Wednesday 3 November 2010

Manston: contamination

I completely forgot the RTC meet tonight on Manston etc – just as well if the councillors and civil servant farce of whether there is or isn’t a consultation last year, this year or next year - but happened to wander past and chatted to Richard Styles the Town Clerk.

I mentioned him that the report and accounts and latest budgets are still overdue some 4 weeks after requesting them – and some 3 months after them being signed off by RTC.

I suspect a bit of shuffling of feet over actual costs, Custom House contracts and civil servant salaries and pensions. Better to delay and hide them from the public.

How bizarre a council delaying publishing its own report and accounts for public funds.

I mentioned a strange letter form RTC requesting business donations to the Xmas lights “or Ramsgate may go dark”.

He looked at me as though I’d suggested killing his first-born that the public and business provide £60M in tax in Thanet – plus national tax – so why would we provide a voluntary tax given so little has been done?

The Xmas lights are over 10 years old – during the time of the Charter Trustees who were also doublehatter TDC councillors.

Again he looked horrified when I said why not cut civil servant salaries or sack a few to free up funds or provide grants.

Manston: chatting to a Fire Brigade friend the assumption is that Manston fire cover is only available 9-5. Probably not into the evening and 11pm - and certainly not 3am flights like Egyptair.

A bit of political bullpoo over the 106 and hairsplitting on planning permission etc.

There’s nothing wrong with the 106 as such. It just hasn’t been enforced.

Worse, Infratil and TDC actually removed the noise monitors in Autumn 2006 and never replaced them. And refused to deploy monitors.

All specified in the 106.

That’s a criminal offence for an airport slated for expansion: endangering a lot of the public needlessly.

Especially when part-funded by KCCC and SEEDA.

No explanation from our councillors and MP’s. Nor Brian White and Richard Samuel.

Will Laura Sandys or Roger Gale raise it in Parliament? Or keep schtum?

And today the criminal case into Britain’s worst mass poisoning at Camelford reveals that the water company “told staff to keep quiet over the contaminated water supply”.

Silence on Thor mercury from Messrs Samuel and White.

Silence on Pegwell Bay: Manston fuel draining into the Bay.

Silence on the MOD Fire base: fire training chemicals used on the aquifer.

Silence from TDC Contaminated Land officer.

Silence from KCC Cabinet.

Silence from Environment Agency: Andrew Ogden, Andrew Pearce, Harvey Bradshaw.

And statements from Roger Gale that Thor and Manston were well-run and posed no danger to the public – when the factory exploded in 2007

Silence or nonsense doesn’t help.

No votes in poisoning your own citizens.

Why were the monitors removed from Manston?

When did councillors and civil servants know?

When and how have they raised these problems?

Why were they not replaced?

What are the Thor toxin levels? And Richboro?

How’s the East Kent aquifer?

What is the Manston Fire cover?

Why are planes not following the “no overflights” rule?

It's a lot of cancer by simply ignoring the 106 and likely contamination of the public.

Tuesday 2 November 2010

Manston farce - except for the cancer

A farcical public meeting on Manston and now a farcical consultation-but-not-a-consultation.

As usual all the public opposed to whatever nonsense the TDC councillors are suggesting.

And now councillors and civil servants scrabbling around to get out of the mess.

Just embarrassing.

No explanation for over a year’s delay since the first request by Infratil.

Stale old men relying on secrecy, pass the buck and petty committee procedure while Infratil do what they like.

No explanation for the repeated breaches of the 106.

No explanation on how many deaths from the lack of monitoring.

Nor the delay on a night flights consultation since last July.

Nor why it would be 12 weeks of consultation – you may remember the EUJet farce of a consultation that began when TDC was closed continued after the planes began flying - rather than the specified 26 weeks.

Empty burble and flannel now they’ve been found out.

A bust airport. Bust as Wiggins. Bust as EUJet. Bust as KCC USA. Bust as BAWC.

How many more times?

It’s a lot of deaths to explain with the mortality rate at 63 rather than 81 years old.

Time to change these useless Darby and Joaners.

Time for criminal charges for Samuel and White and Infratil Directors for removing the noise and air monitors form an airport slated for expansion and 0% fraud.

Time for a public enquiry requested by Tracy Emin into our substandard councils.

Our council has failed.

A bottom 10% UK council and bottom 10% area.

Hopes pinned on ludicrous white elephant projects: Manston, Turner, Westwood 4th town centre, New Roads to Nowhere and Vattenfall.

And all almost total failure.

Silence on Thor mercury toxin levels.

Silence on TDC and KCC’s pension costs and benefits.

Silence on the EKO invoices and 0% salary fraud.

And RTC can’t even publish the report and accounts – presumably it’s the same £300k as of the Charter Trustees – but more costs for pensions.

Where is Ramsgate’s £20M share of council tax?

Manston’s failed.

And a lot of people have cancer unnecessarily.

And we have councillors and civil servants deliberately working against the public to protect themselves.

The only question now is how long will we wait before the airport is closed to safeguard the water – and the public from our shoddy civil servants and councillors.

Delays in closing the airport simply mean more air and water pollution and cancer before the plug is pulled.

The aquifer needs cleaning and protecting.

Time to stop the cancer.

Time for Change.

Sunday 31 October 2010

Manston - gateway to AlQaida

With cargo flight bombs now an AlQaida option – again Manston is wide open.

Random night flights. Egyptair. Banned African flights. Unchecked cargo. Offroute flights etc etc.

A few minutes fly time from Canary Wharf.

It's a wonder a few bombs aren't hidden under a couple of pallets of heroin from Amsterdam or some Sudanese Kalashnikovs from Ostend.

Shouldn’t flights be pulled - the last major terrorism alert in Summer 2007 still had flights coming in plus banned flights.

Shouldn’t there be an aviation blacklist for blatant breaches of airport operations and safety: Infratil’s Directors seem to do what they like.

Why have noise and air monitors been removed and flight breaches deliberately ignored by our councillors and civil servants - for years?

And silence on the East Kent drinking water supply under the runway.

Over a year of fudge and delay since the BAWC night flight application with Matt Clarke and Latchford and Ezekiel last July. The same sort of delay as with the Albion House petition.

We seem to have had public safety endagered for mere dogma and incompetence.

Manston can only close now. The sooner the better.

And the runway and buildings and KCC/SEEDA carpark removed to allow the underground water reservoir to refill and clean.

The same - when action is eventually taken - for Thor mercury.

And at some point a desalination plant will need to be considered rather than piping water in from West Kent and failing flood defences and drains.

Our 1970's pensioners have failed us.

The towns have burned down and fallen down.

A bottom 10% council and bottom 10% UK area.

If you told me I wouldn't have believed you.

Thursday 28 October 2010

Guns R Us: Manston and Ostend

http://www.ruudleeuw.com/ostend.htm



“Bulgaria and Slovakia are major sources of arms to be transported to war zones. Airports from where the arms' transfer is organised or effected are mainly Burgas and Plovdiv in Bulgaria, Bratislava in Slovakia, a number of Russian airports, Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates and the airport of Ostend. The arms are subsequently delivered to the Sudanese airport of Khartoum, to Sierra Leone, Angola, the Congo or other war zones. All the airports mentioned above are still visited by aircraft from Ostend.”



Info above (simply Google “gunrunning Ostend”) on gunrunning in and out of Ostend.


Manston – less so now – used various known gunrunners for the “Ostend hops” eg DAS, MK etc etc (plus aircraft already banned from EU) and in the last 7 days there’s been another unmarked and rather tatty 747 flying in and out. Plus various smaller aircraft.

Presumably also EgyptAir.

And several out-of-hours flights and unchecked flights.

Infratil’s new Director Charles Buchanan – formerly London City Airport – has stated in the last month that it’s not Infratil’s responsibility to check what flights are coming in and out of its airport.

I thought it was.

Along with CAA and Police/Customs – unless they’ve lost control of the airport and UK airspace.

As Infratil “have form” with MK etc shouldn’t the flight logs from the control tower be provided by CAA? And the Infratil Directors placed on a blacklist?

And a transport review of CAA/Customs/Police/Flight logs at airports?

Any – or most - banned aircraft should be identified from a two minute Excel sheet search.

All the specified flight routes are still being ignored by Infratil: at what point does the CAA seek fines and jail sentences?

Or even - I know, foolish when they can't even paint a park bench - TDC.

Arms to dodgy regimes is one thing but blatantly flying them in and out of airports is another.

Separately, still silence on the toxin levels and cleanup at Manston, Thor and Richboro.

There was a half page article in the Sunday Times just gone on the dangers of mercury.

Silence on why Thor was still open for 20 years.

Nothing on dumped jets at Manston.

And ships off Cliftonville and the Blue Flag beaches.

Nothing on KCC's staff costs and pensions by department.

Nor TDC's.

Not even RTC's report and accounts (the whole report and accounts!) - personally promised by Richard Styles a fortnight ago - after being singed off 3 months ago.

Shush.

Not for you to know.

It does make a difference when you can see the services provided and the actual cost doesn't it?

Time for Change.

Wednesday 27 October 2010

Manston night and day cancer

Just another farcical public meeting on Manston again.

As usual all the public opposed to whatever nonsense the TDC councillors are suggesting.

Empty burble from Mike Harrison – the Chair of the Airport Committee no less - about there might be a consultation or not a consultation and maybe in a month or two.

Nor – supposedly - could they say what their own opinions are. How ridiculous to elect silent representatives.

Just embarrassing.

TDC and KCC only seem to operate on silence and lies - and RTC much the same.

A no explanation for over a year’s delay since the first request by Infratil – other than the sound of bucks being passed and councillors ducking the public protests then.

Stale old men relying on secrecy, pass the buck and petty committee procedure while Infratil do what they like.

No explanation for the repeated breaches of the 106.

No explanation on how many deaths form the lack of monitoring.

Nor the delay on a night flights consultation since last July.

Nor why it would be 12 weeks of consultation – you may remember the EUJet farce of a consultation that began when TDC was closed continued after the planes began flying - rather than the specified 26 weeks.

Empty burble and flannel now they’ve been found out.

It’s a lot of deaths to explain if the mortality rate is 63 rather than 81 years old.

And a lot of monitors removed, altered and not in place.

Time to change these useless Darby and Joaners.

Time for criminal charges for Samuel and White and Infratil Directors for removing the noise and air monitors form an airport slated for expansion and 0% fraud.

