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

To celebrate Anti-Corruption Day (http://www.un.org/en/events/anticorruptionday/ ), and the UK in the top 20 at number 17, here's my favourite Kent corruption scandals (worth remembering KCC rates itself as the best county council in UK with a £2Bn budget, oversight of other public servces with a national tax rate of c.42% and Kent GDP of c.£25Bn): 1. Infratil and TDC and the missing Manston fines and monitors - increasing both council and cancer. Several million quid in fines missing - and all for Infratil a company with higher profits than KCC's budget. 2. Pleasurama-Bungarama - a series of mysterious insurance fires and Ramsgate Labour's largest-ever donation of £25k and a Caribbean tax haven company that's never built anything. 3. Southern Water - not just shit in the sea but in the water supply and water pumps. Surely they should be called Southern Cholera? And the best bit: siphoning off any public claims to their insurance company loss-adjustors to maintai...

If Obama’s first foreign visit when elected in 2008 was Germany then the choice of South East Asia also poses few surprises for his second term. A brief 6 hour visit marked the first Presidential visit to Burma in an attempt to seal the reforms of the last year by Burma’s military government including the release of Aung San Suu Kyi now an MP. And a trip to Thailand reiterated the importance of South East Asia for trade and investment: the latter growing at 11% almost double the pace of China. While the first ever Presidential visit to Cambodia is against the backdrop of encouraging greater democracy and human rights as part of the ASEAN Summit. Perhaps all the more apt given the police crackdown on the Poetic Justice arts exhibition, on the Khmer Rouge and Kissinger’s bombing of Cambodia, by activist Theng Seary. Human rights in Asia And the signing of an ASEAN human rights declaration is designed to encompass the range of Asian governance from the dictatorships of Burma to mo...

Qatari Airlines removes its investment from Cargolux – the last remaining airline at Manston. No investment for poisoning your citizens. Let KCC and TDC do that for you with your tax-money. Buchanan’s own figures now for Manston: zero passengers and zero cargo. The KLM announcement is a farce – I would urge the public not to lose their money buy buying tickets as the airport will close. You’ve lost money before with EUJet remember? It’s time for corporate manslaughter charges for Infratil. TDC and KCC have failed us and polluted us. Miscellanous points:  Abysmal town planning with the Grange Rd development – it looks like two nuclear reactors failing onto an office block. I’m surprised at Jenner as they’re a good construction company.  The Broadstairs development opposite the Town Hall – again massive overbuild and out-of-keeping with the surrounding area. TDC Planning have failed us.  Pfizer: the site is beginning to develop with pharma companies (and Sittingbou...

Are the new Kent Police elections are over before they’ve begun. Few people would argue for less democracy. And the new Police Commissioner elections on 15th November to oversee Kent Police should be part of the wider trend for accountability and transparency in the public sector. Yet the signs are disappointing. The £5,000 fee seems to have priced out all the Independent candidates. The short list of five includes Labour and Tory candidates (the latter already on the Kent Police Authority), the incumbent Chair of KPA, a UKIP candidate and Kent Police EU (!) adviser, and an Independent who was Mayor of Medway. Not exactly inspiring – and barely a manifesto between them other than vague platitudes about reducing crime. Presumably as opposed to increasing it. So feeble is the offering that there are concerns the turnout will plummet below 20% making the democratic mandate simply non-existent. Of more concern is that ahead of the election a self-elected KCC 16- member group ...

Does this year’s UN Day marks a time of change for both the UN and Kent. Today's UN Day (Wednesday 24th October) marks not just 67 years of the UN Charter founding in 1945 – but rather surprisingly a sudden outbreak of peace around the world. From the 50 year conflicts and dictatorships of the Arab Spring of Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, to the Colombian FARC ceasefire to the Aung-San Burmese democracy the world just got quieter and safer. Plus we have a world more democratic with the last few red-blooded dictatorships of Cuba, Guinea, Cameroon, and Arabian Ayatollahs sliding into the past. And if conflicts such as Yemen or Syria are fairly recent civil wars then Mexico’s recent convulsions into narco-state collapse are in contrast to the Congo War - home to the largest UN peacekeeping force and millions dead - and proving so problematic that Britain will declare war-rape as a theme of its presidency of the G8 in 2013. While, the China-Japan disputes over the Diaoyu/Senkaku ...

