Film East Kent and misc.

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 like to have Ramsgate’s Brenda Blethyn and Timothy Spall as Board members – I’d turned down the Kent Film Office, whioch wasn't a bad initiative with the private and public sector etc and I always thought Kent TV was not a bad idea as such, a couple of years ago as I think EKFOS will be more effective and complement KFO. Possibly the old gasworks site would make an interesting studio after the Rover garage council vandalism.

Good news too on the Pfizer site: the new developers should be able to maintain the existing Pfizer role and hopefully bring in the lost 2,000 jobs – Viiv would be ideal as part of my Farm and Pharma strategy for East Kent.

Animal exports at Ramsgate port – I happened to see a dozen protestors and 25 coppers and vans – utterly wasteful for this repulsive trade. And from a council-owned port. And RSPCA not inspecting every lorry and impounding as necessary.

Pleasurama: all secretive. Interesting statistic on the Cayman Islands – similar to the British Virgin Islands in money laundering - has a GDP almost the same size as the UK. Someone at TDC was on a big bung for Kent’s biggest seafront development and buildings above the clifftop.

Looks to me like Sandy is on trial as a scapegoat while Samuel and White of the Gang of Four walk away with a payoff, pensions and the blatant 0% salary fraud of the year before their schtum payoff. And all signed off by McGonigal (now the CEO and FD for a £60M public organisation) and the auditors. Ask a-mack@audit-commission.gov.uk for the runaround on invoices and contracts.

Ambulances: the quiet men of the public sector. Too cheap in terms of a service and only a 7 minute turnaround – probably faster with the town centre paramedics which Mayor Green put in place. They’re working on another training role which sounds interesting and I’d mentioned pub kits and training a while ago for the town centres. They don’t, but too often I find the public sector end up nicking ideas and staffing up and taxing up and crowding out the private sector. As with Top Temps and Top Travel at KCC, and 76 lawyers on the rates. KCC’s budget over 4 years is the same as staging the Olympics and about time we had Poole’s Pool instead of tarmacing playing fields or asbestos in classrooms.

The UK has done well in the Olympics although not particularly Kent given the Games are almost over, which should improve for the Youth Games - and interesting to see how the Paralympics are hosted as it is the first time they should have equal prominence with the main Games and that hasn't quite happened as yet.

Time for Change.