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

Time for Change: • Time for UNMDG2 reform: included in every public sector organisation and adapted. The Philippines does it already. Time to include Tobacco (5M deaths each year), road accidents (1M deaths each year) and a Global Space Programme. And before 2020 not 2030: too slow. • Time for a Zero Pollution Law. Vietnam does it. Bury the electricity pylons. And a specialist Environment Court. India does it. • Time for a ban on tobacco. 50 years after it was proven to kill we are still allowing cigarettes to be sold with 100,000 UK deaths every year. Plain packaging required. A ban on new retail outlets selling tobacco. Permits for the remaining outlets. A ban on under 25’s smoking and a complete ban before 2020. Tighter counterfeit cigarette controls. Aid for Malawi to divest tobacco agriculture. • Time for a UN Parliament elections in 2015: this missing layer of democracy has been approved by the UN and EU but nothing has happened. The usual delay of Big Bureaucracy protect...

A broken county. Sandys resigns as MP two years early(!). Another failed parachute candidate. Only silence for the last 3 years on the contamination and corruption from Infratil and KCC and TDC. And now the disgusting spectacle of Carter welcoming Gloag knowing the dangers of the airport. The Toxic Three must go. Carter, King and Wild. Hart and Macgonigal and Moores must go. We need a clearout. No votes for poisoning you own citizens. Gale must be stripped of his pensioned-off-knighthood for 30 years of failure. Silence on the missing monitors and 0% salary fraud. Time for a Police investigation and corporate manslaughter charges for Infratil and KCC and TDC. We pay them and they pollute us. Corrupt councils rotten all the way down. A broken county. Time for Change. Time for a tax strike. Time for a ballot boycott. No tax: short pay and wrong pay and delay. No votes: cancel your voter registration and reduce the turnout. Time for arrests. Time...

At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will forget them. In fact let’s not pretend. We already have forgotten them in Kent. The sacrifices of our troops and citizens in WW1 and WW2 has been forgotten already. Sure on Remembrance Sunday there’s a few warms words and faded flowers. But the millions killed have been forgotten. D-Day last year was forgotten in Kent. Not one piece of activity in East Kent. And in previous years, the disgusting spectacle of the veterans having to scurry around to obtain funding from KCC, for what would most likely be their last visits to Normandy to see their pals graves. Or the Ramsgate British Legion veterans besieged by skateboarders and vandals and tuppeny food vouchers requiring Mayor Green and Kent Police to step in. Or the feeble preparations for the WW1 Centenary next year. There are no preparations – yet Flanders and Mons are remembering the British dead already – a year in advance. And only the War Graves Commission...

Well actually both Manston and Prestwick airports sold for a quid. Good. The sooner Infratil leave Europe and the airports close the better. The Kiwi Killers have breached every safety regulation repeatedly and seen the closure of all their European airports and now the last UK airports. No doubt the last sites at Wellington and Rotorua will go too. They did it here. They will do it there. Ann Gloag of Stagecoach’s shell company is Infratil scurrying away. Messrs Bogoieveski and Baker have done nothing more than tweak their financials at the last minute as extradition papers and corporate manslaughter charges edge nearer. No doubt Fitzgerald and Clarke will be put in the frame and Buchanan – and rightly so. Removing monitors, faking pollution reports, allowing banned-from-Europe aircraft and illegal flights such as sanction-busting Iran Air or gunrunners such as MK Airlines is horrifying. Frontline Kent in the 21st century with gunrunners, drug smugglers and poll...

A busy few weeks for me around the excellent UK trade mission to Vietnam. I’m also close to opening the first Sincerity offices too. Also interesting meetings on the next Surin Schools. Why Vietnam? 90M people and an incredible culture. And after the China debacle of the UK failing to develop the greatest economic growth ever, now an increasing focus for the UK on ASEAN prior to the AEC launch in 2015 and especially Vietnam with the 40th anniversary of diplomatic relations activity this year now concluded, and the preparation underway for the key Vietnam anniversaries in 2015, of April 1975 and September 1945. And unfortunately one of the less positive and almost unknown aspects of the UK policy of the time with Operation Masterdom in 1945 when British troops landed to work with the Japanese troops(!) to pave the way for the reinstatement of the French colonial power despite the Vietnamese declaring independence (even citing the US Declaration of independence). And so began alm...

