Thanet Star will not be going off line due to the
humbug jobsworth society due to some Christmas goodwill and general sponsorship.

Flavour of the month is, for me, Hiltons World Wide Ltd with whom you can get a 15% discount (click here to find out how). I'd like to encourage you all to stop by the shop and say hi. That is if you can find some parking in Margate.

I am planning to write a fairly in depth look at the Eurokent Business Park and would love to get a feel for the opinions of you fine folk that read this blog. (Assuming that you are not looking at this thinking "what is Matt talking about?")

So over to you on the subject of Eurokent Business Park.

Martin Wise has demonstrated that Thanet District Council do not know how to run a press office.

That's quite an inflammatory opening line but it also happens to be true. Martin Wise wrote to Michael Child (Thanet Online) and said in justifying closing the press office to all but a few: It is not the sending out of information by E-mail to bloggers, it is the flood of requests that follow for each one that is the problem.

That right there indicates the source of Thanet District Council's problem - poor press releases. The solution, then, is not to withdraw the service of the press office but to educate the press release writers to do the job properly.

Now if you Google "how to write a press release" you will find thousands of articles and each one will say something like "it is important to include everything that a journalist needs in order to write your story with minimal effort". Something Thanet District council has utterly failed to grasp.

Take a standard press release and you will find several elements the first part usually starts with something like "for immediate release" and then gets on with the telling the story. The first sentence should summarise the content of the release sot hat one could stop reading and know what was going on. The remainder of the release expands on the first sentence and should include a quote from a relevant person.

It doesn't stop there. After the main body should be further information. For example if you quote Bob Smith you should include a paragraph that tells the journalist who Bob Smith is and why he is qualified to comment. If you announce a new report then you should include information (like a URL, for example) on where the report can be obtained. Press releases often include photographic images for use with the story, back ground details and contact information.

After all every journalist knows that a good story answers the five main questions: what, where, who, how and why.

For example who is this Councillor X mentioned in the release and what do they do as part of the council? This information should have been written up when the councillor took up the new role and can be pasted in each time a press release mentions them. It's not rocket science to write a release that explains things properly.

For example: Why should I care? Where can I read more? What is the importance of this? Why did they say or do that? Who said it and who are they? When did this happen? When did they say or do that? Where did they say it? Where is this event taking place? How can I help? How will the road be built? How long will it take?

A well written press release should enable a lazy reporter to look no further than the press release to write their own story. If the Journalist has to pick up the phone for clarification then already something is wrong with the press release. The only reason for calling should be to set up an interview and even then if the quote in the main body of the release is good enough this should be unlikely.

Most articles on writing press releases talk about the importance of getting your release published. This means giving the editor everything they need to write up the story in the shortest amount of time. Journalists, you will be told, a hard pressed for time and will often ignore a release that contains too little information or is badly written.

However when it comes to Thanet news Thanet District Council is always going to be news worthy and, it seems, has given up making an effort with her press releases. As a result the online press, who often lack the time to spend hours and hours digging up answers that are missing will simply pick up the phone and get the press office to fill in the blanks. Blanks that should not have been there.

Thanet is the ideal IT centre for Kent but for one thing - our network connection is worse than our rail link.

IT companies choose London over Kent and if Kent never Thanet for a simple reason our MAN (Metrioplitan Area Network) connection is rubbish and not fit for business. London has ever Internet backbone running through her including International high speed connections. We do not have even a single reasonable connection to London.

In all of Thanet the only quality connection that I am aware of is the CCCU-T PoP (Thanet's MAN hub) having a measly 1000Mbit/sec dedicated line to a JANet hub in Canterbury (this serves Thanet College and a few other places). This also serves as our only connection to KPSN (Kent's Public Service Network) which TDC does not have a direct line to. JANet and BT are two of the main UK Internet Backbone providers.

Two companies offer LLU (required to bypass BTWholesale and offer cheaper ADSL) in some Thanet exchanges Sky and AOL. And they offer connections of 10Mbit/sec. To put it into scale a company offering rackmounted hosting would offer a minimum of 10 Mbit/sec for each server and would have available 100 Mbit/sec and 1Gbit/sec (Gigabit) connections per server to a ultra high speed mainline Internet backbone.

