Manston One Dollar. Free Chemo Bus.

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 pollution and fake monitoring. For years. Even now.

Even now.

And highlights the failure of KCC and TDC in helping Infratil – even Gale and Sandys.

Delay as long as they can – the civil servants think they’ll keep their salaries and pensions.

And the toothless Environment Agency and CAA shuffling their paperclips rather than taking action.

For this we pay them and they poison us.

A new Chemo Unit at Margate and lots of room on the Chemo Bus.

No charge. Form a queue.

Not even one dollar.

But you've years to pay yet.

Time for Change

Bring Bogoievski and Baker Back. Bring Fitzgerald and Clarke Back. Close Manston.

Remove Infratil and Infratil from the NZ Stock Exchange and Wellington and Rotorua.

A scum company run by scum. A stain on the South Seas. And funded with your tax and your health and your children and grandchildren.

Time for Change.

Sad to see Chief Learmonth of Kent Police standing down after 40 years Police service.
Every Kent citizen must be keen to ensure we have the same high calibre of Chief after January.

I will place Kent Police at the No1 spot in my January review of the public sector - for reforms such as the 3 Police Districts, HGV, Drug Den Raid Every Day, Missing Persons, Most Wanted and monitoring KCC's Jimmy Savile Care Homes - just ahead ahead of the Ambulances and Fire Brigade with excellent smoke alarms, tower block and tobacco reforms.

And further reforms needed on machetes/Samurai swords, Learmonth's lear jet for emergency assistance, Margate's Joshua French on Death Row Congo, badge numbers, 43 Force reforms, Exchange programmes, vaccinations and language learning and guns/ammo FOI.

And every day a drug den raid.

Needless to say the Coastguard and TDC are as abysmal as ever.

The former should be merged with the coastal Fire Brigades and save on pretty uniforms and calling out the RNLI to their work for them. And TDC 30% cuts, tax rises pegged top inflation and salary reductions, pension cancellations and jail for MacGonigal.

More dismal tarmac bureaucracy from KCC with more housing for Manston Green and the laughable plans for Discovery Park shops and houses and hotel in some kind of Cement New Town on the rates.

Winter is here and the Flu Vaccine runs out. More dead pensioners just because it's cold. TB epidemics raging across Romania and Vietnam and London the TB capital of Europe. And the largest pharma site has not only lost most of Pfizer but is supposedly nothing more than a potential housing estate.

Laughable.

Except with the highest youth unemployment ever in Kent and horrifying Third World health statistics, Future Kent jobs are nothing more than shovelling tax-tarmac.

The same incompetence with the Manston Parkway and Westwood Cross that have destroyed the area.

The closure of the Port and FerryGate scandal and EKO waste.

Rampant civil service corruption with the 0% salary fraud.

Derelict Pleasurama and a closed swimming pool for a £5M(!) garage for a fire engine.
And still no full FOI after 7 years: salaries, staffing by dept, pensions, cars, expenses, offices etc.

Time for Change.

An aside on Vietnam – the shame of the Long Tan Australian war memorial in tatters for the sake of a few hundred dollars. Something the UK War Graves Commission would never allow from the thousands of graves from Kohima to Rangoon and Kwai. All spotless. Appalling failure at Long Tan for barely 19 graves. And more to be done with Operation Masterdom and the Bien Hoa cemetery.

And the WW1 commemorations next July of the Canadian contribution to Ramsgate and Flanders. First to answer the call. First to fall. And nothing done for the main anniversary.

The schools and colleges and universities across Kent are simply missing out on the ASEAN opportunities of language learning, translations and exchanges, sports programmes for the Asian Games 2019, digital skills, retail and design. The jobs of the future adrift while Kent sickens and rots and dies.

Time for Vietnam

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 almost 40 years of death and destruction involving France, America, Cambodia and China.

Not Britain’s finest hour although when you’re in London you’ll see the links to Ho Cho Minh living and working there eg the blue plaque on Regent St.

But that was then.

The sad death of General Giap this week is the last main link to that time – Vietnam is a modern nation facing at least a rapid 5% growth and a generation that has no recollection of the horrors of the past, and the potential for greater growth from the current APEC Summit.

And hopefully in the Age of Climate Change avoiding the mistakes of China and the West with excessive tarmac and pollution, and focusing on helath and education.

Despite massive smoking rates, appalling road traffic accidents, the sabre-rattling of the Spratlys and the UK trafficking/drug incidents highlighted in recent months Vietnam’s problems are few in comparison than previous decades.

Corruption and pollution are low compared to Infratil and Thor in Kent despite incidents such as Nicotex or Thanh Tanh commune, with a vibrant and comparatively open media, and a greater emphasis in the UNMDG2 from the UN sessions.

While the potential for Vietnamese tourism with only 6M visitors compared to 20M for Thailand or Malaysia, the ASEAN integration and expanded UK trade links and public sector exchange visits, and activity in the UK are keystones of the future.

Kent’s links with the Vietnam Trade Minister, the Pfizer/Discovery Park strategic vaccine facility for TB and flu (you can tell it’s Autumn in Britain because the leaves change and the flu vaccine runs out) and Kent tourism and language courses have massive potential for the future. As do the film studio and festival links.

The time is now for Vietnam. Whether Kent or Britain can grasp that fact or follow through on it is another matter.

Time for Change