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

An Open Letter to Sue McGonigal of TDC and Andy Mack District Auditor Hi Sue and Andy As the new TDC CE and former Finance Director and Auditor as you know I’m concerned at corruption within Thanet and Kent. I’ve stood as MP and now Mayor on a "stop the pollution, stop the corruption, stop the construction" platform. I’m astonished that you are reporting the TDC accounts are correct. Clearly with now 2 Leaders resigned, political defections and one arrested – plus the senior KCC civil servant AWOL and corporate manslaughter charges and costs enquiries for expenses etc it’s astonishing. Especially with: • the 0% salary fraud and payoffs for failure of your predecessors • TDC civil service staffing, salaries, expenses, pensions, benefits • The stolen disabled grants used for carpeting your offices • the unreleased costs on EKO: what seems to be a million pound meme for KCC and TDC to develop business parks – badly – on the rates • the missing Manston fines: at least #2M • polit...

BBCTV empty property scandal tonight - yet even in supposed pressure cooker South East: 9,000 empty houses in Kent. Not even including property companies landbanks. Why building more? Why building on floodpalians and greenbelt?

With support slipping away, the old Gang of Four crew are fading at TDC. The Gang of Four are gone with pay-offs and now Police arrests. And the KCC CEO no doubt being paid off with more shtum money. With Independents holduing the balance of power no doubt there'll be calls to: 1. Establish Margate Town Council - with a reduction in size of TDC 2. Town tax funds paid direct to the Town Councils with sharing of services as necessary 3. FOI publication of TDC and RTC staffing and salaries, EKO, 0% salary fraud, Pleasurama contracts etc 4. Police inquiry into Manston and Thor We seem to have our councillors bumbling along to protect their Party or face-saving given sub-standard council services and pollution and corruption. I doubt any of them have raised the Manston issues with Charles Buchanan or Thor with Andrew Pearce of the Environment Agency. Gale and Sandys simply remain silent after 30 years of failure and 18 months of nothing - mere Party hacks. Our councillors are simply po...

The No Night Flights meeting last night and good public consultation has been taken out of the council’s hands. Being "against night flights" but “for the airport” means it stays open – with cancer and noise and night flight attempts every year. For night flights means cancer and noise all night. Infratil and TDC have hardly done anything but lie and fly for years. And stale pensioners remembering when the RAF polluted them on the rates. And: 1. It’s on the drinking water supply – our councillors hemmed and hawed over when they knew and what they’ve done and shuffled their feet 2. The noise and air monitors were removed by Infratil with KCC and TDC back in September 2006 – so there has been no monitoring. Just Infratil and TDC pretending that they have been monitoring and endangering the public. That’s corporate manslaughter. By Infratil and by TDC and KCC. What councils would hem and haw over expanding an airport by removing monitors – and refusing to close it when it’s on t...

An article in The Times on 7th Novemebr detailing how "Regional numbers don't add up say airlines". In brief it details regional traffic figures form airports around the Uk and how they're utter nonsense eg Humberside claiming to grow to 12M passengers: 12x the population of the region. The head of Virgin Atlantic(!) described the figures as "utterly ridiculous". Clearly with Manston, claims of an airport the size of Stansted are nonsense: equivalent to the whole population of Kent and London flying 2 or 3 times a year. The real issue is why Infratil are using these figures to gain public funds. Why councillors believe them. And why KCC are peddling construction-nonsense such as Manston Parkway. To remove the monitors to downgrade the cancer cost - especially at an airport slated for expansion - is of course a crime. As is the EA and TDC failing to protect the aquifer. With the Gang of Four facing arrest warrants - as will Infratil and KCC - the question is ...

With Sandy Ezekiel arrested on suspicion of fraud and misuse of public office the Gang of Four has collapsed. Latchford sacked, and Samuel and White resigned with 0% fraud and payoffs. All that remains is recovering the 0% salary fraud and missing £2M Manston fines and publishing the EKO and ChinaGate costs. The Labour £25k donation has been detailed but nothing else. Silence from the TDC civil servants entrusted with monitoring and silence from the Environment Agency – I don’t understand why they aren’t being cautioned and questioned. Or were they specifically instructed not to carry out monitoring? And silence from Buchanan no doubt awaiting the arrest warrant and extradition orders for the New Zealand Directors. And silence on Manston pollution and Thor mercury. With the last of the Gang of Four arrested for fraud and misuse of public office, surely a full Police inquiry into Manston, ChinaGate, EKO, 0% salary fraud, Pleasurama and Thor is long overdue. Several of the Infratil direc...

