Sunday 2 November 2014

Ramsgate Tunnels Maps and I fight with this new blog


This first one is a reproduction of the tunnel design plan and I have some already  printed and in tubes, so it will be available to buy form my bookshop on Monday, price £5.99. It measures 3 feet across.


This next one also 3 feet across, is an overlay of the tunnels on the 1939 Ordinance Survey map, I hope to print these on Monday providing the computer lets me – it’s a very big file, so it may be available on Monday. I have had to price this one at £6.99 as it uses considerably more ink, which is the expensive part.

Both maps should also soon be available from the tunnel shop as well.

Quality wise, I have used an HP printer with HP ink and HP paper, so the maps look pretty good and I hope they will be reasonably fade resistant.

I have been working on getting this blog sorted out, I think I have done the live links (the ones where the latest local blog to post goes to the top of the list on the right hand sidebar) I am sure I have missed some so please let me know which.

I have aimed mostly at local blogs that linked to the thanetonline blog and which I hope will link to this one.

I should point out here that I haven’t closed the thanetonline blog, but I won’t be adding posts to it or allowing comments on it. The main reason I have done this relates to our bonkers district council and the main reason I have moved blog sites is to protect the local history posts on thanetonline so that the people who use them will still have access to them.

Essentially the story, such as it is, is that the council wanted me to remove a link to a local paper article and a link to the Google cache of the same article. Instead of either emailing me or phoning me up and asking me to remove the links, something that I would have done and as the council knows that over the years I have been very careful not to publish restricted council information so they probably knew this. Instead of this the council went to the considerable extpense of getting their solicitor to write to me telling me that if I didn’t remove the links I risked a fine or imprisonment.

Essentially the council using a sledgehammer to crack a nut because they have a large amount of our money to waste in this way.

Anyway the problem here is that the thanetonline blog is hosted by Google and the only action that Google takes to restrict blogs with illegal content is to remove the whole blog. Obviously it occurred to me that with our council prepared to act in this sort of way it was quite probable that at some time in the future I may publish some content they don’t like and that the council, instead of asking me to remove it, would pay their solicitor to write to Google threatening legal action and that Google would delete the whole blog.

This cloud, which has wasted a considerable amount of my time, does have a silver lining, which is starting with a new blog I will hopefully have learnt from some of the mistakes I made with the last one.

One important aspect is that this Michaels Bookshop blog was set up in 2008 and because I only used it for testing purposes I never did any of the major updates which are irreversible, so it has a much simpler format.
We then come to Flat Eric’s reviews, Flat has chosen a couple of books from the bookshop to advertise, the first being one of surrealist poetry. Flat says: this is what nonsense poetry becomes when it grows up.



The next being an 1870s book on wallpapering: Flat says it shows you how to get it really flat.


He studied this one really carefully.



Here is his favourite illustration.    

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

There is a good reason TDC did not email you following the remarks made by the QC in the recent EKO misconduct report ordered by TDC. In the report he wrote "But all said and done, emails are an instant form of communication and their terms are not to be construed with the precision of a statute"
I wonder if a different QC would have had a different take on the emails concerned?

TDC do seem to pay lawyers large sums of money. From May to September there are invoices listed exceeding £1.5 millions. Nine big ones of over £100k and a good many smaller ones to multiple recipient. Since its not listed against each invoice you can only speculate what they are all for.


David Jennings said...

Are the maps now available to buy online or only in person at the shop? I couldn't find them at http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/

Michael Child said...

Sorry David the cost of strong enough cardboard tubes and postage means this wouldn’t work for the flat maps, I am considering doing folded ones which I would be able to post, but at the moment I just don’t have the time

David Jennings said...

That's OK - quite understand. I'll try and pop into the shop at the weekend.

Michael Child said...

Look forward to seeing you David, I hope to get the map side of the business better organised eventually, at the moment it’s at the new and expensive stage.