Wednesday 5 August 2009

The Gang of Four a busted flush?

Certainly looks like it.

Unless you’re the Gang of Four, or a civil servant brown-noser’s or a councillor-cheerleader.

At last we have - let’s hope - a ferry to replace the Sally Line of 1998.

Why the 10 year delay? It hasn’t even been in the TDC Forward Plan.

Yet another knee-jerk reaction with an election coming up and the collapse of Infratil, Grupo Antolin, EUJet etc.

Every Thanet regeneration project has collapsed almost immediately.

Largely because they’re stupid ideas.

A failed cargo airport - built on the drinking water.

The noise and air monitors removed so it appears the public isn’t being endangered.

Derelict town centres – that were vibrant.

Switching budgets between the 3 towns and selling off museums.

Minimum wage multiple shops and traffic congestion for Westwood Cross as part of the failed 4th Town Centre glory project.

Rampant new build housing – with 3,000 empty properties. More than the number of council houses managed by TDC.

The mystery Directors of tax haven Pleasurama. That's a sensible use of public funds.

New plans of a Ramsgate-Dubai seafront skyscraper fantasy. Idiocy on a grand scale.

The highest lung cancer rate in Kent. Do nothing the problem will solve itself.

The highest unemployment rate: double the Kent average.

They can’t do it can they?

The Gang of Four.

They can’t take council tax and Government funds and run the towns well can they?

We seem to have Planning for new build favours.

Grants for Dreamland and associated businesses as they burn down.

And council services only for council salaries.

With Dundee House next to Ramsgate Town Hall being refurbed ready for the demolition of TDC’s offices down to Dreamland, all we need now is a Margate Town Council and the towns can run their own affairs with greater public scrutiny, transparency of funds and fewer civil servants and quangos.

The councillors have failed us.

Unanimous votes for ChinaGate and the dodgy Party donations.

Unanimous votes for 0% pay rises but really 30% increases fraud.

The civil servants have failed us: £100k salaries plus expenses to run towns like this?

They can generate bumf and bullshot but they can’t run towns.

What waste.

Of time and money.

Utter waste.

Another lost decade.

The reduction in Council Tax and Tax Rebates must be huge for decades of failure and deliberately endangering the public.

Yet its increases and asset sales for their own salaries.

They can’t do it can they?

Even the Government rates TDC as one of Britain’s worst councils with poverty in the top 5% of all UK districts.

And it hasn’t improved in years.

Messrs Ezekiel and Latchford and White and Samuel have let themselves down, let local governance down and let the towns down.

Two more years of this nonsense if we let them delay, deceive and bluster.

They’ll pick up their pay cheques and we’ll have to pick up the pieces.

The Gang of Four.

A busted flush.

As MP I will:

# close Manston - with the Infratil Kiwi criminals banned from Europe and the Directors on trial or extradited in chains
# close Thor with water rates refunds and emergency NHS funding
# clean-up Manston, Thor and Richboro
# Axe tax-haven Pleasurama and CGP/EKO ChinaGate
# A windfarm levy of free green electricity for the area: 20 jobs is that it?
# Create the New Ramsgate Lido and New Pleasurama Flats and Ice-rink
# Instigate car park charges at Westwood Cross and a multiples levy to be split between the 3 towns and no charges for the first hour in the town centres
# sack any underperforming civil servant earning £50k plus immediately or within 12 months of failing to reverse the problems in Thanet
# instigate “recall” or “vote of no confidence” for any under-performing civil servants and councillors by a 10% public vote
# withhold Thanet council tax from KCC for rebates and refunds
# abolish council-quangos-for-councils funded from public funds eg the Local Government Association with £250k of Kent taxpayer funds
# reallocate the £100M in KCC bank processing charges and funds for 86 KCC in-house lawyers for regeneration
# instigate a Parliamentary inquiry into the failure of reform in Kent and regeneration by jerrycan
# publish monthly all MP, Lords, MEP, quango and civil service costs, pensions etc by department with no “redactions” or “censorship”
# institute service standards for planning timescales and then outsourcing to the private sector
# establish councillor and civil servant exams and standards

I call on Messrs Ladyman and Gale to publish their Parliamentary reports for the next 8 months before the election: the collapse of Thanet is no time for them to hang on just for their pensions.

Failed. Failed. Failed.

Time for Change.

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