Quite astonishing: IranAir flying into a ramshackle airport like Manston. Or Europe as it seems to be banned. Certainly from the USA. The US rates it as the terrorist airline of choice - an Iranian equivalent of what the Libyans did at Lockerbie or the recent Yemeni cargo bomb flights. http://www.newsmax.com/KenTimmerman/iranair-airbus-ircg-treasury/2011/06/24/id/401304 For Charles Buchanan formerly of City Airport in London to allow this and flights such as EgyptAir taking off from Cairo knowing Manston was closed or the banned Afghan flight is incredible. But that's why he'll go to jail. And airport safety has never been paramount at Manston. Removing noise and air monitors and deliberatelty lying about it. Year after year. And the CAA and Border Agency are as flimsy as the Environment Agency. The drumbeat for strikes on Iranian nuclear sites grows louder: two scientists shot, a missile factory blown up etc etc. With SAM missiles deployed for the 2012 Olympics in London - as ...

A sudden Royal visit by the Queen to Margate after 20 years and 30 years before that. Which is good. Although so sudden almost no-one has heard of it. Clearly the problems in East Kent are substantial and a visit to the Turner is a good start after the collapse of the political system and civil service. And with the Commonwealth being revitalised with new succession rules and membership on non-colonies, the monarchy is doing more than just being a useful tourism feature. Especially with derelict Dreamland on view - and the oil tankers off the beaches failed by the Coastguard - and supposedly another year's delay for the CPO. But it's the wrong town and the wrong time for the Queen. Let's hope next year is Royal Ramsgate and its Royal Harbour in the 60 year Royal Jubilee. Less positively the front page of Yahoo the world's most-read website and animal abuse in Ramsgate: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/man-caught-on-cctv-in-shocking-swinging-cat-attack.html The video clip is cle...

Same old nonsense from Bayford and his cancer crew: another farcical consultation. And deliberately ignoring the facts and dangers of night flights and Manston and Infratil and KCC and TDC’s actions. Let’s forget the claims of jobs: they’re ludicrous. An airport the size of Stansted -a few minutes from Heathrow and Ostend. Planning by clowns Let’s forget the rationale for night flights: a few flights around the existing hours make no sense – except as the thin end of the wedge. Planestation and Infratil wanted all-night flights: about 30 or so. Let’s forget that the airport is already bust: Infratil say so – and the only scheduled flights are 2 or 3 Flybe hops to Belfast from Belgium and 2 or 3 Cargolux flights from Luxembourg. The airport is already bust. But when are we going to talk about the air and noise monitors being removed? Samuel and White have been sacked but the councillors all knew about it. They were removed back in 2006. When are we going to talk about the missing fines ...

And early next week is the announcement of the 7 Billionth person on the planet. Probably in Dadaab refugee camp – poverty slums and ethnic war seems apt for the 21st century. Here in Kent, not one public sector organisation supports the UN Millennium Development Goals – supposedly these should be adopted and adapted by each nation. No UK lead on establishing the UN parliament to ensure global democracy. Good news on: • Richboro to be demolished • Kent’s first solar park underway • Dreamland Tesco likely to be stopped Good news from the USA: • 100 US troops deployed into Uganda last week to destroy the Lords Resistance Army – thousands of women raped, hands and feet cut off and thousands of people killed • US universities adopting “conflict-free”policies to ensure suppliers of mobile phones and computers etc do not use “rare earths” from Congo etc. Good news from UK: • Dow Chemicals/Union Carbide responsible for Bhopal questioned over their sponsorship of 2012 Olympics • Ivory Coast ap...

Questions to ask Charles Buchanan and Bob Bayford at KIACC - these meetings are fairly random aren't they - given the KCC leadership battle for Carter: @ presumably night flights, and Manston Parkway are no-go now for public funds @ with monitors removed in 2006 when did you know @ why were they not replaced - they only cost a few thousand pounds and Infratil Group makes a profit @ independent monitoring shows emission levels 4x EU safety levels for at least a year - why were Sandys and Bayford supporting a Parkway and Carter helping Buchanan seek £10m of public funds @ has the shortfall in fines c.£2M been rebilled to Infratil - why not @ overflights are banned so why are they regular and unfined so far @ Pegwell is a SSSI site so why are Infratil dumping aviation fuel? @ should the airport be on the water supply - what is the delay in closing it The last night flight public meeting was a year ago in November - why the delay since then? Why the ludicrous manifesto pledges in May o...

