KCC Corruption election

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 as IranAir – effectively making Manston and Ostend and Luxembourg the hub for the dirty trade of guns and drugs into Africa. Just last week yet another airline, Germany’s ACG, was banned from the skies over Kent.

Or there’s the quieter horror of KCC investing in tobacco, booze and BAE shares – while tasked with improving public health. All the more concerning with my predecessor Jonathan Aitken jailed for the ongoing Al-Yamamah corrupt Saudi arms deals or now Sangcom. Or Thor mercury banned in Margate 20 years ago for poisoning its workers and the public, doing the same in Cato Ridge, South Africa – and remaining open to this day at the Margate site.

Clearly many of these aren’t councillor issues as such, the ageing councillors can hardly keep up with the pace of modern events or desire much more for Kent than an indoor privy, but rather a bloated and failing public sector still exempt from full FOI after 7 years. The alphabet soup of the Environment Agency, HSE, Southern Water, Police, and CAA have all shied away from action preferring silence and cover-up and pension protectionism rather than protecting the public. The Belgian civil service, just a few miles away and speaking English and paid for from UK tax, could run the place better and cheaper?

A similar picture exists with blatant corruption such as the ChinaGate bung to Ramsgate Labour – its largest ever donation for Kent’s largest ever development shrouded in secrecy. Or Pleasurama, Kent’s largest seafront development again shrouded in secrecy with its directors registered in the British Virgin Islands. Hardly sensible for KCC, supposedly one of the largest and best UK’s top two councils – especially with George Osborne clamping down on tax havens ahead of the G8 Summit this Summer in Northern Ireland.

While Top Temps, effectively a front company for KCC staffing-up or Top Travel also undercutting the private sector with public funds, the failed investments in Icelandic banks, the million pound Laser fraud, the 0% salaries fraud of the senior civil servants and Cabinet at TDC, and Two Carters salaries and – Manston again – the failure of EUJet and KCCUSA investments and now shuttling money to Infratil via Visit Kent hardly inspire confidence in a £2.3Bn tax organisation – almost Malawi’s total GDP and larger per capita than India, Cambodia or Uganda.

Clearly we have First World funding but Third World services.

I make no bones that the Toxic Three of Carter, King and Wild have not just failed Kent, but deliberately and repeatedly endangered the public and, as with the Gang of Four and Gale and Sandys, have no place in Kent public life. The doodlebug did less damage.
Rather, as with the Infratil Directors they should face criminal charges and jail.

What must other Counties think? What must your children and grandchildren think if this represents the best of County governance? How bad must failed councils such as TDC or Tower Hamlets or Hackney or Birmingham be if this is Great Britain at its greatest? What must our international partners in Virginia or Hungary or dozens of European towns think?
The recent Vietnam Trade Mission must wonder what is going on, although the Vietnamese Foreign Minister having described over a third of his department as completely useless, would no doubt feel at home.

And we seem to have a two-speed Kent not dissimilar to the Jim Crow period of the US Deep South with East Kent as a plantation state lorded over by the West Kent dormitory towns. And we could have had town planning to create Venices rather than the verrucas of Gillingham or Ashford or Dover or Dartford or any of the tarmac slop that passes for regenerating Kent’s towns.

I maintain we need deep reforms to make Kent fit for the twentieth century at least: a directly-elected Leader, more vibrant opposition parties and independents, political exams, void and rerun elections under 30% turnout for better policies and candidates, and manifestos published 6 months before elections. And specified recall, referenda criteria and of course full FOI- all over 7 years late now for civil service protectionism.

For the challenges of the 21st century far more is required: detailed public health and pandemic policies to mitigate the foolishness of lifting rabies restrictions at Kent ports and live animal exports bans, and coping with the TB alert across London and Romania - and even the measles outbreak in Wales.

SARS, Bird flu and Swine flu are a plane flight away and would surely blitz dozing Kent with its surfeit of ports, airports, Chunnel, language schools and tourists. We struggle to provide a flu vaccine for more than the first few weeks of winter and scandalously allow thousands of our pensioners to die like flies.

And with Manston flying in guns and cocaine – 85% of illegal drugs are seized in Belgium on the transit routes from Afghanistan, Turkey and Amsterdam, illegal immigrants are the least of our problems as they could have a first class seat day or night in any Jumbo jet into Kent.