Time for a public enquiry requested by Tracy Emin into our substandard councils.

Time for a public meeting for all votes on Manston outside of the ludicrously small Custom House..

Our council has failed.

Can’t even publish the report and accounts – presumably it’s the same £300k as of the Charter Trustees – but more costs for pensions. Where is Ramsgate’s £20M share of council tax?

Manston’s failed.

And a lot of people have cancer unnecessarily.

The only question now is how long will we wait before the airport is closed to safeguard the water – and the public from our shoddy civil servants and councillors.

Delays in closing the airport simply mean more air and water pollution and cancer before the plug is pulled.

Time to stop the cancer.

Time for Change.

Sunday 10 October 2010

Stop the pollution, corruption and construction

Why the delays and silence from our politicians and civil servants on the pollution, corruption and construction in Thanet?


Our politicians and civil servants have failed us:


· major pollution incidents and cover-up: highest cancer rate in South East

· Third World death rates: 18 year death gap from rest of Kent

· deliberate pollution from Manston and Thor

· collapse of Margate

· utter waste of tax-funds


Vote Garbutt for Mayor May 2011: Independent Green – directly elected


Stop the Pollution:

• Close Manston airport: built on the polluted drinking water supply - and repeated safety breaches by TDC and Infratil

• Thor mercury factory near Hornby – publish EA toxin cleanup details: should have closed in 1988 but remains open

• Demolish the derelict and polluting Richboro power station

• Clean up Pegwell Bay: one of the two most polluted sites in Kent

* Close Manston MOD Fire station: thousands of litres of chemicals into the water supply

* Limit Thanet windfarm: expansion details, funding and free electricity.

* Revise building codes for refurb and One House. Two Solar Panels.

* Detail all asbestos sites and cleanup.

* Ban pollution ships from the Cliftonville Blue Flag beaches, reform Port and Marina and Channel routes

• NHS joint-monitoring of TDC pollution sites to reduce Thanet’s Third world death rates: dying at 63 not 81.


Stop the Corruption:

• Repay fraudulent TDC civil service 0% pay rises from Messrs Samuel and White

• A fair trial for the Toxic Two and Infratil’s Directors with a public-funded class action in removing monitors of Messrs Samuel and White - and underperforming civil servants and councillors

* Boycott KCC’s council tax payments until Thanet is regenerated and electoral reform: recall, referenda, KCC direct votes

* Peg council tax to inflation and back-office reform and bloat

• Publish all TDC and RTC £22m (almost 50% of a council tax budget of £60m!): civil servant staffing, salaries, expenses, cars, pensions and other benefits each month

• End Chinagate completely and refund the £25k Labour party donations to charity

* Publish EKO and Pleasurama contracts and costs

• End “minimargateism” – create Margate Town Council, reopen Ramsgate Tourist

Centre and Albion House Town Hall to the public and MP offices upstairs


Stop the Construction:

• Halt overdevelopment 23,000 empty houses in Kent: no new build houses except on brownfield

• End garden-grabbing construction: Thnaet has lowest green space per head

• Halt £80M East Kent access road - another “road to nowhere” construction

• Reverse the dereliction of the town centres: civil service vanity projects and wasteful roadbuild

• Rollback development at Westwood Cross and introduce parking charges: an out-of-town-shopping-centre-built-near-the-town-centres

• Expand greenbelt, trees, verges and parks: begin Van Gogh gallery and reopen town museums and tourist centres

* Begin Pleasurama icerink and 2012 pool

* Demolish Arlington House and recharge Turner Centre to KCC


Here’s an article from March’s Independent on Sunday on air pollution in the UK -clearly the collusion by civil servants and our councillors and MP’s to expand Manston has seriously endangered the health of many members of the public:

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/britain-a-breath-of-foul-air-1924790.htm

Thanet has sites with over 4x the EU levels for emissions.

We await explanations on why noise and air monitors were removed and not replaced
by Infratil and TDC – for an airport slated for expansion when nearby Canterbury has 5 permanent monitors for roads.

How many dead from cancer.

Why there are repeated breaches of the 106 airport regulations and Consultations.

Why the airport is still allowed to pollute the drinking water supply - and

why after months and years our councillors, civil servants and MP’s remain silent.

Time for national change:

* Achieve the UNMDG and 1% aid before 2015 with World Bank and IMF reform
* Establish Tobin Fund, Tobin Tax and Tobin Crisis Fund
* No UN and EU payments without FOI
* Create UNMDG 2.0 for 2020
* Mayors for Peace and no nukes
* Whitehall out of Whitehall
* Fund “One Tax” - and from Treasury line payments: no collection and scrutiny

Stop the Pollution. Stop the Corruption. Stop the Construction.

Vote Garbutt for Mayor - May 2011.

Independent Green and directly elected.

Visit the blog: http://lovekentloveramsgate.blogspot.com/

Or email timgarbutt@yahoo.com for more info

Volunteers required for office, fundraising and leafleting


Time for Change

Thursday 7 October 2010

Night flight blight

Night Flight blight

The meeting on Ramsgate’s consultation for night flights at Ramsgate town council was much the same. A council room overflowing with people complaining about night flights, cancer, asthma, the drinking water etc.

And councillors silent or biting their lips to speak up in favour of night flights.

After the meeting one councillor mentioned how wonderful Manston was back in the 1960’s when it was an RAF base and base for Invicta airlines.

In the 1960’s. Funded by tax-money. Trailing jet fuel. And a few airshows to keep the public quiet.

And then it collapsed.

And Manston as a private airport has collapsed over the last 10 years.

Even Charles Buchanan of Infratil now says private planes won’t keep the airport open. It can only be 24hour cargo. If that.

A bargain basement junkyard of an airport.

Kept open by removing the safety measures and endangering the public.

Elections next May: no vote sin poisoning your own citizens before now – and until then.

A year after the last night flight farce we still have planes breaching the 106 repeatedly with overflights, banned planes and landing on the water supply.

Time to close Manston completely.

No night flights.

No day flights.

The runway dug up.

The buildings cleared.

The dumped jets cleared.

The water protected.

The reality is our councillors are simply a busted flush.

And what incompetent town planning.

An airport on the drinking water supply.

A few minutes fly time from Ostend cargo airport and Gatwick and Heathrow.

The removal of the safety measures.

Time for corporate manslaughter charges for Infratil’s Directors and the Toxic Two.

I asked again for the RTC reports and accounts missing form the website months after being signed off.

No doubt we’ll see RTC has merely been acting as the Charter Trustee social club again.

After 2 years little has been achieved.

Albion House remains derelict and the new council room is simply too small.

A quick question on Thor mercury at the end of the meeting? Nothing to do with the council.

Members of the public have organised a meeting for 3:30 pm at the church in Arklow Square to discuss the public’s response the night flights and improvements to the town council.

Time for Change.

Time to reduce the number of councillors at RTC and TDC

Time to remove double hatters sitting on all the councils.

Time to end public sector pensions.

Time to publish all civil servants costs.

Time to reduce the number of civil servants: a 30% increase at TDC to 750 in the last couple of years.

Time to end the public and press banned from meetings.

Time to provide webcams.

Time to establish Margate Town Council and town council tax funds.

Tie to reduce the bloat and waste and lack of funding from KCC.

Time to reduce automatic over-inflation council tax rises.

Time for itemised MP’s costs and activities to be published.

We seem to have stale councillors living in the past or simply incompetent and allowing the towns to fall into dereliction, and asking the public to pay for the privilege.

For 2 years – after a 2 year delay by TDC – RTC has sat around.

The public have been endangered – even yesterday a 747 flew over the towns.

A vote of no confidence in RTC/TDC.
Close the airport.

A council tax boycott.

Criminal charges.

Time for change.

Tuesday 5 October 2010

Toxic air quality in Canterbury and Herne Bay: “we’re choking” and “bad taste in mouths”.

A front cover article in KM for Canterbury and Herne Bay: “shocking report reveals the air we breathe is getting dirtier”.

5 permanent monitors in Canterbury just for road traffic.

Worth remembering that Manston airport will provide - banned - fuel discharge over Herne Bay and Canterbury.

Thanet also has discharge levels over 4x EU emissions – and monitors removed by Infratil and TDC.

I’ve written to Kent Police as I’m concerned that the flight paths are repeatedly breached and the operating times.

Last night a plane landed over the town at midnight: blatantly breaching both regulations.

I don’t know how Kent Police/Customs monitor aircraft cargo if planes are landing outside of the airport operating hours.

Nor why the public haven’t been protected.

There doesn’t seem to have been a Police investigation for detailed statutory duties to monitor and record air pollution: benzene, carbon monoxide, lead, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide.

So why, for an airport due to expand, did Infratil and TDC remove the noise monitors from Clarendon School and a tower block in 2006 – and not replace them? Even now.

Why has the mobile noise monitor not been deployed? Even now.

Why was the benzene monitor attempted to be removed at last July's attempt for expansion?

Why have Roger Gale and Laura Sandys remained silent?

All 56 councillors silent?

Silence from 8 Thanet KCC councillors?

Only Paul Carter calling for airport expansion via a vague announcement of a Parkway train station with public funds.

Silence from Kent Police in investigating the missing monitors.

Silence from Infratil’s Directors and TDC on corporate manslaughter.

Did Brian White really expect a sideways job title rejig and the two politicians in the Gang of Four Ezekiel and Latchford resigning to solve the problem. Carry on polluting as usual?

Did our silent councillors? Not one statement on air pollution.

Nothing on the monitors.

Worth remembering at election time next May.

Seems party and civil servant loyalty comes before the public.

We seem to have cockroach civil servants and grubby politicians scurrying around for months and years doing anything but protect the public.

The highest lung cancer rates in the South East: dying at 63 not 81 years old as in the rest of Kent. The same mortality rate as Haiti or Burma.

It's to be expected next to an airport and the monitors are downgraded and removed and the data fudged and silence form our elected representatives.

We seem to have silent councillors actively colluding with civil servants to deliberately endanger public health and safety?

With 99% of people not members of a political party, and over a third of people not voting, we seem to have allowed tweedledum and tweedldee political parties and civil servants quibble over divvying up tax funds at c.42% of GDP and ever-more pointless laws - and failure to reform for their benefit.

How can housebuilding and road building be a priority for public funds and jobs with 23,000 empty houses in Kent and two motorways?