So that's the monitors removed by Infratil and TDC. But they're claiming they are monitoring. And this has been going on since 2006 when the monitiors were removed? And no fines collected - as yet. At least £2M. And counting - another flight at past midnight last night. And TDC and KCC and the EA bumbling around what's happening to the pollution and water supply. What twits. Criminal twits. No votes in poisoning your citizens. No tax for poisoning your citizens. No tax-jobs for poisoning your citizens. No citizens. Time for Change.

A golly-gosh-well-I-never moment as the P.2 Gazette article this Friday on Manston monitoring: (article link) Confirms that monitoring is “done by Infratil and provided to TDC”. Cllr Green expresses surprise at this as do the other councillors. As you would given the opportunity to fake the data or simply not provide it. And hardly news given the repeated Airport Committee meetings and KIACC public meetings – supposedly about TDC and Infratil noise and air pollution monitoring for the last 5 years. What were they pretending to do? Except of course they didn’t want to reveal that until now. Far better to pretend that monitoring is being done properly. And when that’s found out sack Samuel and White and Latchford of the Gang of Four with payoffs to keep quiet. The same article also has Charles Buchanan confirm Infratil are monitoring. Both this, and how TDC are monitoring, is a surprise of course. As the noise monitors were removed in 2006 and returned to Manchester University monitoring...

A shocking documentary on ITV last night on air pollution in Czech Republic: http://www.u.tv/utvplayer/video/139724 it claims to be the most polluted factory in Europe as a steelworks with 4 times EU emission levels and 6 times the World helath organisation levels on various toxins. Still we silence on Infratil and Thor - the latter supposedly banned and closed in 1989 and the technology shipped to Cato Ridge in South Africa. All we have now is cover-up and denial by our politicians and civil servants to protect their own jobs. All the activities at Manston and Thor are already banned and still they continue. When will Andrew Pearce and the Environment Agency publish the figures and cleanup details? When will McGonigal speak up? When will Carter speak up? When will Gale speak up? When will Sandys speak up? Mere denial and schtum payments for a few resignations. What bizarre secrecy in the Kent of the 21st century. As Mayor I will push not for P45's but jail sentences for corporate ...

Terrific news that HRH Princess Norodom of Cambodia will be hosting a live interview with Surin restaurant before Xmas. Princess Norodom hosts an English language radio show - the first in Cambodia - on improving the country and Khmer people. She is very interested in the restaurant and Surin Charity and is planning to visit Britain next year. Princess Norodom left during the Khmer civil war and live in the USA for many years but has returned and is keen to help develop the country. An amazing lady as she was a Hollywood and TV star and is writing a book of her experiences. I really need to have a Kent school involved in the charity for a Cambodian school - Ellington have done wonderful work in Thailand.

The new Planning changes really do seem an appalling free-for-all to pour concrete. A spectacular backwards-step in regulating development which Britain can rightly be proui do and all the more appalling in the Age of Climate Change. Very interesting to see that women will have the right to vote in Saudi Arabia at long last - only Brunei in Asia now denies the vote - although they are are democratic in that none of the 300k population - neither men nor women - can vote(!) And as so often Britain supports such dictatorships - as we did in Hong Kong with an unelected council for decades even before it reverted to China. And Britain has long supported - often with arms sales - undemocratic regimes in Arabia - most voting rights have only been given in the last few years. In Kent it's about time we reduced the voting age to 16 in an ever-older world the younger generations voice will be drowned out. More positively, here's a really interesting charity run by a friend to help childr...

Another of the bizarre egg on face but facesaving attempts by our councillors and civil servants around Manston. Not just the silly debate on not allowing night flights even though that’s exactly what has been forbidden under the S106 airport operating rules. Feeble whitewash to cover up the lack of enforcement. And hoping schtum payoffs for Samuel and White will cover over the traces. And now an air quality debate and consultation – that doesn’t even manage to mention the words “airport” or “cancer” in the dozens of pages of bumf. http://www.thanet.gov.uk/environment__planning/environmental_health/air_quality_monitoring.aspx More public time wasted and not even a free gas mask. It seems to be suggesting having air monitoring across the whole of Thanet - again presumably that’s supposed to happen anyway – but seems again to be referring to removing monitors from the actual hotspots of pollution. Presumably so the figures could be averaged out over the whole of Thanet and hey presto no...

