Roughly £11.5 Million (a tiny fraction of the £3 Billion pound overspend by TDC) is all it would cost to give an educational tool to every child in Thanet and the same number of third world children too. The result would be a potential blow to the cycle of poverty such as has never been dealt in the history of the United Kingdom.

Edit: The over spend is in fact £3M not £3B the entire budget being £20M which wouldmean TDC would need to pull down KCC funds...

The laptop in question is the XO and it has been created expressly as a learning tool. As of January 2008 it will be available in the UK under the Give One Get One offer whereby you can buy yourself an XO if you also buy one for a child in the third world. Sadly due the pound tanking quite hard of late the $399 price tag comes in at £275. Still not bad for something built and destruction tested to last at least five years in rugged conditions - per unit thats just £27.50 a year.



The astounding results of early years intervention demonstrated by educational nurseries like those in Millmead (Sure Start's Meadow Nursery) show that with the right tools the impact of poverty that sets the stage for future poverty can be undone. The price is a drop in the ocean for the area's education budgets and something the Council should easily be able to find.

To put this in perspective that's just £450 per councillor per day for a year. More than that is daily spent on lunches, fact finding trips to the US and China failed experimental builds for failed galleries.

I know the money for some of these things comes from different pots but what if inside of fifteen years we could start to see the trend of unemployment and unemployables reversed? Imagine what commerce, what business and what improvements we could make.

More than that imagine what all those young people might have to blog about. Imagine the impact on the political scene as these soon-to-be young adults start asking questions. Potentially this could set the stage for a year on year increase in the number of people voting.

I can see that our conservative overlords might not like that idea very much but those of us that still dream of things like justice, truth and the occasional bout of competence feel very differently.

Failing the council (TDC or KCC) actually doing something amazing and helping the area out you can make a difference on a child by child basis by taking up the offer on behalf of a child you know. You can order the XO from amazon.co.uk

I believe that within every one of the 125,000 or so people that live in Thanet is that spark of genius sufficient to radically redefine our very ideas about what Thanet is and just what it can do. It's not just the territory of a few famous names. Each of us has the gift but we all regularly do not use it.

e, the people of Thanet, have talent enough to spare - if only we'd realise it. Some of us write blogs. A few more of us read them but mostly we carefully and studiously follow patterns of behaviour that mean that the likes of Sandy Ezekiel will always be in power. It is this that lets us down.

We are careful to never be wrong. We are careful to never say the wrong thing, to never make a mistake and to never risk even the slightest loss of face. As such we are largely insignificant and our impact, if it exists at all, is negligible because we are set to consistently fail to do anything new or invigorating.

If you are not prepared to be wrong you'll never come up with anything original.

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» Continue Reading: Why you might fail to change Thanet

In this Friday's Extra comes the story that your average Thanet citizen earns a whopping £30,000 a year (or so says the Halifax). ("Typical Thanet Salary £30,000!", Martin Jefferies, The Isle of Thanet Extra (KM Group), Friday December 5. 2008, (DE) page 3).

While this might seem outlandish and is clearly unrepresentative it requires interpretation to be understood. It seems that Martin Jefferies did at least get some one to talk to but that Dave Kinnear of the Margate Town Partnership was clearly not experienced with interpreting data.

So it leaves Thanet Star to explain exactly what the numbers mean while attempting not to send you to sleep. Read on to find out just how badly you are being misled by Halifax and others who cite these figures and why they want to mislead us. It's an old slight-of-hand and today it gets exposed.

(hint: it's all about getting you money from you).

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» Continue Reading: How they came up with the £30,000 a year lie