And the lowest amount of public green space per head in Thanet?

How can council tax rise above inflation every year?

And silent politicians and ciivl servants.

How can the various public sector quango task forces in Margate resolve the problems they’ve created?

Why are there so many doublehatter and triple hatter politicians in sinecures and dead wood seats politicians hollowing out democracy?

How can the public sector unionise at a far greater rate than the private sector – and on public funds? And then complain if public funds are cut. And strike to penalise the public.

And silent politicians and civil servants.

How can public sector machine politicians and civil servant understand the private sector or reform the public sector?

How can tax n’waste and secrecy on public funds be so widespread? Is it outrageously unusual in the 21st century that these are public funds and the public should see every penny and contract and document?

Why a 14 month delay for a feeble empty noise report? Nothing on air pollution. Nothing on the water supply.

A bottom 10% UK council.

A bottom 10% UK area.

And a 24hour cargo airport by removing the safety measures and deceiving the public is the best they can do.

Failed. Failed. Failed.

Time for Change.

Time for Garbutt for Ramsgate Mayor May 2011

Time to:

1. Close Manston airport completely and clean and protect the water supply
2. Sack the Toxic Two: White and Samuel for failure and mismanagement. No pensions. No payoffs. No public sector jobs.
3. A Police investigation – and public funds for a public legal action - into TDC and Infratil’s Directors for corporate manslaughter and endangering the public
4. Demolish derelict Richboro
5. Clean Thor and publish the toxin levels – and a funded investigation into why a banned mercury factory was still operating for 20 years and silence since from our elected and public representatives
6. Designate TDC as a failed council requiring direct oversight from Whitehall: bottom 10% of UK areas
7. Repay the 0% salary fraud from the Toxic Two with public-funded legal action
8. Boycott council tax payments to KCC until a Margate Town Council and the missing £20M per town direct funding is provided
9. Suspend Vattenfall’s 2nd Port office and windfarm expansion: further investment than a £175k TDC charge and free electricity is required
10. Establish Pleasurama ice rink and suspend the Granville Folly and Slipway glass stump –clearer local design code and conservation area
11. Publish all TDC and RTC costs, salaries, expenses and pensions and contracts: no exceptions
12. Cut the bloat and waste at TDC and KCC and end double-hatter funded roles
13. Abolish new TDC pensions and withdraw existing pensions above the average wage and open any existing pensions to the public
14. Establish 2 consultation periods: March and October – end the ludicrous “ask again and again until we get what we want” and rubberstamp system as with EUJet
15. Establish Recall of politicians for 10% of vote and specific issues, plus Deselection from Parties and Local Referenda

Time to stop the pollution. Stop the corruption. Stop the construction.

Time to close the airport: no night flights. No day flights. The runway dug up and the buildings cleared. The Fire station closed. Petrol station resited, no further building and the aquifer protected.

What have they been doing? An airport on the water supply. What fools.

Time to reform TDC.

Time to stop the cancer.

Time for clean air and water.

Time for Change.

Tuesday 28 September 2010

Kent’s civil service cockroaches need the boot.

Here’s details of Spain’s corruption trial for Malaga council that left the “once-charming beach resort carpeted in concrete” and “developers bungs for cash for votes”.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/27/spain-biggest-corruption-trial-marbella

But silence from our cockroach civil servants.

Nothing on the mysterious Pleasurama tax haven with no viable construction plans – who was the civil servant in charge of Kent’s largest seafront development?

Silence on the 0% payrise frauds for m the Toxic Two of Samuel and White – where are the before and after payslips?

Nothing on the fake noise and air monitoring at Manston – removed 4 years ago from a school and tower block and repeatedly lied to the public.

Silence on the Double Donation to both parties for ChinaGate and Ramsgate Labour’s largest-ever donation. For Thanet’s largest-ever construction project. With plans released one week before a vote.

Repeated breaches of the design guidelines for construction, breaches of building footprint and absence of greenery and “just a couple of extra flats” breaching national guidelines on room sizes for slums – who signs off the plans and construction?

The missing disabled grants used for civil service office refurb and missing Tram Shelter insurance money.

Land sales of “spare assets” to avoid having to repair them and bolster payrises and pension funds.

Offices parks, retail parks, business parks, industrial parks, car parks and concrete – left empty.

EKO and the missing million pounds in fees and civil service “companies” and bloat – where are the invoices?

Massively over-inflation council tax increases for substandard services: a 4% increase with inflation at 0.5%? And “the lowest-ever increase” nonsense? The money’s gone North alright. To Maidstone and KCC bloat.

New build glory projects, white elephants and incompetent projects such as Westwood Cross out-of-town-shopping-centre built next-to-the-town-centre. Decimating the towns.

Another £80M East Kent road to nowhere and £3M for Dreamland – in the absence of knowing what else to do with the money except roundabouts and tarmac.

A passenger ferry that wouldn’t fit the harbour: coming soon.

Last week confirmation from Southern Water that 10 tonnes of grit and waste were stuck in the harbour waste pumps. 10 tonnes. No wonder the drains keep backing up ruining good businesses paying council tax in good faith..

Councillors strangely reluctant to speak out on oplanning issues, or enforce blatantly absurd decisions or sack underperforming civil servants – an airport really built on the drinking water supply?

Now several of these are due to an incompetent civil servants in one of Britain’s worst councils and stale councillors treating the council as a pensioners playtime.

But many of these are blatant corruption and flagrant mismanagement.

Add in the deliberate poisoning of the public from failure to act at Manston, Richboro and Thor and concreting Kent with pointless highways, Dartford Crossing and Manston-Parkway-pseudo-train-stations and byways glory projects and we’ve funded cockroaches to scurry around our towns and council chamber stealing lives, democracy, time and funds and deceiving the public.

Time for our cockroach civil servants to be sacked.

No pensions. No payoffs. No public sector jobs and an Emin Government Inquiry for jail-time.

It’s a wonder the public don’t issue a writ for compensation to the political parties head offices for substandard governance.

Time to sack our cockroach civil servants and greasy councillors.

Monday 27 September 2010

Manston cancer.

The NHS Cancer summary document for East Kent has been sent to me: cancer the biggest cause of death, and East Kent in the lowest quarter of cancer treatments.

Seems to me the NHS hasn't been doing its job very well.

And Infratil and TDC allowing breaches of the flight paths and removal of monitors have allowed unnecessary increases in cancer deaths, ill-health etc.

Seems to me TDC have deliberately endangered the public.

After all, that's why flight paths and monitors are specified around airports isn't it?

Yet since 2006, Infratil and the Gang of Four and Ladyman and Gale and Sandys remained silent.

Enforcing the 106 is but a matter of a phone call to stick to the routes - yet for 5 years this has been ignored.

For an airport funded by KCC and TDC and slated for expansion.

And silence from our 56 councillors.

Maybe they thought a cargo airport was a good idea.

And one on the drinking water supply too.

Not one public statement on the removal of the monitors.

Who exactly of these dozens of councillors thinks Manston airport is a good idea?

And if they don't think it's a good idea why the silence?

I don't see any council minutes agreeing the removal of monitors or not to enforce the 106.

Why has Thor mercury and the Environment Agency not provided the maps and toxin levels at the site next to Hornby?

Elections next year: what did our councillors do on Manston, Thor, Richboro?

It's abysmal so far isn't it?

What have they bene doing?

Bottom 10% council. And bottom 10% area. For £60M each year in council tax.

And no votes for poisoning your own citizens.

Saturday 25 September 2010

KCC Chair and "shaped agendas" on Thor etc

A note below to Bill Hayton KCC Chair for the local KCC meeting: as always more interesting for what's left off the agenda and avoided.

Why the silence from our councillors and civil servants on Thor and Manston - not one public statement.

How bad is the pollution?

And so much for democracy eh?

10 tonnes of grit and waster in the Ramsgate waterpumps last week according the Southern Water cleanup chaps - no wonder the drains flood and how long since the drains were checked and cleaned?

10 tonnes.

Now only the Toxic Two of Samuel and White remain with former Deputy Leader of ManstonGate and ChinaGate retiring from politics at the elections in May.

Why don't you write to Bill Hayton though: bill.hayton@kent.gov.uk and ask for not just these items to be discussed - but copies of the toxin reports and a KCC Cabinet discussion.

And add your comments to the night flights petition:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/nonightflights/signatures?page=12

Hi Bill


Can you advise on the points below and add Thor, Manston Fire Pollution, Pegwell Pollution, New Road tax and waste, 0% fraud, 18 year death rate and 106 breaches to the agenda.

Also copies of maps, toxin levels for Thor before the meeting to inform the discussion.

Can you reissue a draft agenda for comment and approval.

Or not if it’s the usual whitewash.

Kindest regards

Tim

A sudden agenda announcement for a meeting all about Manston: 3 ways to describe the same thing: KIA, Manston and a Manston Parway rail station of some sort.

The usual charade for decisions taken – even Roger Gale doesn’t bother mentioning the Parkway now. And “Bold Steps” is some vague nonsense of linking Kent planning to Essex in another quango – and nothing done in the meantime.

No mention of overflights and 106 breaches endangering the public.

No mention of missing monitors.

No mention of the drinking water supply under the runway and contamination.

No mention of 18 year death rate.

No mention of Thor mercury and water pollution which is Andrew Pearce’s responsisbility with permits to pollute and discharge from Manston and Thor etc – and copies of toxin levels, maps etc.

No mention of KCC and TDC staffing levels and costs.

No mention of 0% fraud.

No mention of recall and local referendums.

No mention of why KCC are investing public funds in tobacco, booze and guns.

Mere construction and tarmac on the rates in the absence of any regeneration policies.

And the usual “rush and rubberstamp” of policies and unaccountable on incompetence and failure.


THE Thanet Local Board



Monday, 27 September 2010

Chatham House Grammar School , Chatham St, CT11 7PS



Ask for:
Anne Charman

Starting at 7.00 pm. Doors open at 6.30 pm
Tel
01622 696389




1.
Welcome to the meeting – Mr Bill Hayton, Chairman

- Apologies

- Introductions

- Declarations of Interests by Members in Items on the Agenda for this Meeting.



2.


