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

The start of the new tourism season is always rather exciting: a Bank Holiday wouldn’t be a Bank Holiday without the potential for 3 or 4 days of pelting rain. But in East Kent it looks as though the sun will be out. Broadstairs as so often making a decent effort with beach swept and some of the huts painted and RNLI Baywatch safety hut and children’s swings etc out. Hopefully Ramsgate will do the same although the street sweepers really have put a superb effort recently – a difficult job but one of those unseen hero roles (rightly celebrated in a Canterbury add campaign too) that really improve all 30 of Kent’s towns. And so important for tourism especially given PM Cameron’s launch of the UK Tourism programmes in Kent a week or so ago. The jobs and economic value of tourism in Kent is incredibly high. The horrific Brussels attacks will disrupt travel in Europe for weeks if not months to some extent – already the US State Department has issued a travel warning for all of ...

Tim Garbutt, Police Commissioner candidate 2016 said: "The horrific attacks on Brussels and Bamako this week are an attack on all of Europe and the EU, stretching back years through Paris, Ankara, Tunisia, Ivory Coast and London and Madrid. And with Brussels and Paris, in Kent's backyard as part of the Benelux nations, then it's concerning that Kent Police have failed to respond more rapidly to these attacks. Even today the Kent Police website still contains no emergency contact information for any Kent or Belgian citizens stranded on either side of the Channel. Kent University, the European university, has put in place a contact telephone number for their thousands of students and staff, so why haven't the 3,000 backoffice staff in Kent Police done the same for the 1.6M Kent citizens? And it's rather farcical that San Diego police all the way over in California, and across several timezones, managed to provide updates yet Kent Police in Maidston...

Dear Editor Clearly we’re seeing the collapse of both RTC and TDC with now the resignation of Iris Johnson as TDC Labour Leader, and the sudden announcements of a council tax increase at TDC and now the absurd attempt at a 40% increase at RTC. Our councillors have failed us. Roger Latchford at KCC will go, and Bayford and Wells at TDC struggle to hang on – all of them silent on the Manston monitors with both Infratil and Gloag, and the Pleasurama corruption. Clearly RTC uplifting the TDC grant from c.£400K to almost c.£600k is laughable given the lack of activity: this Bank Holiday seems to have no activity prepared by either TDC or RTC. The councils are even struggling to sweep the prom of sand or ticket/clamp illegal parking. Perhaps though we should be glad the awful damp bra decorations from the August Bank Holiday, or feeble Xmas decorations won’t reappear. A £200k RTC increase can hardly be for the £9,000 Saturday car parking costs and seems secret pay rises a...

Yet more Kent public services in freefall. That said the decision of Ann Barnes the Kent PCC Police Commissioner to resign without contesting the May election is positive news after a disastrous 5 years of onions and cupasoups and not one but two Yoof Tsars, and mobile police station vans nonsense. Apart from these specific foolish policies the wider concern is that Barnes was actually doing the job for 10 years before being elected! The question being what on earth was she doing (clearly little of value and a lost opportunity of some 15 years now) and how many more of these woefully incompetent characters have burrowed into Kent public services without scrutiny? My Police Commissioner manifesto is here: http://lovekentloveramsgate.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/garbutt-for-police-commissioner-5th-may.html And a couple of the key points are: • Abolish the £5k charge(!) for candidates having to stand – how absurd and undemocratic for free and fair UK elections. The Dambusters or Ken...

By upto it, I mean reform and improvement of not just TDC the council but also Thanet and East Kent? The signs don’t look good: Madeline Homer has been CEO of TDC for almost a year now with a lavish £120k salary –almost as much as the Prime Minister - for the lowest unit of UK governance. And TDC is of course one of Britain’s worst councils – as detailed by Westminster and Whitehall. Plus car and pension and expenses – almost certainly as much again. And surprising these aren’t routinely detailed on the TDC website. Along with all salaries and pensions. Clearly there’s been little improvement in FOI at TDC: a council routinely criticised again by DCLG and Cabinet for secrecy and incompetence – the former secrecy designed to cover the latter. But even that aside what has Homer done in the last year? The appalling FOI secrecy trial of elected councillor Ian Driver over the Pleasurama tax haven fraud is disgusting and illegal – yet still hasn’t been cancelled. Councillors have...

Tim Garbutt, 2016 PCC candidate and 2017 KCC Leader said: " Kent is broken. the existing councils are mired in corruption and incompetence. The economy is rolling backwards: East Kent for example was cited as falling lower in the last 3 years by the Cabinet Office on every social and economic statistic. Youth unemployment is soaring to at least 20% if not higher with statistics fudged. How absurd that Kent Police are the tech leaders in Kent with body cameras and CCTV leaving Kent's youth more likely to be tasered (240 shocks last year) than gainfully employed. Even pharma is one core industry underdeveloped after the closure of Pfizer in Sandwich and Glaxo in Dartford. With the death-knell of Manston ringing in their ears, nothing was done by £2BN KCC last year, nothing the year before and nothing will be done this year. While Kent is failing on the New Economies of Digital - Sussex for example created Wired Sussex and Brighton has its own digi-futur...

A vicious stabbing and pool of blood in Ramsgate town centre comes hard on the heels of the teen mob riot of 30 kids and general lawlessness in street parking on the High St and seafront. (Where were the CCTV cameras on the latter?). And of course the recent Government statistics of East Kent rolling backwards on every deprivation and poverty score in the last 3 years. And Kent Police's own statistics of just 17% of rapes and 10% of burglaries solved - presumably if they are recorded at all. To be fair, with the collapse of governance, Kent Police are often at the sharp end of these crimes and simply mopping up the mess. Yet we pay c.£300M for 6,000 police and £16M for 750 TDC staff and £2BN for who knows how many KCC staff to do nothing. But, at the very least the illegal sale of machetes and crossbows should be stopped along with regular police foot and car patrols and ticketing of cars, and weekly crime statistics. Indeed after the Goldfinger shotgun wound farce ...