Malnutrition: cancer, obesity, chlamydia and diabetes off the scale. Food insecurity: overbuild, garden-grabbing and farmland spoiled Poor sanitation: broken sewers, water pumps and sewage dumping Economic dislocation: 2,000 jobs lost at Pfizer, Dreamland a top ten tourism attraction closed for 8 years, no economic policies at all. Corrupt governance: Manston, Pleasurama, 0% civil servant fraud. This blistered kidney we call Kent. Time for Change in Third World Thanet. An outline below on Third World Thanet policies: moving Thanet from Third World collapse in health, water supplies and economic dislocation, to First World growth. Remember, KCC is a $2BN council. Each and every year – and supposedly the largest and best UK council. And TDC is one of 12 Kent councils with $60M per year. Each and every year. And Southern Water, the Environment Agency, Police, Ambulance, Fire, NHS budget billions. For Third World results. With UN International Peace Day today, it’s...

Time for Change. Third World health statistics in Thanet: dying at 60, cancer statistics and social dumping off the scale. Third World water supply: faeces in the water supply and on the beaches, an aquifer under the runway. Third World literacy rates: some of the worst schools in UK, 99% literacy - literate to an 8 year-olds standard. Third World political incompetence: the same double-hatters and parachute candidates, declining turnout and quangocracy again and again, and cover-up of Infratil and Thor. Third World civil service corruption: 0% salary fraud and accounts, EKO waste, vanity projects and removing Infratil monitors. KCC supposedly the best County governance in Britain: bloat and FOI failure and empty housing and Road to Nowhere construction. Time for Third World Thanet to change: policy launch this week. Time to become a Great British district supporting Third World growth and exports. Time for Change.

Last week’s reports that the Arctic icesheet is the lowest-ever is as important as it is horrifying. The last lowest figure was in 2007 (with a decade’s worth of highest ever temperatures), and with the satellite imagery of the last 35 years the reduction in ice at the North Pole can be accurately tracked and recorded. The Summer ice has melted so that within 3-5 years experts predict the North Pole will be open ocean. No ice at all. Presumably just a few soggy polar bears. Already the Northern Sea Route from Tokyo to Europe, across Russia, and the NorthWest Passage across Canada are open to shipping: 34 ships using the former route up from just 4 two years ago. Stormy weather We’re entering a world unknown to humanity where not just this week’s storms such as Hurricane Isaac in Florida and Haiti, or floods in Burma, Laos and Korea become ever more prevalent and deeper – as less ice means warmer seas increasing heat and rising sea levels even further. And, aside from storms, ...

Manston still abysmal with Cargolux and ACG breaching the flight routes. Bizarre that the council are still dragging their heels on public safety. As Mayor I'll increase the bounty on the Infratil Directors to £10,000 for information leading to their arrest for corporate manslaughter. Coppers with cancer. Civil servants with cancer. Lawyers with cancer. Prison officers with cancer. Tourists wiht cancer. Even their own staff. What were they thinking? What were they thinking removing the noise and air monitors with TDC and colluding on the pollution and cancer? Silence on Thor mercury. And the Environment Agency and the Manston aquifer. Southern Water seem to be dragging their heels a bit on the sea discharge and have put claims out to their loss adjustor. Profits for failure I suppose. Good news on the East Kent Film Office and Studio which has been approved for funding and potential for upto 17 jobs. Anyone interested please email a CV to timgarbutt@yahoo.com I’d really ...

Out of the blocks already. The 2012 Games are underway at last the new Olympic stadium in Stratford. Four years after Beijing, 17,000 of the world’s athletes and officials from 205 nations have convened on London for 46 sporting events in the Olympics and Paralympics. But will the Games deliver on their promise? The signs are not good. Let’s not mention the G4S security debacle last week – with twice as many troops now deployed in East London than Afghanistan. Although after last year’s riots this may be a good thing, and a portent for the future. And since the Olympic victory announcement, in 2005 in Singapore, Kent seems to have little to show for the greatest Games in a generation. An Olympics that will almost certainly not come back to England this century – although an independent Scotland or united Eire may fancy their chances. So far in Kent we seem to have had just two Kent Schools Games to improve our chances in the egg and spoon race in Rio in 2016. Possibly a tw...