Notes of Local Board meeting held on 13 July 2010 and progress on any actions agreed



3.
Paul Carter , Leader Kent County Council ‘ Bold Steps for Kent ’


Paul Carter will provide a countywide context to the opportunities, future plans and ambitions for regeneration in Thanet, focusing on the importance of improved transport links, including Manston and Thanet Parkway . Kent County Council has just launched its ‘Bold Steps for Kent ’ strategy which is now out for consultation with staff, residents, community groups and other public sector partners. This sets out how, over the next four years, KCC will provide the best possible services for its residents for less, addressing the budget challenges that lie ahead and recognising the importance of empowering local residents and communities by involving them in how their services are designed and delivered.



4.
Robert Bayford, Leader of Thanet District Council and Kent County Councillor for Broadstairs and Sir Moses Montiefore


Cllr Bayford will describe the various consultative processes that have been undertaken by Thanet District Council and give an update on The Airport Working Party.



5.
Kent Youth County Council/Thanet Youth Council


Kent Youth County Council and Thanet Youth Council members will update the recent work they have undertaken and the local issues in Thanet that matter to them.



6.
Panel discussion: regeneration and the importance of good transport links to the prosperity and quality of life for local Thanet people, including discussion on Kent International Airport , Manston and the Thanet Parkway .


The rest of the panel will introduce them and give a brief overview of their organisation’s work and provide a general update on any future plans or developments.



Charles Buchanan, Chief Executive Officer, Manston, Kent International Airport



Andrew Pearce , Area Manager, Environment Agency



Paul Crick, KCC Director of Integrated Strategy and Planning, Environment, Highways and Waste



Question and Answer Session. The audience is invited to ask the panel questions on any issues or concerns that they may have.



7.
Opportunity to ask questions about local public services.




8.
Any Other Business notified to the Chairman prior to the meeting.

Wednesday 22 September 2010

Manston: "shot down in flames" warning

Manston: "shot down in flames" warning of Infratil and council failings on front page of newspaper

http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/launch.aspx?referral=other&refresh=7y1Bg0Y85s1X&PBID=84956776-5fe0-4064-a733-83aabf1dd4b7&skip=

Fake consultations, repeated 106 breaches, public endangered, removal of noise and air monitors from a school and tower block over years, failure to replace etc etc.

And an airport built on the drinking water supply.

How stupid would you have to be to do that. And then want to expand the airport.

And criminal to do it by removing all the safety measures.

No monitors. No data. No problem.

Delay it for weeks and monhts and years.

That's a lot of people with cancer, asthma and so on because of Infratil and the Toxic Three and the silence and collusion of Gale and Sandys and our 56 councillors.

When the monitoring would have revealed all the the dangerous spikes in air and noise quality.

They knew monitoring was required.

They knew it was removed.

They chose to deny it.

Then they chose to ignore it.

They chose not to replace them.

Same with the overflights.

Same with the banned flights.

Same with the fines.

Same with the drinking water.

For 4 years.

Even today.

Tuesday 21 September 2010

Missing public funds

Aren’t there several missing gaps in Thanet’s public finances whitewashed by our senior civil servants and councillors:

1. Where are the Ramsgate Town Council accounts and staffing costs?
2. Where are the £1M EKO accounts/million pound memo and invoices and staffing costs and expenses?
3. Where are the details of the missing or waived fines for night flights and overflights by Infratil?
4. Where are the Infratil control tower flight log and radar transponder details to check their claims?
5. Where are the before and after payslips of the 0% payrise fraud for Messrs White and Samuel?
6. Where are the Pleasurama costs and contracts after the tax haven mystery
7. Where are the Vattenfall windfarm and building contracts and revenues?
8. Where are the Turner £1M running costs allocated and over how many years?
9. Where are the missing disabled grants and costs: spent instead on office refurb?
10. Where are the Ramsgate Tram shelter monies and repairs?
11. Where are all Messrs Gale and Sandys’ costs, expenses and receipts?
12. How much goes on “double hatter” councillors for the same or similar public bodies and committee costs?
13. Where are the Port and Marina costs and revenues?
14. Where are the water quality and air monitoring reports?

Or should the public not expect to see how public money is spent? More importantly shouldn’t we jail rather than elect and fund councillors and civil servants who deliberately avoid or wriggle around these issues?

If we’re giving £60M in council tax to TDC each year, and our civil servants are taking £22M just to fund themselves, and sending the rest to £1.3BN KCC to take their cut, then we’re not getting very good value with TDC in the bottom 10% of UK councils and now Thanet in the bottom 10% of all UK areas.

What have TDC and KCC and the alphabet soup of quangos and taskforces been doing all these years? Waste and glory projects and roads to nowhere?

http://www.yourthanet.co.uk/kent-news/KCC-to-reveal-big-wigs_-salaries-and-expenses-newsinkent39997.aspx?news=local

With mismanagement of funds and mismanagement and deceit over toxic sites such as Manston-Infratil, Thor mercury, Manston Fire station and Richboro by the Toxic Three of Samuel, White and Latchford it’s amazing there’s anyone left to fund our public fools and knaves.

And the brazen silence of TDC’s 56 councillors and their cosy club of cover-up failure.

Friday 17 September 2010

More boils for Ramsgate

I see the glass carbuncle for the harbour slipway has been provisionally approved.

Along with the Granville Folly and glass stump for developer profit. And glass B&Q Turner Centre, in Margate. And Halfords Big Box for Vattenfall.

We seem to have incompetent councillors and civil servants who having destroyed the towns are unable to put sensible policies in place without grasping at anything and shouting "jobs" or "land sales" before the election.

As with the jiggery pokery of trying to sell Albion House to safeguard civil servants pensions and then sleight of hand with the public petition to preserve it we have the collapse of Socialism or Conservatism and the rise of Cretinism.

Imagine if Bath was peppered with these boils - our stale councillors and civil servants couldn't even run a bath. Let alone safeguard listed buildings.

Thursday 16 September 2010

Toxic Thanet. Toxic KCC. Toxic Airport.

A sudden agenda announcement for a meeting all about Manston: 3 ways to describe the same thing: KIA, Manston and a Manston Parway rail station of some sort.



The usual charade for decisions taken – even Roger Gale doesn’t bother mentioning the Parkway now. And “Bold Steps” is some vague nonsense of linking Kent planning to Essex in another quango – and nothing done in the meantime.



No mention of overflights and 106 breaches endangering the public.



No mention of missing monitors.



No mention of the drinking water supply under the runway and contamination.



No mention of 18 year death rate.



No mention of Thor mercury and water pollution which is Andrew Pearce’s responsibility with permits to pollute and discharge from Manston and Thor etc – and copies of toxin levels, maps etc.



No mention of KCC and TDC staffing levels and costs.



No mention of 0% fraud.



No mention of recall and local referendums.



No mention of why KCC are investing public funds in tobacco, booze and guns.



Mere construction and tarmac on the rates in the absence of an regeneration policies.



And the usual “rush and rubberstamp” of policies and unaccountable on incompetence and failure.



THE Thanet Local Board



Monday, 27 September 2010

Chatham House Grammar School , Chatham St, CT11 7PS



Ask for:
Anne Charman

Starting at 7.00 pm. Doors open at 6.30 pm
Tel
01622 696389




1.
Welcome to the meeting – Mr Bill Hayton, Chairman

- Apologies

- Introductions

- Declarations of Interests by Members in Items on the Agenda for this Meeting.



2.


Notes of Local Board meeting held on 13 July 2010 and progress on any actions agreed



3.
Paul Carter , Leader Kent County Council ‘ Bold Steps for Kent ’


Paul Carter will provide a countywide context to the opportunities, future plans and ambitions for regeneration in Thanet, focusing on the importance of improved transport links, including Manston and Thanet Parkway . Kent County Council has just launched its ‘Bold Steps for Kent ’ strategy which is now out for consultation with staff, residents, community groups and other public sector partners. This sets out how, over the next four years, KCC will provide the best possible services for its residents for less, addressing the budget challenges that lie ahead and recognising the importance of empowering local residents and communities by involving them in how their services are designed and delivered.



4.
Robert Bayford, Leader of Thanet District Council and Kent County Councillor for Broadstairs and Sir Moses Montiefore


Cllr Bayford will describe the various consultative processes that have been undertaken by Thanet District Council and give an update on The Airport Working Party.



5.
Kent Youth County Council/Thanet Youth Council


Kent Youth County Council and Thanet Youth Council members will update the recent work they have undertaken and the local issues in Thanet that matter to them.



6.
Panel discussion: regeneration and the importance of good transport links to the prosperity and quality of life for local Thanet people, including discussion on Kent International Airport , Manston and the Thanet Parkway .


The rest of the panel will introduce them and give a brief overview of their organisation’s work and provide a general update on any future plans or developments.



Charles Buchanan, Chief Executive Officer, Manston, Kent International Airport



Andrew Pearce , Area Manager, Environment Agency



Paul Crick, KCC Director of Integrated Strategy and Planning, Environment, Highways and Waste



Question and Answer Session. The audience is invited to ask the panel questions on any issues or concerns that they may have.



7.
Opportunity to ask questions about local public services.




8.
Any Other Business notified to the Chairman prior to the meeting.




County Councillors for Electoral Divisions within the Thanet District :

Bill Hayton (Chairman)
- Broadstairs & Sir M M'fiore

Robert Burgess
- Margate West

Robert Bayford
- Broadstairs & Sir M M'fiore

Elizabeth Green
- Ramsgate

Michael Jarvis
- Margate & Cliftonville

Charles Hibberd
- Birchington and Villages

John Kirby
- Ramsgate

Chris Wells
- Margate & Cliftonville




The purpose of the Board is to provide opportunities:

· for elected County Council Members to work more closely with public, and with voluntary and private sector partners locally, to meet the aspirations of local people

· for a regular forum for community consultation and participation that will encourage discussion and debate on matters of particular relevance to their area

· to consider the need for services in the local community, and look at the effectiveness of existing services

· for KCC’s Cabinet and Cabinet Members to consult on strategic issues affecting a Local Board’s area

· to allow County Council Members to consider funding applications made to the Small Community Capital Projects fund.

Tuesday 14 September 2010

East Kent death rate

East Kent has a health differential 18 years younger than the rest of Kent – similar to Burma or Haiti.

Also with:

• An airport on the drinking water supply
• Removal of noise and air monitors
• Airport runoff draining into the road system and sea at Pegwell Bay
• Thor mercury banned in 1988 but still operating 20 years later
• Richboro power station derelict for 15 years
• Asbestos in buildings
• Oil tankers refuelling close to shore

Clearly this is a major failure of public health - if not the “Kent system” of public health protection.