We need to ask questions about Kent’s role in the arms trade. Coming hard on the heels of KCC’s tobacco involvement, news that it is reconsidering its funding of BAE armaments is timely this week. The opening of the DSEi bi-annual arms fair at London’s Excel trade centre hosts not just BAE but 180 other arms companies. And at least 14 authoritarian regimes such as Iraq, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in the hunt for, not just missiles and tanks, but UK crowd control equipment such as handcuffs, rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannon. The kind of equipment now being used on the public in Syria and Bahrain and Yemen for the freedoms we enjoy. Invariably the fall of a dictator reveals the torture chambers stuffed full of UK equipment – even the Libyan arms dump at Al-Ajaylat this week reveals tons of napalm, cluster bombs and even mustard gas – as used by Saddam on Halabja in the Iran War. Sarah Waldron of CAAT said: “ The UK Government continues to spend taxpayers' money promoting arm...

I've had some details from the Dept of Business on the Enterpise Zone at Pfizer. I'll post the details a little later as they are better than I thought not just minor tax breaks. Viiv is being considered to expand Pfizer, Glaxo and Viiv jobs. Surprise was expressed at why 500 new homes were annopunced for the site. It wasn't the Dept's understanding and any application would need to be considered by Pfizer and Dover Council and presumably central Government. The Daily Telegraph have raised interesitng points on sustainable development - the most important being that the most sustainable development is not to build at all but there were other points: * 750,000 empty houses in UK * new planning legisaltion drafted by the construction industry * enough "land bank" already for 300,000 new homes * VAT tax break for new build but not refurb * £3M donated by housebuilders to the Conservative Party There is just no rationale for new- build. I think that wwe actually n...

This Sunday marks 10 years after 9-11 but have we learnt nothing? Manston airport remains perhaps Europe’s most dangerous airport. Noise and air monitors removed by Infratil and TDC. Banned EU airplanes regularly flying in and out transgressing all the safety zones. Gunrunning and blood diamond flights from the Congo, Sudan and Sierra Leone spiced with cocaine from Nigeria. And even banned Islamic airlines such as Afghanistan’s KAL Air or EqyptAir setting off from Cairo to land at Manston at 3am – when the airport is closed. And the CAA and Kent Police wring their hands while KCC fund Infratil with tax-funds and the Environment Agency looks the other way on pollution. For months and years. And all barely 10 minutes fly-time from Canary Wharf and requiring little more than half a dozen Lear jets for a spectacular opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympics. Yet the world has changed since 2001. Over 35,000 terrorists arrested worldwide - largely in Turkey, Iraq and Afghanistan. While the thr...

An article published in the Independent yesterday on KCC and Big Tobacco - you need to scroll down the letters: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/letters/letters-free-schools-2349248.html Also a letter published a monht or so ago in the Independent on reforming the IMF: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/letters/letters-what-signal-are-slut-walkers-sending-out-2297029.html And an article on Surin restaurant and Laos cuisine and recipes (try the sea bass! www.surinrestaurant.co.uk): http://www.londonconfidential.co.uk/Food-and-Drink/Food-For-Thought/Southeast-Asian-Cuisine-Lao

Yet another Sunday unmarked 747 with illegal overflights into Manston at 10am yesterday. How can unmarked 747's still be flying into Manston? > Speaking from Maidstone Kent Chief Constable Ian Learmonth > announced Operation C.O.C.A.I.N.E. > He said: "We've noticed that we are lacking capacity in > acronyms so we have stepped up activity by combining the > operation name with an acronym. As soon as my pension is signed > off we will be investigating Manston for Bolivian marching > powder." > Operation C.O.C.A.I.N.E. will target drug smuggling around > Manston and following on from the success of S.K.I.E.S. in > targeting Al Qaida in light aircraft 10 years after 9/11 the > acronym is easy to remember: Coppers Overly Cautious About Infratil Nightflights EastKent > A new road and housebuilding programme to allow police car > patrols and a business park is also due to be annopunced by > the KCC Cabi...