Like many an old soldier Colonel Latchford of UKIP is mistakenly fighting the last war given his letter in the Gazette a week ago. Syria now is not Iraq in 2003: they definitely do have chemical weapons and have used them several times. Saddam gassed many of his own citizens in 1988 and got away with it. And then invaded Kuwait two years later and was let off the hook and ran rings around the weapons inspectors and no fly zones until he was finally ousted in 2003. Several tons of chemical weapons have been revealed since then by the existing Iraqi government, and Al-Qaida and Osama Bin Laden were then largely confined to Afghanistan. A monster like Assad is now desperate to hand over his chemical weapons before a US-French-Arab missile strike, as with Kosovo or Libya or Yemen, wrecks his palaces and barracks and tanks and jets and warships. Such bombing attacks would undoubtedly aid the rebel alliance, we are already funding and arming, in toppling him. Or at best Assa...

What a disastrous Summer for Kent. Yes the weather hasn’t been wonderful. But that aside we’re seeing the faster spiral downwards now of years of neglect and incompetence. The shambles of the secretive FerryGate decisions and Port closure. Southern Water with more sewage leaks and permanently blocked drains – an Environment Agency court case is the right direction bu t a fine of £300k on £300M profits is laughable. And the funds will not be spent in Kent. More silence on Thor and Infratil and Cargolux/KLM deciding that they will fly when and where they like and to heck with the pollution. Jail is best for Buchanan and Pedro and extradition for Bogoievski and Baker. And the grubby corruption scoundrels of Moores and the 0% salary fraud with Samuel and White – and McGonigal and Button and Berry and Sproates silent on the missing monitors and fines. And Latchford returning form the dead as an ex-Deputy Leader to UKIP Leader but remaining equally tight-lipped o...

With the UK economy struggling, much of Europe too and few answers from the politicians then electoral reform becomes more important. If the system is failing to provide answers then the system needs changing. Or at least the pace of reform improved. There are simple measures already underway: * UK votes at 16 - following the Scottish referendum decision to allow 16 year old to vote in 2014. time for a global vote at 16 with Brazil and Austria leading the way already. * World Parliament: a democratic assembly for the UN. Mired in delay with the EU and the UN itself agreeing that democracy is required amongst the unelected ministers and bureaucrat of the UN. Time for national elections to be held. * 30% minimum election turnout or elections rerun. With the national party's' membership less than 1% and lower than the RSPB, we have representative democracy that's unrepresentative. And State funding of parties on the quiet. Rerunning elections would require better pol...

Speaking from the Maidstone police headquarters, Chief Constable Learmonth of Kent Police said: “Not many people know that I am a keen film fan so here is some of my favourite police films what I like that I found in the mucky films cupboard after Pughsley took most of the really naughty ones home for review. These are classic though: 1. Scarface. Just goes to show what can happen if you can allow a flood of drugs into the region whether it be Florida with them Cubans or my patch with Belgium via Ostend then Manston and the like, with them narco-states like Guinea and Mali too. Crack down on crack dens is what I say! Nice use of electro-pop on the soundtrack as well. And unfortunately the only policeman is a rotten apple copper failing to root out the drugs dens and supply routes. The exception becomes the emphasis. Sigh. 2. Serpico. One policeman’s lone fight on rooting out corruption. Tell me about it. Within the bleedin’ police department as well. I ask you. Luckily in Kent ...

On 3rd June 1940 the evacuation of 338,000 British troops from Dunkirk was completed. The return to Dunkirk on 4th June removed 26,000 French troops just on that last day too. The hundreds of Little Ships saved the army from total defeat - risking drowning and gunfire over days. And all sailed from Ramsgate. The archetypal example of the public sector failing and the public having to step forward and do it for them. But this year’s anniversary? Nothing. Sunk without a trace. The 70th anniversary of D-Day and Operation Fortitude tomorrow? Another of Kent’s finest hours. Nothing. Stuck in the mud. We seem to have the complete collapse of tourism activity in East Kent now. And the graves are not kept clean. Ground Zero. Year Zero. Failed. Time for Change.