How has this happened? When were Kent Public health briefed on these issues? What action has been taken?

Should there be a coverup or should there be dismissals and/or jail sentences?

Why the silence from Gale (other than assuring the public the airport and Thor was well run and any water pollution was due to the public pouring paint down the sink), Sandys, Latchford, Samuel, White and 56 councillors: is it not important?

Looks like Party and Civil service careers and glory projects put ahead of the public. And funded by the public.

Monday 13 September 2010

What is the Port for?

Last night not one but 3 security guards stand looking at a car park of HGV's funded on the rates - and then another half dozen lorries parked on the nearby promenade.

No doubt having the usual crap in a bag and throw it on the beach.

What is it for? To tax-fund a lorry park and derelict promenade? Should the Police be diverted for lorries parked a dozen feet from a specially-provided HGV park?

And why is the proposed Vattenfall building nothing more than an office block. Weren't these alrady built and stand empty?

And you hardly need a warehouse for deliveries of turbines that stand in the sea.

Retail parks. Business parks. Car parks and lorry parks. But no park parks.

Stretches of tarmac. No proper paving. No grass verges. No flowerbeds.

Certainly cheaper and easier for the council to repair. Maybe add some bits of offcut fencing from a motorway centrasl reservation.

All these things that aren't just for beautification but important for Climate Change. And even more so in Thanet in replenishing the water supply under our feet.

And our councillors and civil servants seem to have nothing to offer except roads, building and car parks.

Has EKO - simply TDC and KCC - closed or is it still funding civil servants to merely outsource to an estate agency - to build on the drinking water supply.

For Prime Minster's wages, Messrs Samuel and White don't seem to be doing a very good job.

For half a million quid for the pair, Messrs Gale and Sandys specialise in silence and nonsense.

And why do we have 56 TDC councillors - with many of them doublehatters for the other councils?

3 small town councils of 9 each and an effective and reduced KCC could easily provide the shoddy services to date.

And for £22M out of a £60M council tax budget are our civil servants really good value?

We seem to have the bloat of jobs and pensions for life and failure to eject substandard or pointless roles.

While in Canterbury we've the tax and waste of building a huge new student hall of residence when Thanet 30 minutes away has 3,000 empty houses. Presumably Cantebury something similar and Dover as many.

Do they not talk to each other.

With the collapse of SEEDA and GOSE - and zero regeneration plans - KCC is reverting to simply being a potholes council and Thanet a car parks council.

Considering we already have miles of road and acres of car parks there doesn't seem much of a need.

Sunday 12 September 2010

BBCTV: Thanet in bottom 10% of UK districts

BBC TV rates Thanet as 295th out of 324 areas of England as “least resilient to economic woe”.

weblink http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-11164337

The debate on the spending review last Thursday night on BBCTV highlighted the terrible state of Thanet and the likes of Paul Carter of KCC and Laura Sandys MP were there to discuss public services etc.

Nobody could quite explain how even through the good times, and several decades, Thanet, and East Kent, has been the Third World part of Kent:

the bottom 10% of UK councils for TDC
worst drinking water in South East and Southern Water: Manston airport and derelict Manston RAF Fire Station
highest lung cancer rate in South East
collapse of glory projects such as Manston cargo airport and EKO
pollution of Pegwell Bay and derelict brownfield contaminated sites
Thor mercury – banned but open
Ships polluting Margate and the Blue Flag beaches
3,000 empty homes: dying 18 years earlier than the rest of Kent

In a nutshell it seems to me:

an abysmal council for overall planning and regeneration
a disastrous 1974 decision to try and merge 3 distinct towns (and a similar attempt with the Westwood Cross 4th town centre nonsense)
a derelict RAF airbase built on the drinking water supply
shoddy CAA and council air and noise monitoring
terrible town planning with rampant overbuild and shoddy standards
“District dumping” with West vs East Kent
frozen politics: Red vs Blue on town lines and no Margate Town Council
airport cancer
pensioner 1970’s culture and industry
KCC culture of “London’s Patio” with highways and Costain and Balfour and Murphy and Jacobs
public sector culture of secrecy and tax “n” waste and awaydays, masterclasses, seminars, briefings, memos and bumf
public apathy at the failure to reform and rubber-stamp consultation

295th out of 324 areas in England. Abysmal isn’t it?

Time for Change.

Time to call in the Pleasurama development – for an icerink

Time to call in the shoddy harbour and Port developments for an overall review.

Time to demolish Richboro and Arlington House for proper regeneration.

Time for a 2012 swimming pool.

Time to close Manston and Thor and Manston Fire.

Time to stop an £80M New Road.

Time for cancer specialists at QEQM

Time to protect Pegwell Bay and our coast.

Time for a new economy.

Time for a KCC Cabinet member of the Coast and deprivation.

Time for Margate Town council and fewer councillors and double-hatters

Time for free windfarm electricity for every house.

Time to stop ships anchoring and refuelling and polluting off Margate.

Time for refurb and repair rather than New Road and empty houses and office parks, business parks, retail parks but not park parks.

Time to stop the corruption and pollution and construction.

Time for Thanet to be Kent’s Green Lung.

Time for Kent to be England’s Green Lung.

Time for Exciting East Kent.

A place with clean air, clean water, clean streets, clean beaches and clean fields.

Time for Change
----

Terrific shop display and comic in Canterbury on polio: down to last 2,000 cases in only 4 countries: Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India from world epidemic in 1988. Must be possible for UN Millennium Goals on HIV, TB and malaria:
http://www.rotary.org/en/EndPolio/Pages/supporters.aspx

Friday 10 September 2010

9/11 or 999 for Kent?

Kent’s faced a strange set of anniversaries this week: the beginning of the Blitz 70 years ago on Tuesday and tomorrow the anniversary of the New York 9/11 attacks.

The Blitz has still left its scars on Kent – whether it’s the folk memories of the raids on Ramsgate and Canterbury or still bomb-sites.

But AlQaeda? What’s that to do with Kent? Suicide Attacks such as 100 dead in Pakistan this week or incidents in Iraq are confined to the Middle East. Islamic insurgents such as Jemaah Islamiah are confined to sporadic attacks across the Thai-Malay border, Indonesia or the Philippines. And the networks dismantled to a few hundred prisoners in Britain and even less in Guantanamo.

But Kent certainly boasts rich pickings though for a Jihadist: whether it’s Dungeness, Dover Europe’s largest Port or even the birthplace of Christianity at Canterbury Cathedral.

Perhaps more disturbing is Kent’s open front door at Manston. The last few years have seen banned aircraft flying into Kent from Ostend and Africa: a deadly mix of ageing craft, sloppy safety standards, an unfettered cancer cost and cargo from bushmeat to gunrunning to blood diamonds.

Only this week Meridian Air was banned hard on the heels of MK Air along with banned Russian Ilyushins and DAS Air.

Repeated flight breaches means any Jihadist worth his salt could file a flight log and crash into Canary Wharf, Big Ben or the EU Parliament within a few minutes of fly-time.

Or perhaps in shades of AlQaeda learning to fly but not land at flight schools before 9/11 - a half dozen Lear jets or Cessna would make a less dramatic but large impact into Canary Wharf.

If Kent is caught napping then the rogue nuclear states of Iran, Syria, North Korea and Burma pose a constant danger. As our Kent regiments have seen in Iraq and Afghanistan – and the Iranian ayatollahs and similar “purple revolutions” of the Middle East and Central Asia – a “war on terror” can only go so far but people power cannot be stopped.

We’re entering a post-Cold War age of a clash of religions but of ethics. Greater democracy removes the need for fundamentalism: ETA this week announces a ceasefire and the Real IRA pose only a diminished threat in a reformed Ulster. While the Blitz that scarred Kent eventually saw democracy triumph over dictatorship in 1945 and in 1989.

While the murderous child-soldiers of the Congo, Sudan and Rwanda such as the Lords Resistance Army rape and slaughter millions to secure blood diamonds and the gold and tungsten blood minerals used in your mobile phone or computer. http://www.raisehopeforcongo.org/

Surely Kentish safety lies not just in stamping out rogue operators like Infratil and Meridian or Total but greater democracy and prosperity in far-away places. And ethical stances such as KCC divesting its guns, booze and tobacco investments. Or Kent’s universities, Police, NHS and phone retailers becoming blood mineral free in their IT procurement.

In Kent we’ve seen far too many public authorities that are rated by the government itself as stagnant or sub-standard. Yet the UN Millennium, Goals marks the single greatest framework to eradicate poverty, famine and disease. They’re meant for here not just there. We’re working to establish these with every public authority in Britain, the World parliament “House of Commons” for the UN.

While Climate Change initiatives such as Desertec promise not only carbon-free, renewable solar power and wealth to the Sahel states http://www.desertec.org/. But re-energising Kent’s pharmaceutical and engineering industries such as Pfizer – and we could certainly use the solar and desalination expertise as Kent warms up, tips up and floods with Climate Change.

The only certain way to prevent 9/11 isn’t more bombs and bullets or car bombs and suicide flights but delivering the UN Millennium Goals as a backdrop to greater democracy, prosperity and sustainability. Eradicating malaria for example was something we did in the Kent marshes a hundred years ago – along with cholera, rickets and polio – and may need to do again with Climate Change.

In the 21st century not to be able to provide clean drinking water, vaccines, condoms, trees and seeds – the kind of goods available in any Boots or B&Q – for half of the world only encourages a Jumbo-sized explosion in a future 9/11.

Tim Garbutt is the Managing Director of Sincerity Agency the leading Green and Ethical advertising agency in East Kent: www.sincerityagency.com

Thursday 9 September 2010

Dig toilets not graves

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3ObqcRAh9M


Arts event in Trafalgar Square today to highlight 10 years on from UN Millennium Goals to end poverty and disease by 2015.

Over 167 children die from diarrhoea fronm dirty water and cholera - every hour.

100 years of democracy and £60M in council tax-take each year and "Third World Thanet" has Manston airport and Manston Fire on the drinking water supply.

Derelict Richboro power station and pollution of Pegwell Bay.

Thor mercury toxic site near Hornby unknown.

Broken and blocked drains with excrement.

Padlocked public toilets - closed, demolished and shorter opening hours.

If you told me I wouldn't believe you.

In Kent.

In England.

In the 21st century.

I wouldn't believe you.

