Since we asked "is Thanet poorer for lack of news reporting diversity?" Tony Flaig (Big News Margate) has reported the possible purchase of Thanet news titles by KM Media which would leave us with just one news agency in the area.

Murdock wishes he was so lucky.

Is it possible that the success or failure of Thanet as a whole can be deduced from it's size alone? It seems unlikely on the surface but let us look a little deeper.



Physicist Geoffrey West has found that simple, mathematical laws govern the properties of cities -- that wealth, crime rate, walking speed and many other aspects of a city can be deduced from a single number: the city's population. In this mind-bending talk (above) from TEDGlobal Geoffrey West shows how it works and how similar laws hold for organisms and corporations.

Given Geoffrey West's model of human population I think there are a few things we can learn from what has been happening in the towns of Thanet.

For example Margate seems to be suffering a huge decline and I would suggest that this is due to a lack of innovation. Geoffrey West makes the point in the video that for growth to continue we need innovation and yet what I see in Margate specifically is that we are, as a whole, heavily concerned with keeping things the way they are.

Perhaps we fear change. Perhaps we liked Margate as it was in the 1990's or before but the unyielding mathematical evidence suggests that we need two things for Thanet to thrive - Innovation and Change.

Tesco might not be a great entity in terms of the little guy, the Turner Centre might be something that seems out of place and even wasteful and certainly building ever more houses seems, on the face of it, to be a dead end street. Urban sprawl in Thanet is something that I am somewhat uncomfortable with but unless we are willing to innovate an alternative it might be the only sane future.

The problem that the council faces in trying to take us to a prosperous future (regardless of how aware members of the council are of this) is that we need Super Creative people. However our best minds leave. For example when I look for work I really look any closer than London. The best singer I know grew up in Margate and yet she works in London (she's a lead part in a popular west end production).

I wonder if Thanet (and especially Margate) is suffering due to a social brain drain which is feeding the city but starving the district.

As many a teacher is fond of saying: Discuss.