While Police reforms are underway such as tighter Cold casework in Kent with the O’Leary case or Surrey Police and Magnitsky, Missing Persons and Drug den and counterfeit tobacco raids and even FOI on guns, spydrones and uniform improvements on procurement and international partnerships with Mexico, Thailand, Cambodia and Romania – and even dragging the Coastguard up by its bootstraps with oil tankers berthed off the Blue flag coast.

Yet British citizens are largely stranded on Death Row in Congo or Indonesia or extradited to USA at the drop of a hat and left to the idle mercies of a cocktail party Foreign Office.

And Kent’s schoolchildren face the ignominy, not of homes and schools for heroes promised to their grandparents and great-grandparents but asbestos schooling, the vote at 16 provided to Scotland first and slum town planning and overbuild. Yet countries such as Finland and Thailand easily lead the way for a digital future with free wifi, FabLabs and tablet PC’s. Junky towns in a RapeNation, and a horsemeat burger for school lunch is thin gruel indeed, but perhaps a fitting end for the Kent white horse conquered by apathy, incompetence and corruption.

And now with less than 1,000 days to go – after 12 years of inaction - to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals it’s time to fast-forward Kent with every public sector organisation and NGO adopting and adapting the goals. Initial UK elections for the UN World Parliament. Every organisation needs to adopt Climate Change and Fairtrade principles and a County-wide economic plan to drive growth. Those civil servants working hard on embedded water policies, desalination plants or tourism policies must rightly feel ignored. They are. So are Lord Heseltine’s recommendations on growth.

I’m not confident if can be done. The rot has set in and worked its way deep. The Northfleet children with their intestines growing out of their stomachs are ignored, the KCC vulnerable children abandoned to the night, Lydd airport expansion detailing in high Court bungs to councillors, the 2012 greatest games in a generation been and gone, Dreamland derelict and Pfizer losing over 2,000 jobs in the last 2 years.

Frontline Kent seems to have collapsed – British heroes such as Ramsgate’s Channel Dash airmen, or the victory over the Spanish Armada off Margate are ignored. Britain’s Korean War heroes, staving off Communism to create a vibrant South Korean democracy and economy, forgotten 70 years on. Kent’s legions of troops creating democracy from the beaches of Normandy to the jungles of Burma left to rot.

And the cruel political farce of next month’s 70th anniversary of The Dambusters celebrated not in Broadstairs with the trials of the bouncing bomb, but in Kings Hill as a political vanity.

Kent has fallen low. Kent’s worst generation has failed us. The County elections are on Thursday 2nd May: hold your nose and vote if you dare.

Manston's last flights banned

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 for a clearout of councillors and civil servants.

Time for full FOI: staffing, salaries, pensions, offices, cars - DFID does it.

Time for FOI on police drugs seizures and weapons.

Time for Garbutt4Mayor 7th May.

Volunteers, staff and offices needed: email timgarbutt@yahoo.com

The TDC pensioners have failed us. Thanet's worst generation poisoning their own children and grandchildren and coverup.

April's council tax is yours: cancel your direct debit and simply refuse to pay.

A Friday school strike: simply don't return to school after Friday lunch. 2 hours of missed school won't make you stupid - and no asbestos in schools and a free tablet PC.

Tie a green ribbon on the railings of Eastcliff bandstand for the cancer victims.

No votes for poisoning your own citizens.

No tax for poisoning your own citizens.

Time for ECGD publication of Third World debt held by UK.

Time for banks to follow Barclays and end speculation on food, creating famine.

Time for Change.

Toxic KCC election: the candidates

As promised an overview of the KCC county elections, but yet more dismal goings-on at Manston. The Sunday cocaine planes again and a Monarch flight illegally circling over Ramsgate in training circuits.

Worth remembering the AfghanAir (banned!) flight that crashed off the runway and the flight from Manston that crashed on landing on Eire. And at the weekend the LionAir flight in Indonesia that belly-flopped off the end of the runway into the sea.

Clearly an airport like Manston with repeated safety breaches is a danger simply downplayed and ignored or deliberately supported by those with a duty of care.

The early April bounty for the arrest and extradition of the Infratil Directors has risen to by a further £10,000. Bogoievski, Baker, Fitzgerald, Clarke, Buchanan and Pedro in the control tower.

Scoundrels.

Extradited. The perp walk. Legirons and handcuffs. Pentonville. The runway dug up. The warehouses demolished. The control tower dynamited. And any planes seized and scrapped. All this awaits them.

Here’s a summary of the KCC candidates for the 2nd May election.