Time for Change.

Time for every public body to adopt the UN Millennium Goals.

Time to clean our grubby towns.

Time to open and increase our toilets.

Time to demolish and clear Richboro.

Time to plant trees and flowers and grass verges.

Time to publish our water and air quality data.

Time to publish our disease and mortality rates.

Time for Change.

Wednesday 8 September 2010

Goodbye Manston? Goodbye Richboro? Hello Cancer.

Not mentioned by councilors or civil servants or MP's at all.

No statements about Manston built on the drinking water.

Nothing.

There is the front page of Your Thanet about banned aircraft flyting onto Manston - so much for UK airspace etc.

And why was there a Jumbo jet flying into Manston at 2am and 3:30 am on Sunday/Monday? the airport closes at 11pm. Do they just fly in or did Infratil know? Did TDC know?

The ERA newlsetter features 4 pages on overflights and asks for a "Planespotting report" for Octobber: eraeditor@yahoo.co.uk

I think Manston will be bust by then: there's only Cargolux and a couple of presumbly half-empty Flybe. And it is built on the water supply.

But our councillors never mention that.

There is a useful "Who are the Guilty Men" article in ERA for the next election

Airport Committee:

Mike Harrison
Alasdair Bruce
Peter Campbell
Richard Nichioloson
Jo Roberts

Cabinet:

Robert Bayford
Roger Latchford
Simon Moores
Chris Wells
Martin Wise

Not mentioned are:

Richard Samuel
Brian White
Paul Carter
Alex King
Roger Gale
Laura Sandys

An airport on the drinking water. A 24 hour cargo airport. Some of the highest canceer rates. A mortality rate 18 years earlier than the rest of Kent: on a par with Haiti or Burma.

Still no sign of the RTC accounts - maybe the public shouldn't know how public money is spent by public representatives? But all public fuinds over £500 are meant to be detailed now. Everything. Salaries. Pensions. Contracts. Expenses. You name it.

Still no sign of the Thor toxin reports: how toxic is the site? Are barrels of mercury still stored there? How much has been spilled?

Richboro concerns me: when were the council hoping to blow it up or were they just going to let it slide into the sea or the discharge leak into the water?

Other councils demolish them as a health and safety hazard:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2qY8bytQjE&feature=related

Ask Richard Samuel: he's paid as much as the Prime Minister from your tax: plus the 0% payrise fraud: richard.samuel@thanet.gov.uk

Expect no reply. They're still paid until they're sacked. What do they care?

Sunday 5 September 2010

Thor water. Thor kidneys. NHS scrutiny?

With widespread concerns over water quality, when will TDC – or NHS - publish the toxin reports and pollution damage for Thor mercury, Richboro and Manston? As well as the raw data for seawater quality and sewage discharges.

As with removing the noise and air monitors with Infratil and banned and illegal overflights of the towns, it’s as if our politicians and civil servants are deliberately endangering the public by remaining silent.

No wonder the death rate for East Kent is a shocking 18 years earlier than the rest of a Kent - and on a par with Haiti or Burma. Our pensioners are not even making to enjoy their pension by dying off at 63 years old rather than 81 - leaving 3,000 empty homes and dozens of shops.

Elections, P45’s, pension removals and jail may be some incentive for our failed public services to improve but it will be the public that bear the cost in early deaths and ill-health – and paying for the privilege through normal taxes as well as the toxic cleanup and extra hospital, hospice and mortuary costs.

All we need now is for the NHS and QEQM to charge us for body bags, cancer drugs and car parking to offset the costs of the increased burials of Thanet’s Lost Decade.

When will the Thor and Richboro and Manston toxin details be provided?

Saturday 4 September 2010

Manston: illegal overflights and silence.

Manston: front page of the newspaper the illegal overflights.

No mention of the cancer cost.

Where are the grandmothers of the dead?

Where are the mothers of the dead?

Where are the coroners reports?

Silence.

On Thor.

On Manston - the drinking water and dumping in Pegwell and missing monitors.

On Manston Fire station.

On Richboro.

Silence from Gale and Sandys and 56 councillors and KCC.

The resignation of the Chairman of Southern Water.

And more red alerts on bathing water quality.

It's meant to be like this.

Wednesday 1 September 2010

Where is Sandys?

It’s been 3 months since the lection and Parliament has been on hols for a month or two.

What has been done in Thanet?

Where are the Thor toxin results or are MP’s not allowed to see those or make them public?

Where are the Richboro toxin results?

Why is Manston Fire station lighting fires and putting them out with drinking water?

Has an extradition request been put in for the criminal Infratil Directors?

Where are the payslips to compare before and after the 0% payrise.

We seem to have only silence.

And to be fair silence from Roger Gale.

And silence from 56 Thanet councillors.

How strange.

Unless they’re mere Party hacks. MP’s for their Party rather than the public of Thanet.

Thor mercury or the civil servants don’t come before the public. Nor the Party.

And we fund all these people to highlight public concerns – especially major problems.

Even basics like MP’s expenses being published or Ramsgate Town Council accounts being available on the website haven’t been done.

How can the public compare value for money or check if there’s any wrongdoing if the information is hidden or fudged.

It’s like a council of the 1970’s with stale pensioner-councillors bumbling around and being unwilling to disclose public policies and funds.

Recall now allows 10% of the electorate to “call in” an MP for wrongdoing – after the MP expenses farce – and all civil service costs over £500 are to be published (and all costs and other information available under FOI.

Even MP's meetings and diaries - as in USA.

So where is it all?

Or do we have a conspiracy of silence. Party over public. Brassneck lies on fiddles and simple deceit and fraud?

Roger Gale has spent 30 years watching Margate burn down - is the same expected of Laura?

District elections next year – and the opportunity to “Rate your councillor. Rate your civil servants” in an online vote and forum means questions will be asked on who knew what and when – and what they did.

Where is Sandys? When will she speak up? Or is this the best of it?

Tuesday 31 August 2010

Thanet Thor mercury poisoning

No details on Thor mercury factory toxins in Margate, UK (why open when banned in 1988 - and Thor itself handling the cleanup) - also Thor sites around the world and mercury storage and processing in Almaden, Spain and Algeria.

http://www.chem.unep.ch/Mercury/Pretoria-proceedings-finalPDFwriter.pdf

http://www.rsc.org/delivery/_ArticleLinking/DisplayArticleForFree.cfm?doi=a909597g

All reported on by UNEP and Royal Society of Chemistry - and ignored.

Why the silence now from Kent County Council, Thanet District Council and Environment Agency.

Obviously it's career-damaging for civil servants not to close a banned factory.

And is the site now being used simply as a dumping ground?

Where are the toxin level reports?

The number and type of containers there?

Photos of the barrels and warehouses?

The discharge amounts and type?

The sampling sites and dates for toxin samples?

Names. Signatures.

Or was it simply not done.

Silence from Kent Police. No site visit for a banned factory?

Silence from Roger Gale and Laura Sandys. No site visit or reports for a banned factory in their constituency?

The Party over polluting the public? Close your windows? Don't drink the water? Or bathe?

Silence from Kent Fire Brigade. No site visits for a banned factory on fire?

Silence from the Environment Agency. No site visits for one of the world's major polluters? And asking them to cleanup their own site.

Unsupervised.

Silence from our councillors and civil servants?

No resignations? No P45's?

And where are the reports on Richboro.

A derelict coalpower station. Waiting for it to fall into the sea?

Try the Kent head of Environment Agency for your copy of the toxin and site visit reports:

harvey.bradshaw@environment-agency.gov.uk

Thursday 26 August 2010

Pegwell Bay pollution

Front page of Your Thanet on the pollution into Pegwell Bay from the airport.

Very shocking.

http://www.yourthanet.co.uk/kent-news/Pegwell-Bay--can-it-take-any-more-pollution--newsinkent39158.aspx?news=local

A UNESCO wetland – like the Camargue or Nile Delta and the scum and scoundrels at Infratil have simply tapped a drainage pipe into the road system and dumped aviation fuel and chemicals into the Bay.

No doubt damaging the shrimps and washing gunge around our Blue Flag beaches.

And all supposedly banned and regulated by TDC and the Environment Agency.

It's not that they didn't know - simply doing nothing. Year after year.

The ludicrous £80M New Road Scheme – yet only £3M for Dreamland - for half a mile of dual carriageway and 12 foot high earth berms is yet more white elephant glory project road building through farmland.

And still the planes fly onto the water supply. The last rump of flights: one Flybe every day or so and a Cargolux every day or so – no doubt the minimum to keep the airport open and of no value.

Except in cancer ward jobs, clean up and coffins.

And still the plug hasn’t been pulled on Manston and the Fire Station – is it really 12 months since the fake night flights consultation that never was?

And Richboro derelict power station crumbles into the sea at Pegwell Bay – rather than being demolished as a spectacular Bonfire Night event.

Thor mercury’s unknown toxic legacy of chemicals and birth defects.

Petrol stations within the Water Protection Zone.

An airport on the water supply.

And dumping it into a UNESCO Bay. And Blue Flag beaches.

Silence from our councillors and MP's and civil servants.

I wouldn’t believe you if you told me.

Isn’t it time for change in Thanet?

Tuesday 24 August 2010

LD and Thanet sinks

LD lines goes bust on the Dover-Boulogne route today. One ship will be withdrawn and the remaining one possibly freight only as the Channel ferries consolidate.

Not good for Ramsgate Port – a council review tomorrow – as the passenger service never materialised as the ship didn’t fit and apart from c.20 HGV’s per sailing there are few Port jobs not funded by the taxpayer.

Weeds on the ferry terminal roof say it all.

The Marina should go from strength to strength but without a passenger service to Ostend or Boulogne then Ramsgate Port is pointless. The air pollution form the ships looks heavy and presumably the warehouses are largely empty. And Pegwell Bay carries the scars of the failed Hoverport and is in need of extra pollution attention.

Yachties complain about cold showers in the toilet block compared to other marinas.

The first new Vattenfall building is bizarrely built into the warehouse whole the 2nd new on is a Portakabin with more car park near the empty NCP. The suggested new Vattenfall building makes little sense as it’s simply offices when there are empty office parks and warehouses nearby. And again presumably more tarmac.

For a Port we have office parks, car parks, business parks, lorry parks but no boats – all on the rates.

