anyone who hasn't 'been there', for those who have (such as the intrepid Jaye Nolan and Cllr Chris Irvine, whose presence at – and photographing/videoing of – just about everything that happens has become near-legendary) it really does mean something. In fact, it means a lot!
Indeed, I have been at a number of events this year, as previously, but not as much as I'd have liked owing to my ongoing health issues. This fact is a stark reminder to me of just how much I am now missing, though involuntarily, and perhaps that above all else brings the significance of living in a truly vibrant community home to me.
For all its faults, the frequent cynical demeanour of many of its people, and the 'Chaviness' that seems to permeate at least some of its High Streets and by-ways, it's till a great place to be. Let the year 2012 be a strong and powerful reminder of that fact!: it deserves to be
Wednesday, 5 December 2012
Let It Snow, Let It Snow...
This hilly area of the five Medway Towns (it's much flatter on the peninsula side) is always a tricky place to be once the slippery winter weather arrives – but we cope.
By means of a very good road gritting programme and nearly 300 salt bins around the Medway area as a whole, despite the inevitable grumbles, we really do cope just about as well as current human technology (limited though it is) permits.
The cold air coming off the river that weaves through the full east-west spread of our area, and the quite high altitudes (in one of which I lived for almost thirteen years) make winters hereabouts more severe than they tend to be in many other places. Again, we handle it and live with it, because we have to and because we have done so in years before.
Today, we have had a light snowfall, the first of this winter.
During my eight years on Medway Council I had virtually no issues to have to deal with in regard to our winter provision as a council, with the only matter of any significance being the overturning of salt bins by the yob element that fed down to my former home area from Weeds Wood – which is why the main effect was to the salt bin in Holland Road, which they passed on their way onto my 'patch'.
Without fuss or public moaning, I devised the idea of fixing the bin into the ground (it was done by having several metal coils attached to the base of the bin, and the whole thing sort-of 'screwed' into the earth) so that it would be next to impossible to overturn. As a Councillor taking the job of representing and supporting my residents seriously, that was naturally enough my approach then as always.
Now I see via a Twitter conversation between Labour councillor Tristan Osborne and Conservative Joe Armitage that the former has apparently been claiming that the ("Tory-run", of course!) council's provisions are inadequate, and the latter has been calling him out on the claims of a volume of complaints.
Okay, all this is typical stuff from Labour, especially around these parts – but what does this really mean?
Well, for a start, what has changed from last year, which was much more severe than we have experienced thus far this year? It was the same (Labour) councillors representing that ward – Luton and Wayfield – and the only change since that time of which I am aware is those councillors' move of one of the salt bins away from Lawn Close (Bin SB033 in the council's database of such bins) a number of months ago.
They were being rather secretive about where it had gone, as I recall at the time when I tried to work it out for myself. I never discovered why they were so coy about this, especially when I received no response to my guess (I have all of that Twitter-based conversation on file as proof, if need be)...
Anyway, the bottom line of today's business is that local Labour are 'moaning in public' and making claims (that they have since tried to deny) regarding the level of public contact they have actually had on this subject, and they have also evaded answering Joe Armitage's request for some more detail of which and where these purportedly 'inadequate' bins are.
I jumped in with a trio of brief (i.e. tweet-length!) summaries of my own experiences, but the Labour guy ignored that, and switched his tweeting to a completely different topic – an old and frequent practice that always means he doesn't have an answer so isn't going to bother responding.
It is an interesting example of how some people will try to manipulate just about any situation that arises for self-serving party political ends, rather than just doing their job and dealing with actual issues quietly and behind the scenes, like the rest of us have always done. No doubt they'll be able to devise excuses for their approach (they always do) but it doesn't wash.
Meanwhile, the rest of the Luton and Wayfield community just get on with their own real lives, probably with disgust at how their elected representatives come across as being much more interested in playing political games with their situation than in being on top of this from the outset – that is, on the assumption there really is an element of truth regarding the 'inadequacy' claim, which has not been demonstrated...
By means of a very good road gritting programme and nearly 300 salt bins around the Medway area as a whole, despite the inevitable grumbles, we really do cope just about as well as current human technology (limited though it is) permits.
