Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Gazette Editor In Thespian Floor Show

Reader Rebecca has sent me this snap of the Gazunder's lovely editor Rebecca Smith [Are they by any chance related? - Ed] giving it some acting welly in a recent performance in Ash. Smiffy, as her fans know her, trained to tread the boards before becoming a journo, and was playing a role in the Ash Heritage Group's Swing Riots walkabout production.

Which got me thinking. What on earth were the 'Swing Riots'? Well, it turns out they were a kind of rural offshoot of the Luddites. Instead of burning factories, the Swing Rioters were more interested in burning the evil threshing machines, and it all started here in Kent. Indeed, given its name, Ash may well have been the epicentre!

Isn't it nice to know that the time-honoured tradition of arson in these parts can be traced back so far? Albeit these days it's more likely to be a fun park, a listed building awaiting development, or both that gets the old Swan Vesta and a can of five star treatment!

Ash Heritage Group's Swing Riots performance
Swing Riots on Wikipedia

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

You seem to be doing an awful lot of sucking up to the gazette these days.

First East of the Wantsum more attention

and now blatant brown nosing!

Richard Eastcliff said...

Do I detect a Chippy Tone in your voice there?

I just happen to think the Gazunder is one of the best local newspapers in Britain and that the editor is lovely and can do no wrong. That has nothing to do with the fact that she's clearly identified my blog as the best informed and wittiest in Thanet!

Tony Flaig said...

Detect away, Eastcliff I concur with your exhib A

Brown nosing! as charged

Anonymous said...

There is something of the Sarah Beeney appearance about the good editor lady of somewhat limited worldly experience.

Thespian and journo ?

Cop out and commentate.

Big_Pyjama_Stealer said...

let's hope she acts better than she edits!

Anonymous said...

Title of best blog in Thanet is at risk with items like this.

Anonymous said...

rebecca smith is an idiot

Peter C said...

I think she's lovely.

Anonymous said...

The lady editor of the Thanet Extra is quite a bobby dazzler too - but more modest!

Don Wood said...

Why would she want to dazzle bobbies surly its an arrestable offence but then she may like a man in uniform queue ECR IN Austian leaderhosen stockings (fishnet variety) Bosuns wistle and kiss me quick hat in fact you can see him in the afore mentioned piccie with his editor

Richard Eastcliff said...

I think your minces must be playing you up there Don. In fact I'm the one in the shawl on the right.

Michael Child said...

Richard et all I should like to remind you that she was the editor with the nerve to break the Chinagate story a local paper.

For this she still has my respect as a journalist, you may also wish to ponder that she publishes East of the Wantsum, the last one was the first one to make us all laugh including the youf of today and that’s not easy

Peter C said...

She also had the nerve to put uncensored bare bottoms both on the front page & inside The Thanet Times.

Thanetian born and bred said...

If any of you think Rebecca is some kind of dizzy blonde then you are not only being incredibly sexist but also misunderestimating her greatly. She knows where the bodies are buried. Only the laws of libel and commercial pressures prevent her from digging them up. You have been warned!

Kat said...

First of all, she isn't blonde, she's blatently a ginga.

Secondly, why would you expect someone who gets paid a pitance to edit a couple of weekly rags in a shitty dump most people in the world have never heard to be very bright? It's hardly Reuters is it?

The days of local newspapers being 'the' place where journalists go to get trained are long gone. Most educated, young people are not interested in reading about jumble sales and inadequate little councils, so why would anyone with any brains want to learn how to churn that crap out. Most people who have attended university and journalism school in recent years are well-travelled and are intersted in global shifts, not in what old Ethel from number 14 thinks about her grandaughter sculpting something resembling a poo.

As this blog so clearly shows, day after day, only a small number of aging, dull, insular and inadequate little people who will never go anywhere or amount to anything, are fixated on the local.

To be preoccupied with an area that has no bearing on the world is just avoidance. Thanet's ok for a walk on the beach but nothing that happens here is ever going to have an impact on the larger world.

Ok, Rebecca Smith is generally thought of as a bit of a loony, old fashioned, posh, insincere, and not very sharp. She also gets a flac for having parents deeply involved the tory party and being Laura Sandy's bitch as a consequence. But you have to hand it to people who tolerate jobs like that. Can you imagine how boring it must be just editing drivel about old buildings, alcoholic losers, tedious chavs, stupid councillors and pointless local bloggers?

Peter C said...

She's still lovely though.

Kat said...

LOL @ Peter.

I can only think that you are pretending you think that Grottbag is 'lovely' cos' you are hoping she will print some more of you photos of Thanet's unfortunates or you are planning a calendar of fat, ginger, anaemic hockey types.

If the latter is true, it sounds like quite a niche, but may I suggest Scotland - it's full of chubby, ginger, volatile, loud drunks.

Richard Eastcliff said...

Oooh! That Kat's a saucy minx! Why don't you and me get together hun, over a slap-up dinner at my club? After a few bottles of Krug, I'm sure I could get the pussy in you purring! Now that I've got your number, shall I give you a tinkle on the old T-Mobile?

Meee-ow! xx

Kat said...

You club? You mean that place where they make you go in the daytime to weave baskets and have your tablets?

I don't think you would be my type. I think you are more the type who masturbates over pictures of middle aged content gatherers

Richard Eastcliff said...

Phwoar! Keep up the sexy talk luv!