Vattenfall have only paid £175k to TDC for the world’s biggest windfarm which has disappeared into the tax-wages, tax-benefits and tax-pensions and fraudulent 0% payrises of the Toxic Three.

And why with public sector cuts was the Deputy Chief Executive appointed with a bloat payrise for one of the UK’s worst councils? Our pensioner-councillors seem to be led by the nose by our civil servants.

Windfarm repairs will only be adhoc contracts and forecasts of 20 jobs – or is further expansion expected?

Our councillors seem to have at best done nothing and allowed fraud, waste, mismanagement and deliberate deception of the public with false public statement and fake consultations as they ride the decline down.

Ramsgate faces the Margate-isation of dereliction: the litter and filth along the railings has been there for years - as have the broken benches and beach shelters full of urine and dog shit but no benches or windows.

Yesterday Thanet’s towns were both the warmest and sunniest in Britain - hotter than LA or Nairobi or the Algarve.

Yet our museums and tourism offices are closed, derelict bandstands, fountains filled with concrete, Dreamland derelict, rubble and litter in the streets, dozens of empty shops, 3,000 empty houses as the pensioners are hastened onwards, council fraud and waste (was it really £1M of tax funds for EKO to fund ChinaGate and our own council officials?) and banned overflights by cargo planes.

Xmas beckons with no festivals, lightshow details and presumably sand from the beach instead of grit on the High St - all from a £60M council tax budget and £22M of civil service costs.

Silencxe from 56 TDC councillors. Silence from 86 KCC councillors. Silence from 750 TDC civil servants. Silence from 30,000 KCC civil servants. Silence from 200 top Whitehall civil servants.

Silence from Gale. Silence from Sandys.

Just the creak of our towns swinging like a corpse on the end of a rope.

And with an 18 year cancer mortality rate we seem to have built ghost towns.

Monday 23 August 2010

Manston for heroin?

And a 3rd plane - presumably Cargolux - landing at quarter past midnight last night: over an hour since Manston airport should close.

Do the CAA and Police check these flights or do Infratil just breach the operating guidelines as and when they feel like it?

Why bother smuggling bags of heroin from Amsterdam - just fly a 747 in from Luxembourg on a Sunday and offload pallets of it for London or shoot up to Glasgow the drugs capital of Europe - careful not to fly into Canary Wharf by accident though

And an airport built on the drinking water supply is this the CAA at its best?

And why are Infratil and TDC allowing breaches of the operating hours and flightpaths?

If you're interested innthe water supply then email lisa.beeching@environment-agency.gov.uk and ask for the Southern Water and Environment Agency reports on Manston, the water reservoir, Manston Firestation and Thor mercury: dates, toxin levels, signatures etc. They keep refusing to provide them to me.

Similar fudge and silence on asbestos sties iNthanet and kent: try terry.whitlock@kent.gov.uk

I;ve had a note on the Philip Hoare Fund that's another young chap with cancer: the contact detials weren't included - his parents too busy turning him over through the night to stop his lungs filling with fluid - if anyone has the details please email me on timgarbutt@yahoo.com and I'll forward to the QEQM to see if they're staffing up on NHS cancer specialists or we should pay.

On a more positive note KCC are at last getting into Climate Change with an excellent programme of 25 trees for individuals and organsiations - a great idea given Westwood is now a shopping centre and Northwood and Southwood housing estates and Thanet Earth isn't earth anymore.

https://shareweb.kent.gov.uk/Documents/environment-and-planning/Wildlife%20and%20landscapes/Application%20Form.pdf

Although with Thnaet's citizens dying off 18 years earlier than the rest of Kent it might be "a copse for a corpse".

Sunday 22 August 2010

Manston mysteries

Who is in the radar tower at Manston allowing these breaches of the specified flight paths?

Where are the CAA-required flight logs to check the flight paths and fines?

How do the Police and Customs check on these random and banned flights?

And why does Flybe fly in to Manston from over the Channel end and towns? Isn't it supposed to be flying to Edinburgh?

Isn't the reality that Manston has no control tower obvere the weekend and the last Flybe and Caregolux flights are simply to keep ther airport operating license open.

The flights are of no value whatsoever. Except to pollute and endanger the public.

Wednesday 18 August 2010

Early grave for Thanet

Your Thanet letter (P.14):

With Margate having a life expectancy 18 years lower than the rest of Kent: dying at 63 instead of 81 years old, we are now on a par with Haiti or Burma.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy

Should we be paying council tax to be killed off this early?

More importantly where are the toxin details for Thor, Richboro, Manston fire station and cancer deaths from Manston airport?

Even more importantly are the fools who created this toxic inheritance for their children and grandchildren likely to be the ones to get us out of it?

And on P.2 the news that TDC haven't deployed the mobile noise monitor this year. Presumably in previous years too.

And still we have overflights of the towns that are specifically banned.

We've had our councillors and civil servants quietly agreeing to waive all the specified safety requirements for Manston. For years.

Thank goodness we know we cannot trust them.

Why haven't derleict sites sucha s Richboro been cleared already? My view on Arlington House/carpark/arcade is that the lot of it should be demolished. Refurbing a 1960's tower block is simply putting lipstick on a corpse.

Thanet is the shame of England because of our councils.

It's time to renew.

It's time to rebuild.

It's time for change.

Sunday 15 August 2010

Thanet Cancer

Clearly the water in Thanet has been mismanaged by TDC, the Environment Agency and KCC over a number of years.

1. Manston airport built on the East Kent drinking water reservoir – under the runway. Plus – supposedly banned - overflights of the towns
2. Thor mercury on Margate Road: supposedly banned and closed in 1988 but remained open – and still does?
3. Manston Fire station: a leftover from RAF days - again on the drinking water supply - and setting fires to be put out with the drinking water
4. Manston runway drainage tapped into the road system - and the whole lot draining into Pegwell Bay – a UNESCO site
5. Tivoli Brook – discharge concerns: possibly Thor mercury
6. Viking Bay – discharge concerns: possibly Thor mercury
7. The siteing of petrol stations on the water supply and near the shoreline
8. Richboro: a derelict power station of the 1950’s crumbling into the sea for 20 years
9. Oil tankers and cargo ships berthed off Cliftonville and the Blue Flag beaches
10. No full and detailed sampling results form the beaches and Port – published for council and public review

And the result.

Cancer.

Dirty water.

Damaged environment.

The blame game and bickering and buckpassing, coverup, whitewash and memo circulating and mere talking shops or silence.

Anything rather than action.

It’s perhaps no surprise that Pfizer are helping students conduct research into lung disease, bowel and kidney cancer. So far, Thanet’s citizens would make ideal guinea pigs.

Pull the shroud back and it may be an aunt or an uncle. A father or mother.

Biomarkers such as defective cells wouldn’t be needed. Maybe the smell of rotting meat. A shrivelled kidney.

An airport built on the drinking water supply.

And a lower water quality – and reduced – water reservoir than anywhere else in the South East.

The Environment Agency may be right that the water is safe to drink – and that the pollution cannot continue.

An airport built over the whole drinking water supply.

Perhaps we need some working parties, a committee, a liaison committee, a masterclass, a review mechanism, a memo, a report an appropriate range of indicative indicators.

Perhaps a seminar: “My child’s shit a kidney. Why is that?”

A biopsy. A tissue sample. A leukaemia ward. A body bag.

Southern Water may be sponsoring events and more frequently cleaning the pumphouse near the new Vattenfall office block at the port.

But we have been failed by our MP’s, councillors and civil servants.

The horror of Thor mercury – banned but still operating as a factory until an explosion.

The idiocy of an airport built on the water reservoir.

And the incompetence of failing to clean our water and environment – with Blue Flag beaches, and SSSI coast and UNESCO bays.

Every year Thanet tumbles down the governance league tables. Still rubbish. Yes, still rubbish.

And Britain follows it.

All these sites should be closed and cleared - and with Manston returned to meadow to clean and replenish the water supply.

The Stour is polluted from factories in Ashford: the Environment Agency clearing the river banks merely dumps any pollution faster into Pegwell and the sea.

Our waters need to be fit to drink and bathe for ourselves, our guests and future generations.

As the men and women of the 1970’s cough and splutter their way to an early grave their legacy is death, disease and destruction.

They have failed us.

An airport built on the drinking water supply.

Maybe Thanet does need Belgian support.

An airlift of bottled water. Onto the runway. Polluting the drinking water. Requiring another airlift. Of bottled water. Polluting the drinking water.

After a while wouldn’t the Belgians think that this “Britain” isn’t really worth it?

Perhaps Cleckheaton Parish Council could advise on building an airport on your drinking water supply.

Perhaps a UN mandate is required.

Monday 9 August 2010

Nagasaki and nukes

The A-bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6th and 9th August 1945 killed over 110,000 civilians at once. A flash so bright it burned peoples’ shadows into the pavement. And the same number dying slowly over the next 5 years from burns and cancers.

Yet, perhaps as never before, a nuclear free world beckons with North Korea, now declaring its nuclear weapons and missiles, facing renewed sanctions as a nuclear pariah again threatening Seoul, Tokyo and perhaps even the Russian nuclear fleet in Vladivostock and Beijing itself.

While the closure of Futenma airbase in Okinawa represents the end of the last main US military umbrella in East Asia.

With Japan and Taiwan foreswearing nuclear weapons only North Korea remains as the last block to the nuclear free regions of South East Asia and the South Pacific.

President Obama may have gained a Nobel Peace Prize for reducing nuclear weapons with Russia but the dangers of a Jihadist bomb with Iran and Pakistan has never been greater. Or worse, the rogue nations of Central Africa and the Sahara trading with Burma and North Korea for missile and nuclear technology.

But the days of disarmament have perhaps never been closer than the late 1970’s when the dictatorships of Argentina and Brazil and even South Africa binned their nuclear weapons.

Britain and France have both scaled back the EU’s nuclear potential in the face of budget cuts and the likelihood that any nuclear threat comes from backpack bombers rather than fleets of ships and planes.

But here in Kent are nuclear weapons an irrelevance?

Largely so, aside from those Kent citizens still suffering the aftermath of British nuclear tests of the 1950’s, toxic waste from nuclear submarines at Chatham or uranium-tipped weaponry from the Gulf War. While the threat of nuclear technology via our ports and shipping represents an atomic lottery of containerisation.