You do wonder at the incompetence of our MP’s, councillors and civil servants – and the public simply allowing them to continue. The Summer nearly over. Seaweed on the beaches. Xmas lights that are faulty. £100k salaries for Town Clerks to spend £20k. Festivals cancelled at the last minute. Silence on Thor and Manston overflights. And with the missing Manston fines will McGonigle be signing off the TDC accounts with he 0% salary fraud. Maybe that's the way it's done with public sector accounting. A handy lesson for all Thanet's youngsters in public sector and political fraud and whitewash. More cancer overflights at Manston, and the ludicrous farce of debating the operating restrictions that already exist - and the silly pretence that they’ve been ignored. I thought I’d write something a bit different. An airport on the drinking water supply. An illegal overflight at 21:45 and take-off at 23:33 with the airport closed - how do Infratil get away wi...

You do wonder at the incompetence of our MP’s, councillors and civil servants – and the public simply allowing them to continue. More cancer overflights at Manston, and the ludicrous farce of debating the operating restrictions that already exist - and the silly pretence that they’ve been ignored. I thought I’d write something a bit different. An airport on the drinking water supply. An illegal overflight at 21:45 and take-off at 23:33 with the airport closed - how do Infratil get away with it under Kent Police's nose? Another summer gone and fewer tourists than ever. The Turner Centre with made-up visitor numbers for another disastrous glory project after 15 years and £50M. Even in January after the Night flight consultation debacle, Bayford and Sandys signing off on Carter and Infratil’s Manston parkway nonsense and £10M tax-plans. Anyway. Same old ho-hum. Clearly the pensioner councillors have failed us. Now simply trying to cover-up...

I thought I’d write something a bit different. You do reach a point where you just wonder at the incompetence of our MP’s, councillors and civil servants – and the public simply allowing them to continue. More cancer overflights at Manston, and the ludicrous farce of debating the operating restrictions that already exist - and the silly pretence that they’ve been ignored. An airport on the drinking water supply. Another summer gone and fewer tourists than ever. The Turner Centre with made-up visitor numbers for another disastrous glory project after 15 years and £50M. Even in January after the Night flight consultation debacle, Bayford and Sandys signing off on Carter and Infratil’s Manston parkway nonsense and £10M tax-plans. Anyway. Same old ho-hum. Clearly the pensioner councillors have failed us. Now simply trying to cover-up for each other and KCC/TDC and Infratil or the same small-town bickering The Party system and political system has failed...

A few miscellaneous points: 1. A nice letter from the new head of Kent Police Authority on how over flights at Manston may or may not be a Kent Police responsibility with a few drops of whitewash still on it and the swish of buck-passing. 2. Will the regular Sunday afternoon Manston illegal over flight land and take off without Customs or Police? If it does I hope they leave a nice bag of heroin or cocaine from Amsterdam for the Police Xmas knees-up. 3. A couple of good points by KCC: the Environment Plan is rather good - although the danger of pointless housing estates and roads badged as eco-tarmac etc will no doubt remain. But 10 out of 12 Kent districts failing the government’s economic guidelines. 4. On a similar point the real KCC Cabinet of Murphy, Jacobs, Balfour, Beatty, Costain, Carillion remain quiet awaiting the next Big Council-Big Construction glory project of bridges, airports, motorways, housing estates, retail parks and business parks with public land, public funds an...

Manston crashes and burns. What then? Carter in jail. Buchanan in jail. Infratil's Directors extradited for trial - that rarity of a free passage back to UK for the Kiwi Killers. Sandys and Gale mere irrelevancies. TDC and the Environment Agency in ashes. Kent governance in freefall. Manston can only have the runway dug up. The warehouses and buildings demolished and cleared. The MOD Fire base and fires moved. A WPZ water protection zone and SSSI site at Pegwell Bay with the highest monitoring to safeguard the aquifer. A Margate Town Council and review of Ramsgate's £20M council tax contribution and the need for 750 TDC civil servants, 15,000 KCC civil servants, silence on staffing, pensions and expenses for £2.3Bn and 56 councillors for failure. So many years wasted. So little done. So much of it abysmal. Such stagnation and waste. Time for Change.

Coughing one up for Infratil. An NHS campaign on lung cancer: East Kent's biggest killer with 428 deaths. You do the maths on what's attributable to the airprot - with monitors removed. http://www.easternandcoastalkent.nhs.uk/whats-new/latest-news/its-not-always-only-a-cough/ And yesterday - even on Carnival Day - 2 illegal 747 overflights, one unmarked at 12 noon and 6pm and a Cityjet plane circling several times. As Mayor I will instigate jail proceedings for Buchanan and Carter. And now some 2 months into the job McGonigal the new TDC CEO is looking to be more of the same Buggins Turn: none of the accounts, from a trained accountant and Director, include the missing fines nor details of Infratil's public secotr subsidies from SEEDA etc or business rates. Silence on EKO invoices, Pleasurama costs and 0% fake pay rises and schtum payments. Your money. Approved by your councillors. For failure and cancer. Infratil may be deliberately polluting the public but TDC are simply ...

