Kent in freefall. Thanet Ground Zero Year Zero.

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 and public officials.

5. The TDC Vision below: Manston, Westwood Cross, EKO etc - a developer’s wet dream that barely lasted 30 months rather than 30 years and with 9,000 empty houses in Kent, EKO and Westwood Cross now confirmed as a bog-standard shopping centre on farmland but described as fourth town centre to circumvent Planning guidelines and funding and prop up the construction industry

6. Silence still on Thor from the Environment Agency - what is stored there, what are the contamination levels, is Morgan Sproates still the TDC liaison, which councillors and MP’s have been briefed and with what information? Public services that are simply irrelevant and designed to fund and represent themselves and their careers.

7. The review of the Port and Marina in Ramsgate seems to have drifted away. As do the plans for Pleasurama-Bungarama.

8. Silence on civil servants staffing by department, expenses and pensions - 5 years after FOI. But the Daily Telegraph reveals spending of £171M on 1,500 KCC credit cards. Only slightly less than the Environment Agency with £215M and c.9,000 credit cards and the MOD with a whopping £1Bn on 14,000 credit cards. The waste must be mountainous.

With £2.3Bn spent at KCC and £60M spent at TDC and town decay it seems utter incompetence. A few bits of political jiggerpokery with shifting funds into key politicians constituencies but mainly the old West -East Kent dumping ground.

Anywhere far away from Maidstone.

To be fair to KCC, for a 90% one-party council since 1930 it’s more representative than it should be, but there is a failing in no public scrutiny or direct election of council. Only 1% of the public are Party member so no wonder election turn-out crumbles and the construction industry takes control for land permits. And every problem requires a new building or a road.

9. Good to see Richboro scheduled for demolition - although a Bonfire Night demolition would make it more of an event for Thanet’s dwindling activities - along with a school completion to press the plunger and describe Future Thanet. And the solar panel site and boules court clean-ups are positive.

And the rest of the activity for Thanet - and Kent? I can assure having read all the plans there’s nothing. We’re at Ground Zero, Year Zero - funding failure, waste and irrelevancies.

Nothing.

£2.3Bn worth of nothing.

750 TDC civil servants.

15,000 KCC civil servants.

84 KCC councillors and 56 TDC councillors.

Nothing.

An Olympics in London> 4 year sof nothing. Only now a few Olympic teams announced. Nothing for after the Olympics. A once in a generation opportunity lost.

And Infratil simply lead the civil servants and councillors by the nose.

I doubt apart from Paul Carter any of the TDC councillors have met Charles Buchanan and simply jump through hoops on ignoring the overflights and quibbling over the 106 restrictions that were deliberately ignored and paying off the civil servants for schtum.

As with Thor mercury banned 20 years ago.

And we wonder why 4x higher emissions than the EU restrictions and cancer are the result.

And your children and grand-children will pay the price.

Even you.

Cancer is the gift that keeps giving. Through the blood. Through the bone. Through the generations.

The flights continue. So will the cancer. What did you expect?

Kent in freefall and Thanet destroyed.

A lost generation.

A lost decade.

Ground Zero. Year Zero.

Time for Change.