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

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?

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.