Time for Change: Campaign for an Independent Green Thanet MP and Ramsgate Mayor

Hard to know which was the biggest failure of 2009: #The on-off, never-seen Ferry #Manston and on-off BAWC cargo night flights #Manston: removing the air monitors prior to the on-off, never seen night flights consultation of August, September, October, March maybe May #Manston: the missing noise monitors #Tax haven Pleasurama on-off, never seen whatever the plans were – only until 4th Jan to register tax haven duties and income with Customs #ChinaGate on-off, never seen warehouses or something after 12 months #The on-off, never seen reconstruction of the Granville Folly #Ramsgate Town Council established but grinding to a halt in ceremony, protocol and inaction #The missing EKO and ChinaGate expenses and timesheets, TDC £2M office refit from disabled grants #Dreamland: another year derelict The only certainly is the 0% pay rise fraud that were £30,000 increases and delays on providing the TDC payroll costs. Do councillors not review these at Cabinet or Council meetings? – obviously not...

Offices closed. Public distracted. A good opportunity to “bury the bad news” or at least something unpalatable. Here’s two: #The Tourist office consultation # Air quality in St Lawrence http://www.thanet.gov.uk/news/latest_press_releases/air_quality_views_needed.aspx Here’s an overview of some things for Santa for Thanet next year: 1. A tourism office closure programme described as “improvements”. Not dissimilar to “improving-air-monitoring-by-removing-air-monitors”. More “Little Margate-ism” again. The sooner each town directs its own c.£16M expenditure from the £60M District taxtake the better – or will it simply be wasted on admin and process? Fixing the plywood on the window of the tourism office would be an improvement – not really showing the town at its best for visitors 2. Thor mercury cleanup: what have the council been doing? 750 of them and 130,000 residents and there’s no cleanup schedule? 3. The Van Gogh Museum at the derelict Cavallino building in Harbour St to celebrate ...

An extract from the latest report on Thor mercury near Nash Road estate and BandQ: Incident occurred on 19th December 2007. Synthetic route (from Germany) was being scaled-up (by the persons interviewed) and ***********from the Wincham site). Uncontrolled events lead to reactor overpressure, separating the reactor lid and breaking a glass vessel containing toluene (about 50 Kg). Explosion and fire destroyed the plant. Nobody was hurt. Date(s) of Investigation dd/mm/yyyy 20/2/2008 Persons Interviewed Include their job title or role (e.g. Safety Adviser, MD, or TU Rep) **********Wincham Cheshire). ***********Margate) Decision for David Gregory (Inspector). Description of the Incident Explosion of pilot scale chemical reactor. No injuries or fatalities. Agents Involved Stage 1. Pentaerythritol Phosphorus trichloride Toluene (solvent) HCL gas (evolved) Intermediate Bicyclic phosphate (CAS: 873-93-8) Stage 2 Intermediate Bicyclic phosphate (CAS: 873-93-8) Dimethylmethyl phosphonate (DMMP)...

Why exactly are the Gang of Four still clinging to their roles and pay cheques for failure? Where are the noise and air monitors that were “improved” at each consultation for expansion by being removed? Why exactly will the councillors not discuss the cleanup at Thor, the Gasworks and Richboro and the cleanup schedules? Are the civil servants running rings round them or is it keep quiet in the cosy club of incompetence that passes for Thanet governance? The MP's and councillors and civil servants can't claim they didn't know of the problems. Where are the Cabinet and Board minutes on fixing the problems? Are they sat in Margate twiddling their thumbs while the towns are contaminated and collapse? Of course. The worst council in Britain - rated by the Government itself The highest mortality rate in Kent with an 11 year and even 17 year death rate gap. The mysterious 1,750 casualty rate. The most polluted water supply under the airport. Time for Roger Latchford and Sandy to r...

Still no news on: # TDC payroll and cars and expenses # ChinaGate receipts and timesheets # EKO £500k receipts and invoices # Infratil and TDC noise and air monitoring records and flight log # Thor and Richboro site visits and cleanup schedules # The Pleasurama tax haven contracts and payments # 0% salary increases payslips: before and after Impossible. Can’t be done. Must be delayed. And then it’s still impossible. “Commercial confidentiality” doesn’t apply: all costs etc are disclosed. If you don’t want them disclosed then don’t do business with the public sector. “Data protection” doesn’t apply: that’s for data on the public held by civil servants not civil servants costs. If you don’t want civil servant costs disclosed then work for the private sector and fund the public sector. “Crown copyright” doesn’t apply: that’s copyright funded from public funds for the public. It’s very simple. All public costs and information is available for disclosure. FOI and EIR means every piece of lo...