Our MAN connection is 100 meg whereas The London MAN can offer 1 gig (1024 meg) to home users

This set up is what we call a SPoF - single point of failure - whereby if it goes down everything breaks. Our particular SPoF is the business equivalent of a handful of small scale servers that do a bit of email. Whereas Canterbury university can afford to host a Sourceforge Download Mirror due to it's hub's direct JANet connection Thanet couldn't even host TDCs website.

For IT to find Thanet interesting we need to up our network connection by a factor of 10,000%. Thanet means that TDC need to sponsor their own connection at least to the hub in Canterbury or sponsor the Thanet hub to upgrade to 10 Gbit/sec which is still not a commercially viable connection but would give grounds for fighting to get LLU uptake improved. Eventually we must connect directly to JANet or some other backbone provider to be a credible IT development site.

In short we need to connect to the London MAN and to dot hat we need to become a significant part of the Kentish MAN only then will the billions of pounds spent in IT be willing to come near us. With low property prices and a high availability of skilled workers Thanet would be an astounding place for a technology company to do business if only our Internet connection was not third rate.

Thanet District Council needs to wake up and realise that ten years ago it's IT was out of date and it has done little to catch up falling only further behind. Building art galleries with arts funding is all very nice but it will not crate the investment that is needed. A quality connection to the Inetenet backbone will. Market forces alone will assure this happens.


Image credit visual velocity pc

Have China Gateway International PLC been able to raise the £25,000 they needed?

Back in October 2010 China Gateway International PLC announced that it had issued 217,391 shares at eleven and a half pence per Share. That being what the shares go for these days (11p). The subscription was supposed to raise £25,000 in cash for "general working capital purposes" which sounds a bit like paying the bills to me.

Now I don't know everything there is to know about share dealing but I am pretty sure I picked up a thing or two working for a company that teaches (and uses) it. So I took a look at the CGA stock prices and noticed a few things.

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» Continue Reading: Is the China Gateway in trouble?

I'm not sure I follow Tony's logic nor his reasoning for supporting the new Night Flights at Manston.

The main crux of his argument is that on the QC scale the proposed flights would be a quarter as noisy as 747s. However we are actually talking about 6db less noise. Not so much I think.



Tony tells us the new airbus A380 is rated at QC0.5 on landing and QC 2 which means 87 to 89.9 EPNdB on landing and 93 to 95.9 EPNdB on take off. That's still a lot of sound.

Yes, technically there is a significantly greater amount of energy needed to make 95db as 89db but the difference to our ears is quite small. The wikipedia tells us that due to the logarithmic nature of human aural perception, this 3dB change is only perceived as a small change in the noise level. So while the white cliffs of Ramsgate might suffer less is this argument just one of degrees?

I think it is.

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» Continue Reading: Night flights not such a good deal

It is often joked that Supermarkets exist like vampires moving in to towns sucking out the juices and then leaving a rotting carcass behind. Sadly the story of Ramsgate seems to show this to have some truth to it - especially with the chain known as TESCO. Thanet Online carries this story.

After all Margate is already in the throws of saying no to TESCO - a gathering hosted by Arlington House Residents Association have already made a firm stand against the Margate development. They are unhappy about the TESCO redevelopment plans which will see the loss their mostly derelict car park while flat owners foot a bill of £17,000 each for the privilege. The multi-million pound scheme to build a TESCO in Margate where shops already struggle to get a foothold would also see the demolition of the shops on the controversial Arlington site (on Margate seafront).

With significant doubt being expressed at the idea that Thanet District Council might actually listen to the people the already heavily pummelled people of Thanet may find it hard to raise the fighting spirit needed. If so then we truly are as dead as Margate's town centre.