Pinewood Studio has had its £200m expansion plan rejected by the local authorities as of two weeks ago. The development of over 100acres of green belt was felt to be too intrusive – and many of the film set “streetscapes” to simply be more housing on green belt. The expansion plans would have doubled the studio capacity to over 100 acres as part of the filming plans for JJ Abrams’ Star Wars new franchises for next year, and the new James Bond movie. Lord Grade, Pinewood’s Chairman confirmed development will allow the creation of 3,000 jobs and over £150M for the wider UK economy in securing the Star Wars franchises, along with further development of the existing Leavesden Studios. Clearly UK film is expanding with the new Brad Pitt zombie and pandemic movie World War Z premiering yesterday with Angelina Jolie, and shot at Leavesden and also Pfizer’s Discovery Park laboratories in East Kent. While, the BFI is reaching out to UK organisations to participate in its UK Audience Net...

The 66th Cannes Festival closes this week with all the glitz and drama you’d expect. If Kent’s glory days of 2006 haven’t been achieved again with the Jury Prize at Cannes for Andrea Arnold’s Red Road then that’s part of a thin showing overall for the British film industry with no UK films showing at Cannes. Zero. But last week’s review of Kent film locations in the Kent on Sunday highlighted blockbuster shoots such as Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean and even Les Miserables to sit alongside home-grown talent such as Orlando Bloom of Canterbury and Brenda Blethyn and Timothy Spall of Ramsgate. Albeit with most of the locations being either Chatham Dockyard (can there really be that many naval films?) or Knole Park (best-known for the Beatles Strawberry Fields Forever, the first pop video or the Magical Mystery Tour film) holding the end up for Kent’s TV small-screen industry with its heritage of Broadstairs’ Bagpuss and recent productions such as Margate’s Exodus, Gypo and...

Why Kent ignores the Dambuster heroes for their 70th anniversary? The Dambusters Raid still seems incredible with its 70th anniversary today just gone, and yet the shame of its Kent connections going unrecognised. With all of Europe occupied by Nazi Germany, and, in the lull of the airwar between the Blitz bombings on London and Kent airfields and the V1 and V2 rockets attacks on London and Kent, the Dambuster Raid of Operation Chastise on three dams in the Ruhr in May 1943 marked a quite extraordinary example of courage and innovation. Nowadays a comical Carling Black Label ad or Shepherd Neame’s funny Spitfire ads and the Richard Todd film, now being remade by Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings fame, are the last few memories of the raid. And the anniversary ignored in East Kent. The Dambuster bouncing bombs were trialled off both the Broadstairs and Reculver coasts – designed to spin across the water, over torpedo nets, strike the Mohne, Eder and Sorpe dams and sink as dep...

They're dropping like flies. the Gang of Four gone. And now, after the KCC elections Alex King has been demoted from Deputy Leader. So, the Toxic Three are now reduced to Carter and Wild: deliberately polluting Kent’s citizens with Infratil by removing the required monitors and ignoring the overflights by KLM and Cargolux now - and, previously banned aircraft. Alex was previously the architect of the disasters of EUJet and KCCUSA so the chop was long overdue – but a new role of Chair of Policy Skills/HR which to some extent is the Deputy role. The problem with politics as any doublehatter will know – is it’s hard to vote them out even when they’ve failed or are incompetent. A mix of Buggins Turn of any old fool in the role and Dog in a Manger politics of preventing anyone else from doing the job, even if they’re more capable. The rest of the KCC Cabinet is much the same – John Simmonds taking over as Deputy/Finance which is not ideal as he’s a supporter of the ridiculous...

J'accuse Infratil: Fitzgerald removing the required monitors from 2006 and Clarke and Buchanan continuing the lie of reporting pollution. Bring them back with Bogoievski and Baker for trial. J'accuse TDC: assisting Infratil and covering up the lack of reporting and fines: McGonigal, Berry, Button and Sproates. J'accuse the politicians of silence and complicity with Infratil: both MP's Sandys and Gale, the KCC Toxic Three and TDC Gang of Four, the Leaders of TDC and Chairs of the Airport Committees. J'accuse KIACC: feeble control of public reporting on the pollution and Infratil and TDC's antics. J'accuse Environment Agency: failing to enforce the required pollution standards and cleanup ignored by Infratil. J'accuse Kent Police: failure to make the required arrests for endangering the public. Time for Change. Even now the water and air is polluted and there is no monitoring. Even now there are illegal overflights by KLM and Cargolux. J...