This is an article on the £27M cabling contract for the Vattenfall windfarm http://www.cnplus.co.uk/news/subocean-wins-23m-windfarm-contract/1867639.article That’s a big contract: £27M just for part of the cabling. I noticed yesterday by the Jet petrol station on the Pegwell/Richboro foreshore that Carillion were digging concrete-lined trenches. How does the cabling get from those trenches out to the windfarm of the North Foreland without digging up the seabed of Pegwell Bay a RAMSAR and UNESCO site? A Planning error as foolish as building a petrol station on the floodline and draining the airport’s aviation fuel into the Bay. Or building the airport on the underground water reservoir. And is the cabling contract is £27M and the windfarm is the world’s biggest windfarm – which presumably costs a lot more than £27M - why has Brian White accepted only £175,000 for a developer contribution? That will hardly cover the 0% pay rise fraud. And which councillors approved this? It looks to me l...

TDC rated again as one of the UK's worst councils. Meeting "minimum standards". We seem to have a service of crooks, cretins and liars. And death by council. Double the cancer rate. Poisoned water. Noise and air monitors removed. Fake 0% pay rises for failure. Fake £500k EKO quangos Still no ChinaGate expenses. Tax haven developers. What has been going on? Silence from councillors. Silence from Civil servnats. Silence from MP's When will we have credible explanations and how these problems will be resolved. Resignations. P45's. No payoffs. No pensions. No public sector jobs. All seem viable to me. The Gang of Four of Samuel, White, Latchford and Ezekiel couldn't run a bath let alone 3 small towns. Failed. Failed. Failed. Time for Change

Coventry airport closed. Kemble airfield expands as a breaers yard for derelict aircraft. With Heathrow or Gatwick or Stansted slated for expansion – if any – then regional airports make little sense. Ever tighter environmental restrictions, noise control, air pollution. Unless you’re Manston of course. Built on the water supply? No problem. No effective radar? No problem. Removal of noise monitors? No problem. Removal of air monitors? No problem. Council to fudge consultations? No problem. County council happy for an airport far away from them? No problem. Council to pay for the airport’s consultation? No problem. Council to pay for an extra council quango of councillors? No problem. Dumping jumbo jets on the water supply? No problem. A Masterplan of 2M passengers. Up from zero. And more than double the whole population of Kent? No problem. And a cancer rate in Thanet double the UK average. Either 11 years or 17 years early death rate compared to the rest of Kent. Even the official fi...

Another front page article on cancer in East Kent. http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/Launch.aspx?referral=other&refresh=7Yk1y0D26Ga0&PBID=d7d2b9a4-64e8-44e3-9e11-33b67854552c&skip = Clearly smoking would affect cancer figures a little. But most people don’t smoke. So why would there be over double the national average of lung cancer. And a specialist cancer ward. A mortality rate dying at age 69 rather than 81 like the rest of Kent? Certainly an airport – especially if you remove and don’t replace the air monitoring. What were the civil servants and politicians thinking? No-one would know? No-one would mind? They could “lose” the paperwork? They’d keep their jobs and pensions anyway? Hustle through fake consultations? Even fake 0% payrises? Polluted water wouldn’t help. Nor contaminated land like Thor and Richboro and the Gasworks – all that dust blowing around. Here’s the estuary airport protest site funded by KCC with suggestions that Manston should be used inst...

Front page of the Thanet Gazette. As you'd expect in Toxic Thanet: * air and noise monitors removed from 24/7 cargo airport by TDC and Infratil * ChinaGate cargo warehouses plan on the Manston water supply * 6 dumped jumbo jets on Manston water supply left by KCC and TDC * RAF base without monitoring or similar deceit * Thor mercury near Nash Road housing estate, B&Q and Hornby: closed-but-not-closed for 25 years * permits to pollute and discharge into Pegwel Bay * Pegwell and Stour most polluted river in UK after Medway * Richboro cancer towers derelict * The mystery of toxic Tivoli Brook * Ramsgate and Margate gasworks derelict for 10 years * The fake EUJet and Night Flights rubber-stamp consultations * The EA report on "not polluting your water supply" to TDC in July * Old Sericol site pumps switched off No mention from councillors. No mention from civil servants. No toxin and cleanup schedules. No Cabinet minutes. No Chief Executive and Board minutes. No Forward P...

