Tomorrow is likely to be a strange day for many of us.

After all tomorrow sees a day of strike action that could potentially disrupt things a bit. Libraries, community centres, town halls, registrars’ offices, leisure centres, museums and some Sure Start centres and council nurseries are likely to be closed while rubbish collectors and street sweepers are unlikely to be working.

In short if you have children or some official paperwork to file tomorrow life could be tough. As a knock on to this any number of workers will be forced to take time off work to care for their children.

The question we are asking on Facebook is: Do you support the November the 30th strikes?

North Thanet`s MP, Roger Gale has at about seven o'clock this morning email out to say that he has spoken out against proposals to permit the televising a part of some court hearings.

Now forgive my cynicism but does sending out a press release even count as speaking out these days. If an MP opposes an idea and no one knows about it has he, in fact, opposed anything at all?

The knotty problems of philosophy aside for a moment my main objection to this latest utterance is how widely Gale (right) manages to entirely miss the point.

Gale writes When the proposition to televise the House of Commons was introduced I said that it would lead to “grandstanding” and to the cherry-picking of newsworthy items at the expense of the real work of the House.

Well, duh! The media is not run for the benefit of the House. The media runs for profit alone - that means entertainment largely.

How can this former television producer and director fail to understand that while the gatekeepers of information flow are all doing so only for profit then "the real work of the House" is hardly going to get full coverage now is it.

Rather than calling the access of TV camera's to the commons a mistake because business people put their business first our dear old dinosaurs need to pull their finger out and be the change they want to see.

Rather than telling us that the media's access to the work of the House has led to us all being mis-informed (sic) - a claim I hotly dispute - perhaps Mr Gale would care to set the record firmly crooked on whatever matters he feels we the plebeian public have misunderstood.

One thing is for certain though - if Gale wants to see full coverage of the workings of the House then he needs to campaign for the House to obtain sufficient channels to transmit the hum-drum and the every day. You never know someone might even watch it.

A BBC report into poverty in Paris and London. Perhaps it will be an eye opener for those of us who try to ignore it in Thanet.

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I think some one is suffering from foot in mouth disease here.



Why not go further and say that single parents, ethnic minorities, chavs, punks, goths, LGBT people, men, women, feminists, socialists, long term unemployed, teenagers, those without degrees and Sandy Ezekiel should all work for as little as possible because that will really help the job market...

It might sound like a good idea to undercut others to get a job but what you do is allow market forces to expect everyone to work for that rate and in Thanet that would mean working for about 97p an hour. Cheap labour gets little respect.

A council (not ours thankfully) is taking social media giant Twitter to court to try and unmask a blogger who has accused councillors of grossly unfair election practices.

In South Tyneside matters have become so bad that the local council has taken moves that could redefine privacy and free speech not just in the UK and the US but potentially in the entire world.



The problem is Mr Monkey, a local political blog.



Mr Monkey claims that South Tyneside councillors interfered with postal votes and then threatened to sue a voter who dared to complain. Mr Monkey also alleges that there was then an attempt by the Labour party to cover up crimes of interfering with the post, election rigging and generally being not-at-all good leading to the placement of David Milland as the MP for the safe seat there as a replacement for a hastily removed council member.

Unsurprisingly the apparently litigation happy leader of South Tyneside Council seems to lead a litigation happy council. Not to mention the fact that the blog, if shown to be true, could be a huge embarrassment for the Labour party both in South Tyneside and locally. Just as they were starting to do so well too...

Disclaimer: South Tyneside Council would like to sue Mr Monkey just as soon as they find out who he is. His allegations are not all ruthlessly backed up with evidence and while they ring true to me there is no saying that the author behind Mr Monkey has enough evidence to prove everything. For this reason I am in now way suggesting that the posts are 100% true even though they sound likely. They are, at this stage, untested in court.

Meanwhile South Tyneside (and one imagines the Labour party) are taking on Twitter themselves to try and unmask the author. This appears to have included demanding the twitter account details of a number of people including councillors who had used twitter to hold private correspondence with constituents.

Fortunately we in Thanet appear to be protected by the fact that TDC couldn't find their own way out of an open box let alone sue a big company. Even so it is something to be slightly worried about.

Members of the union "UNITE" stage a protest outside the Oxford Street branch of Marks & Spencers, which employs the services of Thanet Earth produce (part of the Fresca Group Ltd). The Union says that Thanet Earth produce are exploiting migrant workers by using them as casual workers. UNITE says Thanet Earth produce is also failing to employ local people in the areas that they operate. UNITE advocates that pressure be put on the supermarkets that buy Thanet Earth produce, which includes Asda, Tesco and Sainsbury's, to change Thanet Earths employment practices.

Tesco is evil - that's the word from both the comments on the blog and the searches people have been making. Is this just a few disgruntled people sounding off however?

Is it Small Business vs Supermarkets?

We know that Tesco is not a true monopoly (yet) and so in that way can not be called evil. The Telegraph suggests that ostentatiously disapproving of mega-retail is regarded as an elementary social courtesy. In other words calling Tesco Evil is fashionable right now.

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» Continue Reading: Is TESCO evil?

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Another one of those holiday Seasons is done and dusted.

How was your festive day?


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