Friday 21 September 2012

Third World Thanet: policies


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 Third World polices and Thanet and Kent to improve.

Thanet, with a new generation, Pfizer experience, Port and vibrant small businesses needs to move from stagnation to a growth economy based on Third World service.

1. Reverse Third World health statistics in East Kent – with new public health policies
2. UNMDG adopted and adapted by council – a UK first delayed from year 2000
3. Kent tax rebate of 0.2% to DFID: the shortfall of the 0.7% target – since 1970
4. UN Parliament initial elections in 2013: the UN and EU agree on a UN Parliament but easy to delay it
5. Votes at 16 – avoid a tyranny of pensioners, 6th form initial elections for 2013 Mayor and directly elected KCC Leader
6. World Bank and IMF reform/merger and direct elections: SDR and Tobin Tax/Marshall Plan to deliver UNMDG, and R2P of 500 deaths
7. UK 10% interest rate cap as Germany – ban Third World extortion of 4,000% interest rates
8. Begin ethical policy: tax havens, Veolia, Infratil, Trafigura, Cargolux and Union Carbide – banned from public sector contracts
9. FOI of EU and UN
10. 3 charities for every Thanet business and public sector organisation – one for Third World, one RNLI and one Kent
11. Viiv: at Pfizer site and strategic facility for UK and Third World vaccines – public shares fund through High St banks
12. Reshape Kent Uni and CCU Uni curriculum as point 2
13. Support related Third World businesses in Kent eg MAG landmines, water filters
14. DFID office in Ramsgate: regeneration not expensive offices in Buckingham Palace Rd or Gordon Brown’s constituency - and focus on malaria nets
15. Twinning: Africa and Asia not the suburbs of Western Europe
16. Ofcom: UN TV and radio channel
17. East Europe focus: largest Romanian population in Kent
18. Trees: 1.3M one per Kent citizen – c.5 trees planted per schoolchild per year
19. EU: languages and 2013 Heritage Label
20. Police: public sector crime division, 42 focrses reform and weapons/uniform procurement, and develop missing persons specialism – and every day a drug den raid
21. Foot passenger ferry: regen
22. 1945/UN peace memorial and Korea memorial: repair
23. Surin Village Schools charity: jobs and Port exports: www.surinschoolcharity.org/ (like the new Facebook page)
24. Police/NHS: Third World exchanges/training
25. Cambodia: $10M DFID funding reinstated
26. TB: vaccines – UK designed toilets/portakabins
27. Brunei and Bhutan : vote and as UK votes at 16
28. HMS Kent: from HMS Suntan to plastic patch cleanup
29. Commonwealth: exchanges/training
30. Climate Change land levy: reduce overbuild and 24k empty houses in Kent, farmland and greenbelt
31. Ban offshore ship anchorages: use the Ports
32. Fisheries policies: repelenish North Sea cod stocks down to 10%
33. Pensioners Winter Policy: OAP’s dying like flies in Winter – and now Summer Climate Change
34. Solar power: Kent nuke-free, solar farms and One House Two Solar Panels policy

Misc specific points:

• article in Independent yesterday: Corruption in Britain
• KCC FOI partially published: salaries over £58k
• 46 sheep slaughtered at Ramsgate Port (and 2 drowning!) – abysmal
• 25% of 1,700 Kent migrant children lost
• KCC sudden shortfall of 10,000 school places(!) requiring 27 new schools
• Silence on Thor, Infratil, Cargolux: $25,000 reward for arrests
• Silence on asbestos in schools, Pleasurama secret meetings and RTC/TDC accounts
• Silence on MP recall and referendum and FOI meetings


Time for Third World Thanet and Collapsed Kent to improve.

Time for Change.

Wednesday 19 September 2012

Third World Thanet


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.

Wednesday 12 September 2012

Arctic Kent and Infratil and Cargolux £20,000 reward

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, the US wheat belt already has 1930’s style Dust Bowls this Summer, sending food prices soaring: cereal prices up 120% and dairy up 107% as 45% of the corn and 35% of the soya crops are destroyed. Cereal prices peaked in 2008 at their highest ever according to the UN - yet another awful record now broken.

Food riots have already destabilised regimes during the Arab Spring: Yemen reports rice prices up by 60%, while bread prices in Egypt and Tunisia sparked riots and revolution – with similar incidents in Ivory Coast and Malawi. Add in reduced fish stocks and political instability in Ghana and Ethiopia and the food crisis looks bleak across Africa and the Middle East.

Kent would be affected not just by more floods and storms – along with sharper winters and much hotter summers that increase potholes, but also economic refugees and humanitarian crises from Africa and the Middle East.

Food riots haven’t broken out in your local Tesco just yet but the world’s refugees from Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen and Kenya will pitch up on Kent’s doorstep as a the food crisis deepens - and epidemics of cholera, typhoid and tubercolosis break out. Another multi-million pound Kent Police spy drone will be of little use hovering over the Channel filming a bigger and better repeat of the Calais Jungle or Hackney Riots.

Food speculation

So strong are the concerns on the Continent – not separated by the Channel breakwater - that several German and Austrian banks have already removed food products from investment funds to reduce speculation and food hoarding and shortages.

Change for the better

Perhaps opportunities for Kent in the Climate Change Age though are in the likes of Thanet Earth greenhouses on brownfield sites to provide space-age sustenance, reduce air miles, and provide greater protection of farmland for the very real need to feed Britain’s own population.

If the U-Boat blockade in WW2 reduced Britain to grow your own allotments on every patch of land, near starvation levels in just 4 years, and rationing for a further decade, then Climate Change would be more far impactful. Especially as a starving Kansas would take priority over a starving Kent in any future Climate Change Lend-Lease or Marshall Plan.

Greater emphasis on investment in ethical products such as low-embedded water or reduced animal fats would refresh Kent’s farm sector – even reform of rice tariffs with Asia rather than USA, and VAT as an ethical tax linked to a capped interest rate as in Germany.

And investment in the pharma sector for not just Third World vaccines for HIV and malaria, but newer strains of resistant crops and seed banks would expand the Kent economy. Although it’s perhaps ironic when Kent has reduced its orchards by over 90% for empty business parks and retail parks. And carving up its remaining farms into housing estates and barn conversions seems only to have stimulated garden-grabbing tarmac speculation.

With over 1M empty homes in the UK – and many of them built on flood plains the tide may well reverse the tarmac boom of recent years as the construction companies head off to South Sudan and the Sahel for road-building.

And if the Desertec solar farm project in the Sahara could provide all of the world’s electricity needs then there will always be a requirement to stimulate the Kent solar panel industry.

In the chill winds of the Age of Climate Change Kent is looking exposed.

Tim Garbutt is the Managing Director of Sincerity Agency the leading green and ethical advertising agency in East Kent: www.sincerityagency.com and standing for Mayor to “Stop the Pollution, Stop the Corruption, Stop the Construction”: http://timeforchange.blogspot.com

• Manston noise and air monitors and illegal Cargolux overflights: silence and coverup
• Pleasurama tax haven: silence and secret council meetings
• Thor: banned but open: silence and let’s-play-let’s-pretend
• KCC and TDC: $2BN and $60M in tax to do nothing except say there’s no money or nothing can be done as they drive around in chauffeured cars on the rates
• The KCC AGM on 16th October and Police elections in November: the Toxic Three of Carter, King and Wild out, and Police arrests for Infratil, Cargolux and Thor

As Mayor I will increase the Manston bounty to £20,000 for information leading to arrests of the Infratil and Cargolux Directors, and KCC, TDC and EA corporate manslaughter.