A further update on the Kentmere Avenue at Manston airport. The largest monitor covering the airport: here’s the picture off the Kent air quality website: http://www.kentair.org.uk/monitoringnetwork.php?view=sitephotos&site=ZH3&bulletindate=03/12/2009#details Like a rather large telephone box or a shipping container: this is the monitor that’s now switched off. The diffusion tubes are literally test tubes with a dab of cotton wool and tied to lanp-posts – usually used in their dozens and hundreds to monitor traffic pollution. Here’s the Medway newspaper front page on serious traffic pollution in Medway which is monitored by diffusion tubes – for cars not jumbo jets. http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/Launch.aspx?referral=other&refresh=fG1705Po2c0Q&PBID=95f0fcf6-68e7-4ec6-a688-2d9be9749147&skip = As you can imagine airport monitoring – especially an airport slated for expansion and built on the water supply and near an urban population of over 100,000 needs ...

Except it's not. It's making air monitoring worse by....removing the most advanced monitor at Manston. The Kentmere Avenue monitor right at the end of the runway. It's strange that this release plops out from Cheryl and Penny the day after I'd asked Penny for clarification on the data from the Kentmwere monitor and the flight logs. And bizarrely this release is from last week announcing the changes that were made...in August - at the time of the night flight announcements. It's pretty clear we're expected to swallow this flannel and bullshot along with the failures in monitoring at an airport that was slated for expansion through a mix of council and Infratil collusion. And rank incompetence in expanding it on the water supply and just down the road from Heathrow and Ostend. But I'm picky about being poisoned. Maybe you are too. Maybe even TDC's own staff and councillors are too. Aviation fuel doesn't fall like stair rods under the plane does it - it...

Strange that this monitor was removed on 1st August – wasn’t that around the time of the announcement of night flights by TDC and Infratil? The Kentmere monitor is right at the end of the Manston runway next to the housing estate nearest the airport so quite important you’d think for public health and safety. It’s by far the most advanced monitor at Manston: electronic readings, 24/7, benzene etc etc. All the other monitors now are dabs of cotton wool along the perimeter road. Apparently the monitor was “constantly malfunctioning” which is strange after all these years. And the removal of the noise monitors by Infratil and TDC from 2006. So at the time of airport expansion, Infratil and TDC have repeatedly removed monitoring, never provided the mobile monitoring and never sought to improve monitoring. Now you know and I know that if you want to expand the most polluting industries in an area it’s very difficult as the monitoring has to be robust to ensure the death rate doesn’t rise to...

Dear Mr Garbutt Thank you for your communication received on 14/10/2009. I can respond to your queries as follows: 1. If you can email which companies/amounts TDC invests in each year - a summary is fine. Is the £2m investment a reduction or a fall in shares performance? At 31 March 2008 the Council had the following investments: - Glitner Bank £3.016m - Irish Nationwide Building Society £4.041m - Landsbanki Islands £1.001m - Bank of Scotland £1.005m At 31 March 2009 the Council had the following investments: - Debt Management Office £5.9m - Alliance and Leicester £1.036m The level of investments depends entirely on cash flow requirements and therefore the level of investments at year end can vary significantly between years. (Weren't we told by TDC that they hadn't invested in Icelandic Banks and it's hardly spectacualr investing in the "Debt Management Office" ie putting the funds back into the Treasury. But with a £2M loss). 2. Payroll: please provide with any ...

The South Coast NHS has released details of the lung cancer rates in the area. East Kent: Thanet and parts of Dover have a rating of 70 dbl. Areas around Heathrow such as Hounslow and Hillingdon have rating from 66 down to 54. Nearby Richmond near the flightpath has a rating of 45. No specific ratings exist for each of the Thanet towns. As you can see – and not unexpectedly – living near and under the flight path for 747 jumbo jets at very low level makes Manston one of the most unhealthy places in Kent. The NHS didn’t even try the ”airports are good for you” approach. And Thanet has the highest early death rate in Kent: dying at 69 years old in Thanet and 81 years old in the rest of Kent – again a massive statistical skew. The 106 went some way to attempting to reduce these effects: flight paths away from the towns, air monitor etc – all of which have been ignored by Infratil, KCC and TDC. And now our councillors and civil servants seem to be aware of the problem but simply standing a...

