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

Garbutt draft KCC Leader 2017 and MP 2020 manifesto out for consultation and a few points in more detail below: 1. Lebanon: women’s rights tweak – illegal for a woman to vote unless she's completed elementary education. Doesn’t apply to men. A minor gender equality tweak though as both sexes c.94% complete elementary education. Nevertheless gender discrimination given all Saudi women can now vote. Only UAE and Brunei have equal opportunities of not allowing anyone to vote(!). 2. EU vote at 16: #whennotif the EU introduces a universal vote at 16. How can territories such as Jersey or various German regions or nations such as Scotland and Austria allow vote at 16 but not elsewhere? Wasn’t a key point of the EU to introduce consistent standards? 3. UK elections exams: politicians are the only public sector workers without exams. Elected then 5 years of fixed term power. Kent has politicians that can barely read or write. A simple multichoice exam on various political points sho...

FAO Michael-georg Link, Director OSCE, Office for Democratic Institutions Dear Michael-georg In your OSCE election observer/reporter role I wanted to raise various issues with the UK/Kent 2015 elections: 1. Not free: £500 or £5k charge for candidates 2. Illegal candidate: LibDem in in Thanet North election George Cunningham a civil servant for the EU/Taiwan 3. Dual roles: MP and magistrate – not strictly illegal but not a separation of powers 4. Doublehatters: numerous candidates standing for roles ie 4 seats but the same person so reducing democracy and increasing costs 5. Parachute candidates: numerous candidates from out of area ie diminishing local representation 6. Numerous family members and ex-civil servants standing 7. Police silence on point 2 despite being the required investigative authority 8. Electoral Commission: ditto 9. Vote at 16: bias to some UK regions eg Scotland (as well as in EU eg Austria) with greater representation 10. Postal ballots: numerous a...

Clearly Manston is already a dead duck. Indeed one point that seems to have escaped UKIP et al’s notice is the sale of Jentex at the corner of the airfield – which was the fuel store. So UKIP – and Tories - are trying to reopen an airport without planes or fuel or radar or buildings – only a runway that could be a lorry park. Maybe a Parkway train station soon. Don't titter. And after, almost 6 months, nothing for UKIP to show for being elected but an internal revolt and end of their majority to just one - and now none. And the DCLG poverty figures slide backwards to one of the worst in UK. Today Medway cited as the worst in UK for Year 4 schools. Not exactly a flagship process for Britain’s only – and last? - UKIP council. While at KCC any plans for Manston and trust in Latchford and Shonk and the NF chap were completely rejected. So UKIP at County has absolutely no policies. And to lose one District councillor is careless. But five? And are election promises ...

It's National Poetry Day and The Chief has released a Kent Police haiku to celebrate: Roses are red, Violets are blue Kent councils are corrupt and High Court too But not Kent Police. Speaking from the Kent Police poetry room, Chief Alan Pughsley said: "Obviously we is very busy what with drug dens raids and the Kent Police Xmas panto, but we felt it was in the tradition of Great British Policing celebrating the Great British Creative Industries that we should help celebrate National Poetry Day. Especially in Kent, he said, the county of literary greats like Dickens and Shelley and Keats, we felt that a Meiji haiku would be interesting. It doesn't rhyme properly but that's haikus for you. And anyway the Environment Agency contamination had too many syllables in it to fit. Meanwhile if anyone knows the whereabouts of good governance then please call 101 as it is missing." Time for Change www.votegarbutt.co.uk @timg33