And you have 3 choices:

1. Refuse to vote or spoil your ballot paper
2. Vote Conservative – essentially stagnation and supporting the Toxic Three of Carter, King and Wild and the corruption at TDC scapegoated with Sandy
3. Vote for any of the other candidates

It’s your choice.

Any electoral turnout under 30% should be considered null and void, and re-run with better candidates/policies.

KCC has been Conservative for decades – which isn’t especially surprising as most of the shires are – but the Conservative councillors are now over 90% of the council which even Conservative councillors find ludicrous for democracy.

Kent on Sunday described KCC as “stifling democracy” and I think that’s fair. While, no directly-elected Leader means the council becomes essentially a Party meeting and tends to be weighted towards West Kent.

Hence East Kent and Thanet stagnating and deprived of funding or used as a dumping ground.

Perhaps worse, your children and grandchildren are expected to be polluted. And that’s OK. They deserve nothing better.

A couple of principles on the election to consider:

• Do not vote for doublehatters: roadblocking democracy and unnecessary seats/costs
• Do not vote for councillors from other towns/shifting seats: the Party games of parachute candidates
• A too-large council that could be halved: 7 councillors at Town level, District abolished and c.30 at County
• FOI pledges from councillors: why are public funds and meetings and documents still secret? How can you – or they – make any electoral decisions without knowing staffing levels, salaries, pensions, cars, expenses, office space etc
Here’s the candidates and my views for your consideration:

Bad:

• Roger Latchford, UKIP: formerly the Gang of Four and astonishing he’s standing again albeit switching to UKIP. Do not vote for this man. After the horror of the Manston monitors he should not be in elected politics and he’s too old for a jail cell. Do not vote for this man.
• Rick Everitt, Labour: a scoundrel. I raised the corruption at RTC’s previous annual meeting and he simply laughed and brayed “call the police, see what they’ll do” etc. Do not vote for this man.
• Jo Gideon, Conservative: Airport Committee - years of refusing to raise the missing monitors. Do not vote for her. No votes for poisoning your own citizens.
• Bob Bayford, Conservative, Party leader, former Leader after the Gang of Four. Silence on Manston, Thor and Pleasurama. 20 years in the council. If he could have improved things he would have. Do not vote for this man.

Dubious:

• Chris Wells, Conservative: I know Chris worked hard for his constituents but I understand he was on the Airport Committee and failed to take action on the monitors. A Doublehatter. Vote with your conscience.
• Bill Hayton, Conservative, KCC Chair previously. Silence on Manston, Thor and Pleasurama. Vote with your conscience.

Good:

• Liz Green, Labour: works hard for Ramsgate and one of only two Labour candidates at KCC which must be difficult. But a triplehatter. Vote for Liz.
• John Kirby, Conservative: works hard on improving Westcliff and town signage. Vote for John.
• Trevor Shonk, UKIP: cares about the town. Vote for Trevor.
• 2 Labour: Amy Rutland and Will Scobie: new blood. Vote for Amy and Will. They couldn’t make it any worse. Could they?
• 3 LibDems: Tony Flaig, Bill Furness, Matt Brown. Vote for Tony, Bill and Matt.
• 2 Independents: Ian Driver and Tom King: Vote for Ian and Tom.
• 3 Greens: Mike White, Ed Targett and Tim Spencer. Climate Change. Climate Change. Climate Change. Vote for Mike, Ed and Tim. A Green Kent. A Green Coast.
Some of the candidates/districts may overlap and so this needs fine-tuning.

I don’t know of the other candidates.

But you have 3 choices:

1. Refuse to vote or spoil your ballot paper
2. Vote Conservative – essentially stagnation and supporting Carter’s Toxic Three and the corruption at TDC
3. Vote for any of the other candidates – an Alliance for Democracy

Here’s the Conservative manifesto released today: it’s mainly the same empty guff for failure. No zero Asbestos in schools. No White Elephants or the Road to Nowhere. No zero landfill. No winter pensioner policies. No free windfarm electricity. No 10% interest rate cap. Although it is an improvement in KCC’s civil servants not drafting policy for the politicians. But a dozen powerpoint pages for a £2Bn council? That’s it?

http://www.kentconservatives.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Kent-Conservative-Manifesto-2013.pdf

It could have been written on a pair of slippers any time in the last 100 years.

And the horror of still endorsing Manston and Lydd.

No votes for poisoning your own citizens.