Infratil have sold off their Lubeck airport in Germany. Infratil Manston is little more than half a dozen cargo flights from Ostend cargo airport each week. Which are then unloaded and trucked to Heathrow or around the M25. All of it on the water supply and at rooftop height with some of the highest levels of lung cancer in the UK. Clearly Manston has been seen as a "quick-fix" and "one-0ff" regeneration for Thanet by ignoring and removing noise and air monitoring. What must they be doing at Prestwick? Here's an article I've written on the subject in Your Thanet (page 15). http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/Launch.aspx?referral=other&refresh=m17XJx05n3A1&PBID=84956776-5fe0-4064-a733-83aabf1dd4b7&skip = Infratil have been pandered to by our councils to the point of deliberately endangering the public. While the RAF and MOD have done much the same with oil and chemical sprays over the runway and Fire base - all built upon the underground r...

Most of the problems with the airport are being resolved. Very few flights now. Which is good. Pointless poisoning your own citizens with aviation fuel. And pointless poisoning your own water supply. Not one flight. Not one helicopter. Closed. No lung cancer. No aviation fuel. Nothing. As MP I will assist with the EU inquiries into Lubeck and Prestwick and tighter regulation of noise and air monitoring. We cannot have aviation companies and councils endangering the public. Aside from the airport, tobacco is obviously a major lung cancer problem and a bit more so than other towns: tobacco vending machines should be banned from pubs and cigarettes removed from the large supermarkets. Tobacco kills over 100,000 people (at least) in Britain each year. Ramsgate Town Council are rattling along although there’s some silliness over trying to exclude the public and press from parts of the meeting. 16 councillors represent the 40,000 citizens of Ramsgate. Every piece of information is available ...

To put the danger in the reduction of air monitoring at Manston here’s a link to a diffusion tube: http://cambridge.org/us/engineering/author/nellisandklein/downloads/examples/EXAMPLE_9.4-1.pdf As you can see they are literally a 7cm test tube that’s exposed for a month to record any air pollution. As they’re the simplest – and cheapest – way to sample air pollution they’re usually used in large quantities and mainly for roadside fumes and pollution at a busy crossroads or junction. Manston has 3 of these. 2 in Manston village and 1 in Minster. You wouldn’t use just 3 diffuser tubes or sites would you? And all aligned in parallel with the runway rather than under each end where the planes land? The more detailed air monitor in Kentmere Avenue, Ramsgate - directly at the end of the runway, the end where planes aren’t supposed to land anyway in the 106 - was turned off 2 months ago and TDC state that “even with increased traffic (at the airport) it will not be reactivated”. And notes tha...

It gets worse. I’ve received the latest air monitoring from KIACC. The significance of the report is that the UK limit is 40 g/m for all the nasty emissions like benzene etc, and in 2008 the average at Manston (with poor monitoring) was 31 m/g – an airport expansion at Manston can only be achieved by not monitoring the increase in air pollution. The Kentmere monitor was also switched off in Aug 09 due to poor data capture etc – again poor monitoring. In 2006 the central Ramsgate monitors were removed from the tower block and school and never replaced by Brian or Richard or Sandy or Roger. The mobile monitor has never been provided after several years Why switch off Kentmere and have no mobile monitor in the towns – making weak monitoring worse? With Thanet having the highest lung cancer rate in Kent already it looks like our politicians and civil servants are keeping their heads down and trying to make it worse. No votes in deliberately poisoning your own citizens - not this side of Na...

Trying to develop an airport by fudging or removing all the safety measures. Why would you do that? I can understand Infratil doing it: careers to be made, profits, promotion. I can possibly understand a civil servant doing that: careers to be made etc. But why would local councillors and civil servants want to do that? Jobs for the area? OK. I can understand that. But pollution jobs? Bit of political or civil service brown-nosing for County. I can understand that. But here’s what I don’t understand. You wouldn’t remove the noise and air monitors would you? And then if you did, you wouldn’t refuse to put them back would you? That would be: no monitors, no data, no problem as the death rate spirals. That’s what noise and air monitors are for aren’t they? To flag up any dangerous pollution levels? At an airport. They’re not optional are they? And then to cap it you wouldn’t try to expand the airport again would you? Still without noise and air monitoring. That would be deliberately and k...

Mike Fuller the Chief Officer of Kent Police has been making a few enquiries around the questions raised in Kent on Sunday over Manston: What Police safety procedures are in place at Manston airport in the event of a crash on the water supply? Mr Fuller: Air travel is one of the safest forms of transport both for passenger and for freight flights. Before an airport is licensed its management have to meet very high safety standards, and their ability to provide these is regularly checked. Kent Police are identified as the lead emergency service and have officers who have specific areas of expertise that enable them to deal with any crisis. Our preparations are built around regular exercises with other emergency services and agencies which test those plans to the limit. As part of that we do prepare for the crash of an aircraft and the contamination of nearby water supplies. The critical role is knowing what to do immediately after any disaster, and the rigorous and repeated testing of o...