No noise monitors in place for 5 years. Fake consultations. Gang of Four sacked and paid off for schtum. The latest ludicrous debate on a night flight ban - and overflight ban - that already exists. A Parkway glory project of £10M until last month. Who is the civil servant at TDC and KCC responsible for the airport? Who are the councillors? When did they know the monitors were removed - what have they done to replace them? Silence from Gale and Sandys - mere Party bystanders and cheerleaders for Paul Carter, Alex King and Geoff Wild. We now have Manston without any regulation or monitoring at all - other than Charles Buchanan doing what he likes. No monitors. No fines. No problems. And no details on the cancer costs: already 4x EU pollution levels. Rare cancers. Time for a Police enquiry and witness statements. Time for jail sentences. Time for Change.

A note to Katherine Kerswell at KCC: As CEO of KCC a 4 star council and CE of SOLACE the Chief > Executive's trade union can you advise on Kent's corruption > scandals: > > * Manston: missing monitors and fines > * c.£200K schtum pay-offs for Messrs Samuel and White of > the Gang of Four > * two paygrade hikes just before dismissal for Richard > Samuel > * 0% pay rises for Samuel and White that are over 10% > increases: can the before and after salary slips be > provided? > * election payments of c.£20k and £18k to Messrs Samuel > and Gilroy as heads of council - presumably only minimal > expesnes are allowed and these costs ar epart of the > £100k-plus job desciption? > * chauffeur costs for KCC - only Cabinet ministers have > chauffeur cars? > * costs of Top Temps and KCC taxis: these seem to be > KCC-funded companiesfor KCC-only use > * Pleasurama-Bungarama: the largest seafront development in > Kent with no plan...

A directly elected Mayor to close Manston and jail Carter and Buchanan and extradite Infratil's Directors. A directly elected Mayor to reduce the number of councillors and ciivl servants. Both local Thanet MP's and Parties seem to shy away from discussing why the 106 has not been enforced by the Gang of Four. And total silence from councillors on the cancer cost and missing fines, nor how they will support flights given it's on the East Kent drinking water supply - a Police investigation is the way forward. Councillors with specific questions to answer - aside from the Party Leaders are: Hayton and Harrison: both Chair of the Airport Committee through the last few years of Infratil and TDC removing monitors, Moores, Chair of the 0% salary review for two of the Gang of Four, and Ezekiel bizarrely standing again rather than following Latchford's sensible move into retirement. And as late as January this year Sandys and Bayford trotting out behind Carter's FOI-released...

Disastrous failures at TDC by the Ganf of Four and KCC with ManstonGate, ChinaGate, Pleasurama and Westwood Cross and the same empty promises and Buggins Turn councillors - and a couple of thoughts on the TDC election today: * a vote for Independents would be a step forward - several are disenchanted witht he performance of the Parties they used to follow * the main Parties are largely irrelevant at a local level - and the previous blocs of Parties has now been broken: no town is automatically Labour or Tory and civil service waste is subject to coverup or scrutiny * a boycott of the election or spoilt ballot (simply draw a line through the ballot or tear it in half and put it in the ballot box) is essentially a vote for "none of the above" - with a turnout already less than 35% (and the rise of co-opted or unelected candidates) the issue is effectively one of a lack of public support and public sector focus. 99% of the public are not members of any Party and c.80% of the pub...

The KCC leader manifesto below and a couple of thoughts on the TDC election: * a vote for Independents would be a step forward - several are disenchanted witht he performance of the Parties they used to follow * the main Parties are largely irrelevant at a local level - and the previous blocs of Parties has now been broken: no town is automatically Labour or Tory and civil service wasteis subject to coverup or scrutiny * a boycott of the election or spoilt ballot (simply draw a line through the ballot or tear it in half and put it in the ballot box) is essentially a vote for "none of the above" - with a turnout already less than 35% (and the rise of co-opted or unelected candidates) the issue is effectively one of a lack of public support and public sector focus. 99% of the public are not members of any Party and c.80% of the public do not work in the public sector. * Double hatters and triple hatters - a ludicrous rotten boroughs approach to pad out the same Party person for...