Rather, we need: No Manston. No Thor. No Asbestos. No Pandemics: TB, Rabies, SARS, Measles/MMR, Swine flu and Bird Flu.

I know of no manifestos for Labour, LibDems, Greens, Independents or Labour: if there are any then please email me at timgarbutt@yahoo.com and I’ll include links.

I’m hearing rumours Dave has stood down as Mayor and Chair at RTC. I will ask him to stay on as my Deputy Mayor.

I will be a Mayor for East Kent, Eastern Europe and East asia.

And as Mayor I will ensure: No JunkyTown. No RapeNation. No Pandemics.

Can you help? I need volunteers, office space and fundraisers.

Time for a drugs den raid every day. No JunkyTown.
Time for rape policy improvements after the G8 Congo rapes: 85,000 UK rapes. No RapeNation.
Time for Pfizer UK vaccine strategic facility. No vaccine shortages.
Time for Change.

KCC elections: pollution, corruption and construction

The KCC candidates for Thanet have been announced and I’ll write separately on who I think would be good candidates and an update on the Kent public sector league table.

It’s mostly the same old faces and doublehatters though – if they could have improved things they would have wouldn’t they?

One notable candidate to avoid is Roger Latchford of the Gang of Four: Manston monitors etc.

And a key issue is: when do we question them? Where are their policies? Where are the hustings?

It looks like they fill in a form, post if off, are elected and that’s it for 5 years. A sham of democracy especially with such low turnouts and the Party machine: down to 15% for the police election and recent Canterbury by-election.

Here’s some questions to ask of them though:

1. Who removed the Manston monitors, why have they not been replaced and where are the fines for overflights and air pollution?
2. How much contamination at Thor and what has been/will be done?
3. Also the Manston aquifer
4. And Ramsgate sewers with faeces in the water and blocked drains/Southern Water
5. Will you resign double hatter seats
6. Should the minimum turnout be 30% before an election is declared void and re-run?
7. Do you support a Margate Town Council?
8. Will you vote out the Toxic Three of Carter, Wild and King?
9. Do you support votes at 16 and criteria for recall, referendum and direct votes?
10. Where is the rest of FOI: salaries, staffing by dept, offices, pensions, cars?
11. Where are the 0% salaries fraud costs approved by Moores and McGonigal, and have the Police been briefed?
12. Do you want a ban on live animal exports from Ramsgate and all Kent ports?
13. With 1m empty houses in UK how much house-building do you support?
14. Should council tax be pegged to inflation or less as a general rule?
15. Will you vote against KCC investments in tobacco, booze and guns?
16. With 90% of councillors Conservative how can KCC be less of a one-party fiefdom?
17. How many vulnerable children are lost by KCC each month?
18. Do you support ships berthed off the Blue Flag beaches?
19. Ramsgate pays £17M in council tax – what are the KCC contributions spent in the area and beyond civil servant staffing?
20. Do you support no council payoffs beyond a month’s salary and a ban on other public sector jobs for misconduct?
21. Do you support the sacking of AIDS Gregory, and shirtlifting bint Harrison as incompetent and Gale for 30 years of failure?
22. Do you support, as in Germany, bank interest rates pegged to below 10% and the end of payday 4,000% loans including closure of such shops?
23. Do you support the end of banks’ food speculation investments as with Barclays?
24. How much asbestos is in Kent schools and how is the cleanup going?
25. Do you support FOI on police drugs seizures and weapons stocks/procurement

Expect prevarication, mumbling, blaming the other lot, vagueness and general flannel.
They can’t do it and will waste public funds and time.

A couple of minor points:

* the UK last week became the first G8 nation to achieve the 0.7% Third World aid target pledged in 1970, (most of the others are scheduled to achieve it by 2015) - except USA and Japan both on c.0.2%
* Barclays became the first UK bank to end food speculation investments that increase famine - will your bank?


Time for a Police investigation into Manston with arrests – we’re not funding McGonigal etc to allow pollution and then delay the inquiry while being paid by the people she’s polluted.

Time for Buchanan and Pedro in the control tower to be arrested for not replacing the required monitors and illegal overflights.

What is this farce. £60M paid to TDC and £2Bn paid to KCC to be a tuppeny polluters and a corruption nest?

The Gang of Four gone.
Richboro power station gone.
Manston gunrunners and cargo flights gone.
ChinaGate gone.

All supported by the existing councillors and MP’s.

Time for a clearout.

Time for Change.