Consideration of a nuclear waste storage facility at Dungeness is starting to hot up. But protestations of jobs and the safety implications of 4,000 flasks of UK nuclear waste are likely to be drowned out. Not only by the realities of Sellafield in Cumbria already holding almost all UK nuclear waste, but the geological changes of Kent’s coastline over the next few centuries. Centuries of change? Britain’s total nuclear waste may only be enough to fill the Albert Hall and larger than 160 football pitches but the storage dump, even if approved tomorrow, would not be built until 2040. The site would not be full of waste until 2074, with the whole site then filled in and covered over and fenced-off. A process that of course has never been done before. And the site will still be contaminated for hundreds of years – facing all the unknown geological shifts and pressures of the centuries passing. Imagine how the Kent coast has changed in just the last 200 years. Whether it’s the regul...

A few miscellaneous notes: • the Olympic torch to run down Harbour St and Surin about 10am on Thursday – good to see cancer victims represented and several paralympians. • The 2012 beach volleyball events by TDC have been really excellent the last few years – but what a dismal performance by KCC overall for the priceless Olympics opportunity for activity and legacy. Almost nothing. We need Poole’s Pool and the Van Gogh gallery (KCC storing millions of pounds of art in warehouses is just silly) all the more. • Deloitte drop the sale of Manston and Prestwick airports: PWC pick it up to no doubt drop it soon. And Kent Police to feel a few collars: $5,000 reward for information leading to arrests of Infratil Directors for corporate manslaughter. Even now late flights and offroute flights and water pollution and missing fines while our pubic servants dither over how much cancer and corruption is acceptable. * Silence on Thor mercury. * Silence on Pfizer growth and Viiv. • Andy ...

A few quick points: * ships still anchored off coast - a Torrey Canyon waiting to happen * RTC and TDC accounts: silence on the corruption and refusal(!) to provide the required public scrutiny of invoices, contracts, payslips, letters, emails etc * Dreamland: another Summer wasted although the inquiry should be reporting back about now * EKFO being considered for funding - and now the new Local Act as of last week requires all public services to be challenged on quality and value and other providers considered * Silence on the 0% salary fraud of the Gang of Four and their little helpers McGonigal and Moores * Silence on the missing noise and air monitors and millions of pounds of fines - and why flights continue to illegally overfly the towns and land on the aquifer * Arlington: the same with this eyesore - both Dreamland and Arlington will be 2-5 more wasted years before being removed and replaced * Thor and Manston aquifer: Environment Agency now simply refuse to sa...

Terrific news: Surin School Charity has been initially approved for funding to create a dozen jobs and open offices Ramsgate: www.surinschoolcharity.org With the first school built and 3 others in the pipeline it will be a terrific opportunity to develop the charity. If anyone is interested in working for Surin school charity then please send a CV to timgarbutt@yahoo.com and if any Kent schools are interested ion partnering with a new school abroad then also please get in touch. Also developments in place for the East Kent Film Office. So little assistance from most of the public organisations in improving Thanet - just mired in failure. Why are we paying £60M for TDC and £2Bn (that's billion) for KCC if they're not rolling out dozens of programmes? A couple of miscellaneous points: 1. Appalling that Pleasurama-Bungarama and Westwood Cross overbuild and gridlock with 132 houses is continuing with 1,000 empty houses in Thanet. 2. Ships still anchored off Margate in ...

As Mayor I’ll put a £5,000 bounty on the head of each Infratil Director for information leading to arrests for corporate manslaughter for removing the noise and air monitors. The cost would be a fraction of the missing airport fines – even now the aquifer is in danger, pollution into Pegwell Bay repeatedly highlighted by the Environment Agency and overflights by Cargolux etc. The reward will extend to any senior official at TDC etc who have aided and abetted this deliberate endangering of the public. Civil servants with cancer. Coppers with cancer. Ambulancemen with cancer. Firemen with cancer. Judges with cancer. Lawyers with cancer. Councillors with cancer. Children with cancer. Our councillors and McGonigal remain silent. The Toxic Three of Carter, King and Wild were keen to develop Manston and fund Infratil until a month or two ago. Deliberately polluting the public that fund them. Deliberately refusing to provide effective monitoring. Deliberately refusing to charge the...