What no one seems to be asking very loudly is how on earth the roads ont he sea front will cope. Already the stretch by the clock tower is heavy with traffic and with the turner Centre due to open sooner or later one imagines that there will be more traffic. A TESCO and (if you have a lot of faith) some other big stores at the other end would surely bring grid lock. Some potential impacts might be that the golden beach becomes too smoggy when the wind is in the wrong direction, that bus journey times are lengthened meaning Westgate and Birchington suffer and those that rely on buses pay more.

As a result of this Margate town centre is unlikely to profit from the build and the old town will get harder to get to. TDC are likely to complain of dropping revenue from the multi story car park and stupidly raise the prices there again driving people to Westwood Cross and this new TESCO where they might get a shot at parking for less than the price of a small house.

Then again if the council was interested in reviving any part of Margate then they would be removing all barriers to getting traffic to the site not adding them.

But we needed fear that Thanet has somehow gone barmey wanting less TESCO stores. Activists in a number of places now oppose TESCO ont he grounds that they are now pushing into plalces they should never be.

Why are TESCO keen on new stores

TESCO are desperate for new stores. If not here then in France or anywhere they can build them. The reason - the folly of infinite growth.

TESCO like so many other big companies measure their health on financial growth and expansion. If some competitor has 0.1% more profits than they this is a "disaster". TESCO and every other firm is seeking to double it's size over a fix period the size of this period is dependant on the rate of growth but a decreased rate of growth is seen as very bad so doubling speed can get faster but never, ever slower.

TESCO has simply run out of places to put shops and yet they must squeeze twice as much money out of the population as they did seven or eight years ago. By 2017 they need to be looking at having twice the number of shops they have now.

It does not take a genius to realise that there is a point on this chart where there are more than one TESCO stores per person in the country. Sooner or later TESCO must fail and what they are trying to do is put off the time when it will happen.

It's the same for every business. And like every business before it TESCO must get more aggressive to survive. The simple rule of mathematics can not be by-passed you can not have infinite growth in a finite system! TESCO is no exception.

Has TESCO Turned Evil?

It's that time again when I get to talk to potential advertisers and see what funds can be raised to keep this and other blogs I run live and available to you.

Up for grabs in the next few months are a couple of the prime sponsor slots (top of the page between the two menu's and a set of four untaken slots in the sidebar.

These sponsorship locations are an indication of the value that the sponsors company offers to Thanet Star and to the best bidder goes the spoils. It works like this - you (or any other company) offer me what you think is a fair amount for sponsorship of Thanet Star, per month, for a length of time that is also up to you. The monthly rate times the number of months equals the value and the highest value get's the best spot. All offers of all sizes will be seriously and gratefully considered.

All sponsors get a write up and as such I reserve the right to say no if you happen to be a particularly unpleasant scallywag. A valuable SEO report may, if you have a website, also be published giving you an expert's recommendations at no extra cost while allowing me to show my skills.

Read More About Sponsoring Thanet Star.

In this article I want to revisit a topic that I last touched on in 2008. Why numbers matter in business online.

Numbers mater. If you want to know what the score is in a game of football you look at the scoreboard. If you want to know if you are winning or loosing at blogging you look at the numbers too.

Take things back further to the 3rd of April 2008 and you could read To get ahead in business - ask a blogger! and in that I showed how the leading sites of Thanet stack up in terms of valid visitors, quality of traffic and likely traction in the market place.

Part of that is down to SEO. I am strongly for quality SEO rather than snake oil, I'm all for taking Thanet beyond web design and that's all good but the one thing I want you to take away from this is that the numbers do not lie - you can tell who has understood and who has failed to understand from the numbers.

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» Continue Reading: Why numbers still mater in Thanet

The world of running your own web based IT business is not such a cozy place to be right now. It looks very much like I may need to take on work outside of my normal range in order to keep the cash flow at a level I can live with. Fortunately for you I still intend to maintain my web server and blogs.

This might mean working for someone else though.

That's not such a bad thing as I have discovered that jobs needing my skills range from about £25,000 to £60,000 depending on location and specialization of skills. So as a result anyone needing a Web Server Engineer, SEO Expert or New Media Analyst should drop me an email. I'm probably the nearest thing to Sir Tim Berners-Lee's that Thanet has and there is only one of me.