Yet the closure of Lydd cites the danger of damage to the Dungeness reactor, and concerns at Manston over banned EgyptAir flights landing at the closed airport are less the beginnings of a Jihad Open Skies over Kent, and more the failings of Infratil and councils in downgrading public safety measures – and the potential for nuclear accidents.

The theft of fission material or broken flasks of toxic material on a train accident are a likelihood. While disposal of nuclear waste in the English Channel by nuclear electricity firm EDF poses an issue for future generations from Cornwall to Kent.

While here by the coast in Ramsgate discussions on the “Mayors for Peace” organisation (www.mayorsforpeace.org) is perhaps the single most effective way for Kent’s towns to unite with the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the 65th Anniversary to reduce the impact of nuclear weapons and technology.

Medway Council for example already works with Mayors for Peace - with over half of the one hundred most populous cities of the world.

The Decade of Disarmament sponsored by the United Nations will undoubtedly result in at least “threshold status” for nuclear weapons: warehoused on land with UN inspections, and the removal of stocks of other WMD of chemicals, nerve gas, napalm, phosphorous and landmines.

With the Defence Review recommending the merger of the Air Force and Navy, perhaps it’s simply a matter of time before much of the Royal Navy and EU fleets are placed under UN control for humanitarian duties and crises.

The reality is that the greatest threat to world peace is no longer a nuclear Armageddon but dictatorships and the failure to achieve the UN Millennium Goals.

With the anniversary of Hiroshima last week and Nagasaki today, Europe can now follow Asia in beginning to establish a Nuclear Free Zone.

While Climate Change and the importance of renewable solar power represents a final nail in the coffin of nuclear fossil fuels and real power, not brighter than a thousand suns, but renewable from the power of one sun.

Sunday 8 August 2010

Thanet crashes and burns

The top 200 civil servants meeting in Margate identified an 18 year health gap between Margate and the rest of Kent.

That’s a huge skew for such a small geographic area isn’t it?

18 year difference.

Dying at 63 instead of 81 – these are Third World death rates aren’t they? Haiti or Burma or Yemen according to this table.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy

What went wrong? Are macro-environment factors an issue: nearby Manston airport and pollution 4x EU limits, Thor mercury banned but remained open for 20 years and derelict Richboro power station?

The new Margate Task Force seems the same amalgamation of Fire, Police, Council etc – and a newspaper poll records 80% of the public not believing it would make a difference.

It looks as if the wheels have come off the County.

Wednesday 4 August 2010

Bin Laden jets into Manston

I’m sure Osama is a bit busy at the moment to fly in to Manston.

But if EgyptAir can fly into Manston from Ostend - and land at 3am - then maybe he could pay Manston a flying visit.

Flytime from Cairo is about 4 hours so the 747 must be setting off - even as Manston is supposedly closed from 11pm.

Osama himself could fly in at night, flick the transponder off and just keep going until he hit Canary Wharf.

But who’d want to fly a jumbo jet into Canary Wharf at night and risk missing it?

With public disregarded surely EgyptAir plus half a dozen Lear jets full of semtex could be used.

In broad daylight. Maybe on the weekend.

Not quite as spectacular as the World Trade Centre but there you go.

As the RAF – hopefully - shoots the jumbo down somewhere over Kent then away the jets go into Parliament.

130,000 people in Thanet have been endangered for an airport glory scheme by nincompoops.

A 24 hour cargo airport.

By removing the safety measures.

And built on the water supply.

Opposite Ostend cargo airport.

And a few minutes flytime from Gatwick, Heathrow, Luton and Stansted.


And now only silence and buckpassing and scapegoating from our 56 councillors - rather than closing the airport.

I see there’s a bit of political gamesmanship on the front page of the Gazette with a “surprising” reveal by KIACC that mobile monitors were never deployed at Manston as required.

For over 5 years.

Each and every meeting mere cynical denial from the Gang of Four.

And now silence, buckpassing and tokenism from our MP's and councillors.

And the top 200 civil servants from Whitehall visiting Thanet for an awayday on deprivation and poverty.

Noise monitors from a school and tower block being removed seems the least of their problems with the collapse of Thanet.

On more mundane matters than another 9/11, I understand there’s a review of the Port and consideration on redeveloping Arlington House with Dreamland.

It seems to me that the Port is of little use without a foot passenger ferry – and even then with Ostend 4 hours away the land could better be used for a tourist attraction like the Landings.

With hundreds of empty houses and the dereliction of Dreamland there's never been a better time to demolish the 1960's carbuncle of Arlington House and look at Dreamland to the TDC building and Cecil Square as one regeneration project.

While the Vattenfall office block in Ram,sgate, again given dozens of empty offices and brownfield sites, should be called in for scrutiny as it seems as foolish as building houses or roads on farmland in the Climate Change Age – or even on top of the water supply as with Manston and Thanet Earth.

We seem to have a council that can only think in terms of land sales and construction permits to fund its own salaries and pensions. Only to then let public sites rot through idleness and incompetence. And then to knock them down to build houses or the ridiculous white elephant New Road and skyscrapers.

Until the very things that make Thanet unique and special are destroyed.

And we have merely clone towns and urban sprawl.

The dereliction is almost total.

Osama couldn't have done better.

Ground Zero Thanet.

Tuesday 27 July 2010

What now for Messrs Samuel and White?

The collapse of Manston means they carry the can for failure.

A payrise.

A new jobtitle.

A pension increase.

A nod and a wink.

But where is the criminal investigation into removing noise and air monitors?

Removed from Clarendon school and a tower block. And never replaced.

Mobile monitors specified and repeatedly requested by KIACC. But never provided.

The only question is did they decide to do it themselves or did the politicians request them to do it and keep quiet.

Can they expect a further lavish payoff and pensions from the taxpayer - to keep their silence.

Certainly with the council-approved 106 detailing all the health and safety requirements at Manston – but almost none of them implemented for year after year – and no council approval to remove them it looks as though the full responsibility is theirs.

And silence on Thor mercury and Richboro - what exactly are the pollution levels?

Or will our silent councillors speak up on their behalf?

Who did authorise the removal of monitors and why were they not replaced. Year after year.

Why have they not called a review committee into civil servant performance and the missing monitors at Manston?

Why have the Police not taken statements?

Obviously removing the safety measures at an airport slated for expansion is a serious matter: cancer, shortened lives and so on.

Our councillors must have known.

And our MP’s.

Why the silence?

When will Gale and Sandys speak up?

Politicians can be delisted or recalled with 10% of the vote - but why the silence?

The public doesn’t fund elected officials with houses and salaries and pensions and holidays and expenses to remain silent.

When will we have a public statement.

Are the public really expected to sicken and die while funding our public representatives to remain silent?

We seem to have ongoing corruption with fake 0% payrises and tax haven contracts at Pleasurama.

And do we now have a new Deputy Chief Executive at TDC with a further increase in salary? How silly.

And only dumb silence.

Or do we have mere fools and knaves running the council and handling public funds?

To provide dereliction, cancer and stagnation.

Saturday 24 July 2010

The cancer of Manston

A video below on airport pollution and protests in USA.

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local/los_angeles&id=7392927

Toxic fumes.

Lung cancer.

All the things you’d expect.

Yet there we have a councillor speaking out about the toxic effects: illness, early death and so on:

"We'd like to see the jets be banned now. The toxicity from those jets with no buffer zone is literally killing our folks in this area. It is a huge, huge health issue," said L.A. City Councilman Bill Rosendahl.

Yet at Manston silence.

Clearly an airport produces pollution.

That’s why TDC and Manston have produced the 106 operating guidelines: noise monitors, air monitors, mobile monitors for the town centre, flight zones away from the towns, night flight bans and so on.

So why have these been removed?

Noise monitors removed by TDC and Infratil in 2006.

Banned flights eg Antonovs: too dangerous for European airspace
Mobile monitors never provide for the town centres.

Air monitors sited at the rural end of the runway.

Regular and repeated overflights of the town centres.

Yet none of these breaches of the 1067 have ever been debated or agreed by the council.

Rather what’s happened is the Toxic There of Samuel, White and Latchford have deliberately and repeatedly over several years downgraded and removed the safety measures and encouraged Infratil not to replace them - but to increase flights.

Noise monitors removed form Clarendon school.

Removed from a tower block.

Documents released under the FOI refer to “political decisions to direct flights to different ends of the runway” – essentially switching the flights as complaints and the danger arose. And then removing monitors.

From the fake consultation for EUJet in 2005 suddenly allowing flights without a 6 month consultation to just last year and attempts to removed the benzene monitor and introduce night flights again without a consultation the Toxic Three of Samuel, White and Latchford have done their best to ignore the very real dangers to the public.

Lung cancer.

Leukaemia.

Asthma.

Rare and unusual cancers.

And only silence form 56 councillors.

Silence from Gale and Sandys.

Silence now from Paul Carter and the Parkway railway station.

Bruce-Lockhart of KCC resigns.

Gilroy of KCC resigns.

Ladyman ousted.

Ezekiel resigns.

Yet the Toxic Three remain.

Presumably they can pass the buck to junior staff, to KCC or to the Airport Committee.

Yet they were the members of KIACC as well as the Cabinet and Executive heads at TDC.

It’s not that they didn’t know they refused to act.

Last year’s consultation on night flights was announced in August to trigger a consultation within 6 months. Quickly this was fudged and changed by TDC due to public anger and protests.

So for a year planes have continued to breach all the regulations.

Flights and fines simply being ignored and non-existent and downgraded monitoring taking place.

KIACC simply dropped.

Looks like political and civil service face-saving taking priority over public health.

And still the planes fly over the towns.

And land on the drinking water supply.

And then Samuel and White vote themselves fraudulent 0% payrises – presumably on the basis that that’s they only way they can get them through.

We seem to have the deliberate and repeated corporate manslaughter of the public through inaction.

Surely these fools should be sacked: no pensions, no payoffs, repay their fake payrises with fines, no public sector jobs and face criminal charges.

What will the TDC staff be thinking as they breathe the pollution?

The silence of councillors can be expected?

The silence of MP’s can be expected?

This is how the civil service behaves?

What will the public expect: an airport developing by removing safety controls?

And the real danger of lung cancer?

Where are the NHS statistics on cancers by East Kent NHS?

Where are the monitor reports and flight logs?

Tracy Emin calls for a Government Inquiry into Margate - and shouldn't this include Manston?

All because Messrs Latchford, White and Samuel thought they’d ignore their own safety guidelines.

When will we hear from Gale and Sandys?