Apparently the Mayor can only be elected by being elected by elected councillors. But they can’t elect members of the public. I didn't understand that either. Again Duffers world bumbles along on the rates. So Dave resigned with warm words on inaction. Nothing on Manston monitoring, fines and overflights. Or Thor. Or Pleasurama. Or Port. Then pre-arranged candidates and votes for Kim Gibson as Mayor – previously recommending a prison as an economic step forward for Ramsgate so we shouldn't expect too much. I couldn’t see who was the new Deputy Mayor but very ceremonial for a ceremonial council so irrelevant, and didn’t wait for the farce of the accounts and Manston fines, Pleasurama contracts etc. One for the Police eventually. About 10 members of the public so mainly outnumbered by councillors and civil servants. Unless you're over 60 it's not the council for you. Almost all the councillors doublehatters with TDC, and TDC to blame for everything...

Tomorrow (Wednesday 8th May) the Ramsgate Town Council Mayor election. Time for Change. Dave Green the current Mayor has resigned. Time for Change. The collapse of Ramsgate. Time for Change. Racist UKIP on the rise and return of the Gang of Four. Time for Change. Please turn up and vote for me. Stop the Pollution. Stop the Corruption. Stop the Construction. A Mayor for East Kent, East Europe and East Asia. The pensioners have failed us: Thanet's worst generation. Year Zero. Ground Zero. Time for Change.

Today’s your chance to vote on peripheral issues and faceless candidates. If you do want to waste your vote then choose a non-Conservative candidate to reduce the KCC West Kent One-Party bias. Or not vote and reduce the turnout. Or spoil your ballot. It’s up to you. You can’t vote on Manston and Infratil and the air monitors removed – no candidate mentions it. You can’t vote on the 0% salary fraud of senior civil servants – no candidate mentions it. Nor top Temps staffing up on the rates. Or Icelandic banks tax funds. Or Thor mercury banned but open. Or FOI of all salaries and expenses and staffing. Or EKO. Or the Labour Chinagate bungs. Or Pleasurama BVI corruption. Nothing. So vote. Pretend it’s a democracy. Rather you’re electing Party fanatics to raise their hand when told to do so. Or with the MP’s like Sandys Party fanatics parachuted into a constituency to do as they’re told. The main policy being increasing tax to pay for politicians and civil serva...

KCC elections? Silence on Manston and Pleasurama and 0% salaries. No public meetings. No policies. So much for democracy. Fill in a form. Stay quiet, Hide behind the rosette. Get elected on a minimal turnout. Don't vote. Don't pay your council tax. Pay it short. Pay it late. No tax for no democracy. And Ramsgate Town Council and emergency meeting to sign off the accounts but exclude the public. The same manipulation through bureaucracy-bumf. Don't attend. If nobody supports them they haveno legitimacy. And the Mayor ceremony next week withDave laready resigned. Time for Garbutt4Mayor. Time to stop the pollution, stop the corruption, stop the construction. Your MP's and councillors and civil servants are corrupt and incompetent. Time for Change.

With Kent on Sunday describing KCC as “stifling democracy” then elected governance is clearly at a low point in Kent. With over 90% of councillors from the Conservatives then a one-party state is the reality. Throw in double-hatters where the same person sits on various councils, and falling turnouts (as low as 15% in by-elections and the Police elections), and monotone politics is the order of the day. Declaring an interest, I’ve stood as MP and now Mayor in Ramsgate as an Independent, to “Stop the Pollution. Stop the Corruption. Stop the Construction.”, against the worst excesses of County governance. We seem cursed with an almost wilfully backward political system: KCC funding Infratil at Manston knowing that the airport is on the water supply, and Infratil and TDC removing the air monitors are heinous crimes. Or there’s the silence over the banned EU aircraft such as Afghanistan’s Kam Air or known gunrunners and blood diamond shippers such as DAS Air, or Jihadist flights such ...

Report on ACG banned from flying: "ACG provides global aircargo transportation with scheduled and chartered long-haul capacity. Besides general cargo they are specialized for heavy and oversized freight, perishables, live animals and dangerous goods.[5] On the 18th of April the company announced that it would temporarily suspend flight operations,[6] this because the airline's Air Operators Certificate was suspended by the German National Aviation Authority; the Luftfahrt-Bundesamt." Abysmal Infratil and TDC and KCC have allowed numerous such flights into Manston. Appart from the new KLM flights last month I think that means there are now no flights into Manston. Perhaps occasional a Lear jet or Cargolux. Nothing - and onto the water supply and with the air monitors removed since 2006. Time for arrests. Time for Manston to close. Time for Thor mercury to close and cleanup. Time for MODFire to close and not pollute the water with fires and chemicals. Time f...