Well folks, it’s official: Canterbury is in the midst of the restaurant revolution.

Just as 1917 will go down in history for another revolution whose title escapes me, so too will 2015 be remembered as the year when Canterbury formally became the Union of Standard Satisfactory Restaurants

More and more of them are opening up in the city centre, so many that it’s hard to walk more than a few yards without being offered the opportunity to eat yourself into a state where your clothes no longer fit.

We’ve had two gourmet burger joints open within days of each other, there’s a Greek restaurant opening in Orange Street, there’s a French restaurant going in next to Cafe Rouge, an American diner in The Burgate and, I’m told, two more earmarked for empty units at the top of the city centre.

While many of the restaurants in Canterbury are indeed no more than “standard and satisfactory”, these tend to be those which belong to large chains and can be found in any town centre.

Those which excel are the one-offs run independently by a small group of people who invest themselves in what they’re doing: The Kashmir in Palace Street, The Royal Inn at Longport, Kudos in Dover Street and Pinocchio’s in Castle Street to name the best.

But the signs are the new restaurants are likely to be just as good.

I’ve already had the pleasure of eating at Gourmet Burger Kitchen in St Peter’s Street. And I can’t sing its praises enough: The food and the service is first rate.

The opening of each new restaurant presents us with a fresh experience to try - and one we’ll keep going back to if we enjoy.

But not everyone in the city shares this enthusiasm. A scan of the residents groups on Facebook reveals that some citizens are hankering after greater variety or more niche speciality shops like delis or upscale shoe shops.

Some are suggesting the council should intervene to limit the number of restaurants.

How would this work? Firstly, I don’t think the local authority has any right interfering in the free market except, say, to deny planning permission if a kebab shop wants to open up in genteel Cromwell Road.

Secondly, what if you went to the council and said you wanted to bring your homespun cooking to the people of Canterbury, only to be told that the council is only giving permission to purveyors of scented candles or wooden toys? You’d wonder what the hell is going on.

The fact is, restaurants are opening up for two main reasons; the growing number of students and the number of tourists.

Canterbury is also seen as a destination for people from across Kent who fancy a day or an evening out.

Rather than whining about the proliferation of restaurants, we should celebrate this and see it as a force for good.

Writing on Facebook, Dave Roberts summed it up nicely: “Canterbury: Kent’s kitchen.”

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There was some consternation during the Tannery blaze that people were turning up to watch or video the disaster.

It’s perfectly understandable that people already upset at seeing their homes and possessions destroyed are going to be perturbed by people who in their view are “rubber-necking”.

But it’s also perfectly understandable why people do such things.

This was the biggest blaze visited upon Canterbury for 11 years and those who turned up to spectate did so out of natural curiosity. If we can experience first hand a major event such as this, we will.

If we can’t, then we rely on the news.

Furthermore, we are all also natural communicators. We are, in a sense, all news reporters.
Most of us look to provide information as much as we look to receive it.

Casual passers-by are also in a position to obtain photographs which will go down in history or leave important historical records for future generations.

Amateur cameramen have taken some of the most well-known pics in history. The best footage of the Kennedy assassination was filmed on 8mm reel by Dallas resident Abraham Zapruder, who simply wanted to record the day the president rolled into town.

So while those whose homes were destroyed in the fire did not appreciate people turning up to see for themselves what was going on, believe me, it has absolutely nothing to do with callousness or insensitivity.

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It looks like Kent County Council is coming to its senses in recognising that having shut the Chaucer School, it would do well to reopen it to cope with the coming population explosion brought by thousands of new homes.

Even better would be if it reopened as a grammar school. Only this week the Chief Inspector of Schools Sir Michael Wilshaw called for a “grammar school ethos” to combat mediocrity in secondary education.

Better than a grammar school ethos is an actual grammar school so that bright kids whose parents can’t afford to pay for private education can flourish in an environment which is just as good.

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As I walked along the High Street the other day, I passed an irrepressibly middle-class couple who looked about 30 and were pushing a baby in a very expensive-looking buggy.

Mum had dreadlocked, dirty blonde hair held together in a fat ponytail and a variety of tattoos on her arms and legs.

Dad, too, had the requisite green splodges on his muscled arms. His hair was shorn to grade one or two on the sides of his head while the rest had been allowed to grow to around six inches and was tied in a tight ponytail which protruded like an index finger pointing backwards from the top of his skull, a hairdo made unpopular by Arsenal’s hopeless former striker Nicklas Bendtner.

It made me think that in 20 or 30 years time, the kid in the buggy could bring a whole meaning to the concept of defying one’s parents: “As much as they wanted me to, I refused to get my ears pierced or get any tattoos.

“Mum and dad were horrified when I returned home from the barber’s with a short back and sides, and when I started wearing Ralph Lauren shirts and chinos, they went berserk.
“When they were downstairs listening to Alt-J, Plan B and Jake Bugg, I’d be playing Brahms and Duke Ellington records...”

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A simple visit to WHSmith in St George’s Street the other day left me feeling frustrated and annoyed.

I picked up a magazine and stood at the unmanned cash register.

After a while a staff member came up, but instead of taking my cash off me and serving me there, he walked me to the self-service till and popped the money into it.

Then he lazily pointed at the change and receipt slots and wandered off in apparent irritation that he been disturbed by a customer.

WHSmith, I assume, needs its customers, but that haughty display has cost it one for good.

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Like Gazette correspondents Richard Stainton and Alan Thomas, I didn’t buy city council chief executive Colin Carmichael’s line that it is impossible for the authority to open up about what it has in store for the Serco site and old coach park at Kingsmead.

Mr Stainton points out that “commercial confidentiality” is routinely used as convenient pretext for excluding the public from dealings between developers and the city council.

Mr Thomas drives home the point that if, as Mr Carmichael says, the council cannot reveal anything until the deal is locked in contracts, then it will all have happened without one speck of involvement from the public.

When I asked for some of the details of the plans prepared by the council’s preferred developer, I made it abundantly clear I was not asking for anything commercially sensitive - just the number of homes, number of student flats and, types of businesses.

Once the deal is stitched up and legally bound in contracts, what hope is there that we the people will be able to have any influence upon what happens at Kingsmead?

Labour’s Northgate councillor Alan Baldock spent the six months before the council elections doing his “man-of-the-people” routine.

Yet when approached by the Gazette to talk about the scheme, he decided he wasn’t at all interested in letting the people he represents know what’s in store and adopted the Conservative-controlled council’s vow of silence.

There’s them with access to all the information, details, drawings and so on. And then there’s us: Powerless, excluded, only worthy of being informed when the deal is signed, sealed and delivered.

This is exactly the sort of top-down approach to local government we were promised would become a thing of the past.

All this grubby little episode does is reinforce the idea that we can’t be trusted with information and mustn’t be involved in how our city is shaped.