A miscellaneous blog note on various points: • Roger Gale on the radio on the future of East Kent waffling about how important it was to improve Dreamland. You don’t say. After 30 years as MP. And wasn’t he photographed launching some cheque with Steve Ladyman 2 or 3 years ago at derelict Dreamland? Useless • Remember Nigel Farage at Broadstairs 3 or 4 months ago? I asked him various questions on Manston and Thor and TDC corruption – after he said he supported Manston. I’ve written to him at least 3 times. Silence from Mr Farage. Another empty bullshotter on a tax salary. • Mark Seed at TDC: apparently there is no coordination of public compensation from EA etc. You’re on your own. You sort it out is the publicly funded response. He expressed a vague surprise at Manston on the aquifer. Yeah right. And wasn’t even sure of the outfall pipe length • Audit Commission reviewing TDC and RTC accounts – more later. Ask the auditor if you want to know or see any costs, invoices, Pleas...

Water, water everywhere… yet more can be done to improve Kent’s water. Perhaps the Jubilee washout has come at the right time. Along with Thanet’s Blue Flag beaches faced with outflows of sewage over the Bank Holiday Kent’s water supplies have been thrown into stark relief. Hosepipe bans are still in place with reservoirs only just beginning to refill. With rainfall less than Syria Kent seems to be facing a collapse in future provision of clean drinking water. With the Rio20 Summit beginning next week to try to resolve many of the world’s environment problems, perhaps greater focus is required on Kent. Stricter EU guidelines for Blue Flag beaches will keep the pressure on the Environment Agency to ensure Kent’s premium tourist product our beaches and oceans are spotless. While Southern Water – can they really be making $285M profit by discharging poop to sea when it rains – need to consider if in the county with both the longest coastline and most Blue Flag beaches, if discha...

It’s bust. Of more concern is the public funds and time invested and wasted. And missing millions of pounds of fines. And pollution. Even today an unmarked 747 illegally overflying the towns. And landing on the aquifer. Manston can’t be sold – who’d buy an airport on the aquifer? As Mayor I’ll put a $5,000 reward on the head of each Infratil and TDC Director for information leading to arrests and jail for corporate manslaughter. We’ll hear less from Buchanan in a prison cell in Pentonville. He and Infratil knew exactly what they were doing in removing monitors and not replacing them at an airport due for expansion. Worse, is so did your TDC and KCC councillors. As blatant as the Gang of Four and 0% fraud. Even now flights continue illegally. Even now. A Third World Thanet where the growth industries are cancer and corruption. A 21st century Britain where the police and civil servants even poison themselves in dithering over corporate manslaughter. Every week an unmark...

10 tonnes of shit flushed into the sea off the UK’s most Blue Flag beaches. Just dismal. Then fumbling and bumbling over whether it was flushed out on Monday – or last Wednesday. Then almost no signage or advice. And all this with ships anchored offshore – a pollution accident waiting to happen. The cover up of the Manston monitors. The Manston aquifer. Pegwell Bay and airport fuel. MOD Fires at Manston on the aquifer. Dismal. Clearly TDC, Southern Water and the Environment Agency’s, and Coastguard, remit is simply to ignore the problems and then cover their backside when it does happen. Fines simply recharge the cost to the taxpayer. P45’s and arrests are required. In the meantime stop paying council tax and business rates. Pay it late. Cancel direct debits. Pay the wrong amount. Delay payment. Pay it wrong again. They can’t jail you: the courts won’t convict such failure and the jails are full. If you want to pay your tax for failure then send a letter to TDC and p...