The cold air coming off the river that weaves through the full east-west spread of our area, and the quite high altitudes (in one of which I lived for almost thirteen years) make winters hereabouts more severe than they tend to be in many other places. Again, we handle it and live with it, because we have to and because we have done so in years before.
Today, we have had a light snowfall, the first of this winter.
During my eight years on Medway Council I had virtually no issues to have to deal with in regard to our winter provision as a council, with the only matter of any significance being the overturning of salt bins by the yob element that fed down to my former home area from Weeds Wood – which is why the main effect was to the salt bin in Holland Road, which they passed on their way onto my 'patch'.
Without fuss or public moaning, I devised the idea of fixing the bin into the ground (it was done by having several metal coils attached to the base of the bin, and the whole thing sort-of 'screwed' into the earth) so that it would be next to impossible to overturn. As a Councillor taking the job of representing and supporting my residents seriously, that was naturally enough my approach then as always.
Now I see via a Twitter conversation between Labour councillor Tristan Osborne and Conservative Joe Armitage that the former has apparently been claiming that the ("Tory-run", of course!) council's provisions are inadequate, and the latter has been calling him out on the claims of a volume of complaints.
Okay, all this is typical stuff from Labour, especially around these parts – but what does this really mean?
Well, for a start, what has changed from last year, which was much more severe than we have experienced thus far this year? It was the same (Labour) councillors representing that ward – Luton and Wayfield – and the only change since that time of which I am aware is those councillors' move of one of the salt bins away from Lawn Close (Bin SB033 in the council's database of such bins) a number of months ago.
They were being rather secretive about where it had gone, as I recall at the time when I tried to work it out for myself. I never discovered why they were so coy about this, especially when I received no response to my guess (I have all of that Twitter-based conversation on file as proof, if need be)...
Anyway, the bottom line of today's business is that local Labour are 'moaning in public' and making claims (that they have since tried to deny) regarding the level of public contact they have actually had on this subject, and they have also evaded answering Joe Armitage's request for some more detail of which and where these purportedly 'inadequate' bins are.
I jumped in with a trio of brief (i.e. tweet-length!) summaries of my own experiences, but the Labour guy ignored that, and switched his tweeting to a completely different topic – an old and frequent practice that always means he doesn't have an answer so isn't going to bother responding.
It is an interesting example of how some people will try to manipulate just about any situation that arises for self-serving party political ends, rather than just doing their job and dealing with actual issues quietly and behind the scenes, like the rest of us have always done. No doubt they'll be able to devise excuses for their approach (they always do) but it doesn't wash.
Meanwhile, the rest of the Luton and Wayfield community just get on with their own real lives, probably with disgust at how their elected representatives come across as being much more interested in playing political games with their situation than in being on top of this from the outset – that is, on the assumption there really is an element of truth regarding the 'inadequacy' claim, which has not been demonstrated...
Tuesday, 4 December 2012
RasPi Talk at Hackerspace Charlotte
This is a really interesting talk by the Raspberry Pi Foundation's Eben Upton. If you're at all interested in this area of technology, do reserve forty minutes or so for the talk and slide show (but not the Q&A session, which has been cut out) in order to go all the way through this. While some of the content is, naturally enough, background material, there is also a lot of quite fascinating stuff in here, if you keep with it...
Monday, 3 December 2012
Haruhi Suzumiya
They are very well done, actually; and the English dialogue versions (the ones I've so far encountered, anyway) are among the best I have yet encountered in the genre.
There are hardly any language or verbal style 'clashes' when someone didn't get it quite right. I have found that happened quite a lot in years gone by, but it seems to be almost entirely eliminated here, and it's very colloquial.
Of course, my (by now an open secret) preference for cuteness leads me to having developed a soft spot for the shy Mikuru Asahina (the other possible candidate, Yuki Nagato, turns out to be an android, unfortunately), and who even has her own fan club, I notice – but that's just me, and getting to be so predictable of me, I suspect...
Anyway, it's an interesting set of stories, involving time travel, reality warping, androids, aliens and espers, among other ingredients, and yet quite easy to digest and not too difficult to follow all the twists and turns. Recommend for sheer enjoyment and for being very engrossing!
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