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

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