Just more abuse and scoundrels at TDC with the latest councillor disputes. While these scoundrels are huffing and puffing Thanet is failing and $60M tax wasted in civil service bloat and corruption and vanity construction. They have no policies. Only clinging to power. Why? Just because. It gives them a platform they wouldn’t have in their normal lives. And they pick up a few quid for bickering and whining. That’s why we have a bottom 10% council and bottom 10% area. Another lost year in a lost decade. As Mayor I will: 1. Call in the Police to investigate Infratil and McGonigal on the missing monitors and fines and 0% salary 2. Close Manston (a field and Water Protection Zone) and Thor and MOD Firebase 3. Cancel Pleasurama-Bungarama and review with Ramsgate Tunnels 4. Establish votes at 16 5. Establish Pfizer-Viiv with Glaxo 6. End windfarm hotel ship and offshore ships 7. Demolish Arlington House as part of the redevelopment of Dreamland 8. Establish Margate Town Council and can...

Same-old same-old at the RTC Finance meeting tonight. This was the meeting after the Annual Public Meeting to audit the accounts. Delayed from a fortnight ago the first attempt of Richard Nicholson as Chair was to prevent any questions at all. Even to refuse an agenda at first. Bizarrely they wanted to sign off the accounts without any questions. Then said they’d be signed off and then questions. But no copies provided. I was the only member of public there. And I left after 10 minutes leaving them talking to an empty room. And only 7 councillors out of 16 with only one apology. Finally the Town Clerk announced verbally salary costs of $90,300 for 2 full time and 1 part-time staff with an extra part-time and apprentice to be announced. Given Richard announced his salary was a lot less than $40k at the last public meeting I don’t understand how $90k costs works out. Maybe some pensions. Maybe not. It can’t be councillors costs as apparently they’ve refused to take salaries – fai...

An abysmal fudge by TDC claiming to support an airport in the aquifer as it goes bust. And remaining shtum on the monitors and missing $2M fines. KCC and TDC and the Environment Agency have actively colluded with Infratil to endanger the public. The Police need to investigate and press corporate manslaughter charges. No doubt the hope is that Sandy will be a scapegoat for the Gang of Four on peripheral misuse of office charges. Most of the Duffers and Gang of Four wouldn’t last the winter, never mind winter in Pentonville. This Wednesday at 7pm the annual audit of RTC accounts creeps out of the woodwork after being refused at the Annual Town Meeting a fortnight ago. No draft or signed accounts on the website. Ramsgate’s $17M council tax reduced to $300k TDC fob-offs and KCC’s $2.3Bn funds reduced to $25k KCC councillor gifts. Mind you, maybe it’s best not to trust the Duffers. Or factor in corruption and bungs. Information on salaries, pensions, expenses, Pleasurama contracts...

It seems a rather pointless formality at TDC given the airport is up for sale and most of the public opposed. It will be interesting to see who votes for it though. And more interesting that the New Duffers are still in favour of developing the airport. Despite the safety breaches, economic failures and the aquifer. Interesting to see if any of the councillors speak up and call for the 106 to be pulled on public health and safety grounds. Cancer doesn't only work for night flights after all. We seem to have clusters of rosettes and civil servants actively endangering the public. Time for Change in 2013 As Mayor I will close the airport and rebill the fines and cleanup cost to Infratil – a company woiht larger profits than KCC’s budgets (why they were relying on public funds seems bizarre to develop the airport even after removing the monitors seems bizarre). Instigate a Police investigation – even now we have not just the aquifer problem or 0% salary and missing $2M fines...

Speaking from Maidstone Chief Constable Learmonth said: “We are determined to catch this Paul Carter criminal. Not the KCC maintenance bloke what done a runner with 20 grand, but Paul Carter the KCC Leader. Whether it’s Infratil and the noise monitors or Thor or investing in tobacco he has killed more Kent citizens than Hitler.” Kent Police are liaising with colleagues in the Met, Sussex Police, New Zealand Police and Interpol as part of Operation ArrestPaulCarter. Paul Carter drives a Jag with some wellies in the boot and known accomplices include Wild and King along with Terry Farrell, Charles Buchanan, Steve Fitzgerald, Matt Clarke, and the usual KCC Highways Tarmac Gang of Murphy, Jacobs, Balfour and Beatty. Deputy Chief Constable Beautridge said: ”Carter has been sighted near the fifth Dartford Crossing, Manston Parkway, a Gatwick Parkway and not one but two regional airports on the rates. Along with various ticky-tacky housing estates, a highway a byway, an underpass and an ...