The China Gateway, Thanet. It's big news right now and a lot of people are talking about it (still) and search for it (Check Thanet's own search engine on China Gateway to see how much has been said of late).

So I thought I'd give you a quick tour of some of the sites talking about it.

Thanet Finder Blog Portal - China Gateway Page gives a good breakdown of the latest and greatest news and blog views on the subject. However space there is tight so let's look a little deeper.

First I guess we should look at the Thanet Council Disision on the subject before flipping over to the BBC coverage of the China Gateway story. From there you should find links to further stories on the subject.

Research and reporting guru Michael Child talks candidly about the risks having now been convinced that the environmental risks are too great. Read everything he has had to say on the subject here. Nip over to Michael's website to see which way each councillor voted.

The water supply is just the thing that one blogger felt needed saving savethanetswatersupply.blogspot.com was the result.

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» Continue Reading: China Gateway, Thanet

Stage coach bosses are clearly in awe of this great publication that is the Thanet Star. Who wouldn't be - Thanet Star is a great blog. Stage Coach Thanet, however, are not content just to subscribe to email updates, but it seems that they have chosen to endorse us using their smaller buses.

I am grateful but I must admit they have not done a very good job of it. I've tried to correct their mistakes but realy the copy editor needs to start again.



Not only have they miss-spelt the site name by adding an "S" but who is that girl? That's not me. Are they trying to say I'm a good looking cross dresser?

I appreciate the effort and all but the press office at Thanet Star can offer official Matt B images for use in adverts. Come on Stage Coach I'm sure you can do better than that. How about expanding the range to advertise Big News Margate on a big double decker or perhaps the entire Thanet Blog Portal on the loop. Think out side the box guys.

If you are like me you make spelling errors and grammatical errors like it's an Olympic event. However I feel it is something we should aim to improve about ourselves. Certainly that's the case for me - I wish to raise the bar (to keep abusing the metaphor) and this cheat sheet will, I hope, help towards that.

What I've done is listed the most common errors. If you see me making these errors then please feel free to point them out. I'll make no secret of the fact that my grasp of spelling and grammar is shaky but I refuse to let that stand between me and good blogging.

I feel that bloggers have the opportunity to take the lead from the printed media and in Thanet this is especially true. To do this we need to present the best version of our work that we can. This is where this cheat sheet might be handy (especially for me). If you make any of these mistakes then congratulations you are a human being. Like me for example - were it not for one last re-read I would have left a clanger in this article - right in the example itself!

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» Continue Reading: Common Blogging Grammatical Errors - Cheat Sheet #1

Things have become somewhat happier in my corner of the world but my time for any activity is significantly reduced. I have what I hope is a big story to share. I'll get it written as soon as I can.

I have recently received some bad news. I do not know how well I will be able to maintain this or any other of my blogs for the next few months. I apologise now.

One of the things that we Thanet locals seem to enjoy accusing the council of is lack of joined up thinking. This is because different departments become isolated from one another and the threads of ideas that started as good ideas at some point become disjointed and bazaar at times. The same can happen in blogging.

Some readers might be aware that from the start I have tried to use Thanet Star not only to look at Thanet but to share with my fellow Thanet bloggers some of the technical experience I have picked up. I have no doubt that there is a world of difference between what any two people see as important in a blog. Nevertheless I will continue to attempt to address some common themes - in this case joined up blogging.

Blogging works on the whole not because of individual blogs (although these are important) but because of the connectivity between them. This connectivity allows readers to jump from one blog to another and follow the thread of conversation. Search engines mimic this and so treat links much like votes - where a page links to another there must be (it is reasoned) some connection in theme or topic between the pages.

By being sure that our blogging is internally and externally joined up we not only make our blog (or any other website) a better and more satisfying experience for readers but we also grant the topics we discuss more weight and impact. In this post I am going to look at this topic and the effect it has on a niche (such as ours).

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» Continue Reading: Joined Up Blogging

Recently a number of people have brought up the topic of getting people to read their Thanet blog. Some have wondered why no one reads their blog and others have wondered why everyone reads certain blogs but not others. That's a huge topic and I am only going to scratch the surface today.

Most readers of Thanet blogs read those blogs because they discovered and liked them. The majority of traffic to Thanet based blogs is from regular readers - readers that come back time and again. Before you can have a fan base of even one or two people you need to have been found.

People will find your blog in one of four basic ways: Search, Recommendation, Social Discovery, Random Discovery.

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» Continue Reading: Getting Readers to Your Thanet Blog

As if in answer to our own question "China Gateway - What Now? it seems that the council have postponed the rushed through meeting to deside the future of the project. so far it has been postponed until October.

Despite this a meeting has been called by Christine Tongue who, some of you may recall, is the film maker responsible for the documentary "Thanet Under Threat". The meeting, to raise awareness of the implications of the China Gateway project, will take place at at half past seven on Tuesday the 9th of September at the Red Hall in Grosvenor Road (Broadstairs).

If you talk to your average taxi driver you may find that eight out of ten cats have no idea what the China Gateway is and just as many don't actually care. Possibly this is because the average Thanet Cat (to keep abusing the same metaphor) has things like making ends meet to worry about. But just because no one is talking about it does not make it important.

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» Continue Reading: China Gateway - Now Then, Now Then...

I truly feel that our local Grass Roots Media (commonly called blogging) is going to become one of the most fundamentally important forces for good in Thanet. For this reason anything I can do to help Thanet's newly growing community to continue to grow I want to do.

I do not have huge amounts of money to pay for big events or extravagant sponsorships but I do have advertising space. So I intend to give freely advertising space for all Thanet Grass Roots Media sites (blogs, forums etc) on the Thanet Star. I intend for this to be a permanent feature of this site.

To qualify your site must largely be about Thanet. Obviously obscene, illegal or hate filled sites may be refused at my discretion but largely I simply want to be sure that people who come to Thanet Star get a chance to visit other grass roots media sites too. Also various obvious disclaimers about no warranty, the management's discretion, acts of god, terror, power companies etc etc apply too.

I'm going to kick things off by making some simple advert images for some of the leading blogs but should I miss you out (and no doubt I will) all you have to do is email me at the address shown on the £1 advert image with your preferred graphic. All adverts will be randomly rotated on a background priority from now until such time you appear to have stop blogging (and I notice).

In the unlikely event that you don't want any free publicity just drop me an email and I'll remove you from the list.

Shock as KCC schools chief quits screams the headline from Kent Online. This is the "exclusive" by political editor Paul Francis who reports on how county councillor Chris Wells is standing down from his role already. This was no exclusive however.

This news item comes a full day after Big News Margate broke the news with the headline SHOCK ! CHRIS WELLS OUT OF KENT CABINET?

Kent Online published at 6.03am on Friday 29th August 2008 (today) and yet Big News Margate had the story out on Thursday 28th August 2008 (yesterday).

Does this mean that "main stream news" is losing it's edge and unable to compete with the Grass Roots Media (commonly called blogs)? What do you think?