Corrupt Kent and UKIP dictators

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 Assad could hope for an ICC war crimes trial in The Hague and the cell next to the Rwandans and Yugoslavs and Kenyans cluttering that place up.

Syria is already destroyed. The worst option would be further chemical attacks or the kind of limbo-land of Saddam's Iraq between 1990 and 2003 of further destruction.

While both the French intervention in Mali and the UN attack role in The Congo show both the necessity and possible success of intervention especially R2P. 

Maybe Britain's generals could have done better in Basra and Helmand. Maybe not, with the usual MOD errors in equipment. 

Maybe sat in their barracks surrounded by piles of expensive kit they daredn't use - or lose - is the future of our military?

To suggest intervention is always a failure or ineffective is simply not true. We have already have a disaster in Syria. 

Shame on the British government and military for not being able to end his vicious and repulsive regime already as one of the last dictators alongside Mugabe, AlBashir, Nazarbayev, Obiang or Lukashenko - and far sooner than 100,000 casualties and millions of refugees requiring further UK aid.

No doubt the dictator's secret prisons and torture chambers will reveal more British armaments and handcuffs and sniper rifles as usual - this year we were even exporting chemical components for sarin to Assad. And next year's WW1 anniversary is the perfect time to celebrate confining chemical weapons along with napalm and landmines to the history books.

Why are we supporting Egypt with their chemical weapons stockpiles or Angola or Sudan? 

While for Colonel Latchford to speak out on poisoning his own citizens when the removal of the Manston monitors by Infratil and TDC remains unexplained, and with 4x EU safety levels of air pollution endangering the Thanet public, is a disgrace.

When will he speak up on that? 

Time for arrests.

Time for corporate manslaughter charges.

Time for misuse of public office and funds charges.

Time for jail sentences at Infratil and TDC.

Time for Change.

Kent corruption and yet more disaster on the rates.

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 on why monitors were removed back  in 2006.

And pollution levels 4x the EU safety levels.

And even now the illegal overflights and flights onto the aquifer under the runway continue.

Deliberately endangering the public – for what? A few fines? Party glory? Civil service pensions?

A disgusting, grubby little council of corrupt scoundrels.

A few miscellaneous items briefly:

1.      1. The global vote at 16 edges nearer (although in Jersey, Austria and Brazil it’s happened) with Scotland in 2014 for the referendum and Labour pledging the 16 vote before 2020. I must admit I thought the Tories had announced it as policy from 2015 but maybe not. But positive anyway given an ageing population.

2.       Labour also planning to ban zero hours contracts, a cap on payday loans (but not all interest as in Germany or Eire) and flat train fares.

3.       

T2. The 400^th anniversary of Japan-UK relations www.400japan.com  this year being fairly low-key but ramping up with the Will Adams Festival and now the 2020 Olympics for Tokyo. More is required in East Kent with Japanese links such as Fujifilm, Hitachi trains and the various language schools.

4.       Worth mentioning 2 more universities in the global top 200 – a superb achievement for a nation of 60M with the top 20 split almost evenly between UK and USA. I believe more is required from Kent’s 4 – excellent - universities with the rankings and Asian languages.  Disaster for UK education when foreign languages were removed as compulsory 10 years ago: the EU specifies 2 European languages as ideal and I think at least 1 Asian language given the rise of East Asia.

     3. WW1 anniversary next year: little done in London or Kent so opportunities for East Kent with Richboro Port, the White Cliffs of Dover and Folkestone artworks – we should celebrate our Canadian friends in Ramsgate  and lesser-known stories such as air bombing and Vimy Ridge and Passchendale. And Thailand’s contribution of course.

6.       4. Portas Towns: the parliamentary review confirms it as a bit of a disaster. Little of use to Margate.

7.       5. Dreamland: the right direction. Where are the missing rides though?

8.       Pleasurama: the right direction. Clear and tidy the site before winter.

9.       6. Death Row Congo: one death from malaria but Margate’s Joshua French still alive. No doubt to the Foreign Office are doing nothing. Stranded without money or passport? Get knotted. Injured in hospital? Get knotted. In prison? Get knotted. Diplomacy on the rates at its best.

1    7. Drugs dens: excellent KP raids: as Mayor I will ensure there is a drugs den raid every day and publish the haul each month along with Most Wanted, Prison escapees and guns and knives.

E 8. EKFOS: the right direction with a presentation on the activity. The specifics of film aside we’ve seen the failure of relevance on Pfizer or tarmac or Big Industry White elephants like Infratil or TEF – how much have we paid them? For nothing. Good businesses like Piper Windows or Thanet Press go under with 100 jobs lost and not so much as a phone call from the councils for support.

    9. Fire Station/Newington Swimming Pool: the new pool is terrific. And we need the Newington Pool refurbed and reopened. And Poole’s Pool. Tourist towns need swimming pools. A £5M fire station is ludicrous.

     10. Almost 15 children start smoking every day in East Kent- and KCC invest in tobacco, and plain packaging has been delayed and stores still stock cigarettes for Britain’s biggest killer: 100k dead from tobacco and only 3k from road accidents each year.

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     11. DSEI the huge arms fair starts in London this week – guns for the dictator of your choice – and KCC funds BAE the arms manufacturer, and UK providing sarin chemicals to Assad and sniper rifles to Egypt with UK export credits and guns to the Saudi National Guard through the mysterious GPT Projects part of EADS. When the dictator’s torture chambers are opened there will be British gun and ammunition and handcuffs and leg irons and pliers as usual.

  12. Lough Erne and the G8 Declaration positive with disclosure of tax havens required and asset tracing/tax systems for Third World countries and the large corporations. The days of Cayman Islands bank accounts and tuppence tax on billions of pounds profit are ending.

13.   TDC recycling: a step in the right direction, but Canterbury already recycle plastic and plastic bottles and have done for years. Sleepy old lazy old TDC.

And what have Sandys and Gale been doing over the Summer as Thanet slides under the waves?

Nothing.

And we wonder why there are fewer Party members or voters than ever. And yet they seek more Party funding from the State.

A corrupt and incompetent council and our MP’s stay silent.

Jail is required for Infratil and Southern Water and the Environment Agency and TDC and KCC for these massive scandals.

Ramsgate 5^th worst seaside town and Margate 7^th worst and Hastings 9^th worst: the systemic failure of the South East.

Time for Change.