Seeing the national parties at work I can’t help but think that they’re so similar now that you could lump them together and have one fairly good main party with maybe 3 or 4 smaller offshoots. Rather than 3 large and bland copycat parties. New Labour as Thatcher-lite, Cameron Tories as New Labour-lite and Libdems as a bit of everything. Cameron’s raised some sensible points recently on curbing civil service salaries – but aren’t councillors meant to do that? – and publishing accounts and payroll for councils and quangos – but doesn’t that happen anyway? – and cutting MP’s by 10% or c.60 seats. Personally I’d slash MP’s to 400 seats and 200 in the Lords, slash quangos which are simply more civil servants in new guises and limit civil service departments except by Parliamentary Act. And ban Party whips except on national security issues. We seem to have failed financial services and failed governance and regulation. None of the parties seems able to reduce public sector bloat or improve...

I hope the Ramsgate ferry happens: congratulations to anyone of any party that makes it happen. 20 years and counting. This year and counting. Certainly a far better idea than the silly “new town centre” of a shopping centre with in-fill houses on farmland near-the-town-centres at Westwood. Thanet’s looking more like a polluted, derelict and burned down version of Milton Keynes every day. If the ferry doesn’t happen before the election then I will help drive it through from Parliament - and in the meantime instigate a minibus/passenger service that drives onto the existing TEF ferry. I’d also throw out any silly road closure filming bills from County hall: isn’t the County meant to open and close County roads and if they’re not then who is responsible for existing closures of the County’s roads for festivals etc with KCC’s £2bn budget (and a £100M Highways budget) and no meetings in September because they had nothing to do after the councillors awarded themselves a pay rise the previou...

Hello. This is a TDC and Manston public announcement. As Chief Executive of Thanet Council I understand there are public concerns over TDC’s role in developing the airport and I wanted to use this opportunity to put one or two matters straight. It ain’t me. I had nuffink to do wiv it. I saw some papers but I don’t remember. It was Brian White wot done it. He can change his job title and department name and everyfing . But he done it. He removed them noise and air monitors. It ain’t me. Not never. I am sure. Not when I was Chair of KIACC. And not as CEO of TDC. I ain’t done it. Since 2006. I ain’t done nuffink. It was Brian. He never told me or nuffink. It was Brian. And even if I did I don’t remember nuffink. Besides Ladyman and Gale never said nuffink neither. And they knew too. Although I knew nuffink. And if people are dead well that’s their problem. I sign the papers and read the memos. And that means it ain’t nuffink to do with me. And besides since when did airports have to have ...

At last the minutes and webpage is available from Ramsgate Town Council today - the old “get the info out the day before the meeting tomorrow” trick it seems, partial/fudged minutes etc etc – and it seems impossible for the public to add items to the agenda such as Pleasurama, Thor, Richboro, Infratil etc. Anyone going to RTC’s 4th meeting tomorrow (7pm at Albion House, Ramsgate's Town Hall) may want to ask questions on Thor, Richboro, Infratil, Pegwell, lung cancer, early death rate, derelict buildings, £60M tax-take and £22M salaries at TDC rather than some of the ceremonial aspects. Whoops – a couple of points of correction on the latest minutes: # no mention of Thor mercury # the jet dumping ground is a fact not potential: 6 dumped jumbo jets and a 7th removed at Xmas after being dumped for 10 years # Noise monitoring inefficient – as it was removed, and still no air monitors nor mobile monitors # no mention of TDC/RTC payroll/costs for review # all RTC info is open to public a...

A report in Thanet Extra (page 2) on the “Thanet cesspit” that is the pollution in Pegwell bay one of the worst 2% of polluted rivers in UK. http://www.thanetepaper.co.uk/index.aspx The report correctly highlights the much tougher punishments elsewhere in Europe for deliberate pollution. Geoff Wild the KCC legal and flytipping expert has repeatedly refused to remove the dumped jumbo jets at Manston: ask him yourself: geoff.wild@kent.gov.uk Brian White and Richard Samuel for years have refused to provide noise and air monitors that would record the aviation fuel onto the sea: ask them yourself brian.white@thanet.gov.uk and richard.samuel@thanet.gov.uk They are available for question son 13th October at the Pavillion Broadstairs to discuss 7,500 extra housebuilding in Thanet. While Infratil and Matt Clarke continue to dump aviation fuel into the outflow system that feeds into the Kent Highways road drainage and dumps straight into Pegwell Bay. Approved by Brian White. And the Environmen...