Time for Sudan and East Africa

I don’t subscribe to the current belief that either Russia or China are intrinsically enemies of UK or the West.

Certainly undemocratic nations at the moment, but as in any developed one party state, divisions appearing within the party leadership and so imperfectly replicating democracy.

Rather, most of Britain’s enemies in recent decades have been brutal dictatorships – Saddam’s Iraq or Gaddafi’s Libya or Syria’s Assad spring to mind.

All using or threatening the use of chemical weapons on their own populations. Sudan’s Bashir still indicted by the ICC for genocide, while the latest crime of Malian world heritage destruction, as with Bamiyan and Dresden Elbe bridge, and al-Mahdi to be sentenced next month.

And Broken Nations such as Afghanistan and Somalia and Sudan and Yemen now destroying their own populations.

Hungary's former US ambassador spoke eloquently on the need and possibility of dictators out: only the last few now in Africa and delays by the African Union: Eritrea, Cameroon, EqGuinea, Zim.

East Africa though being an endemic hot-zone of conflict and poverty.

And as with reforms and planning for Turkey to join the EU, there’s no reason why a reformist Russia, with or without Putin, shouldn’t join the EU. Reforms around Crimea could even make a Russian accession faster than many of the North African nations.

With populations of c.150M within a thin strip on the Mediterranean from Marrakesh to Beirut why wouldn’t those MENA nations join the EU?
It will be a while before Syria is reconstructed.

China has long been a landpower though, focused on its internal conflicts, whether Tibet or Uighurs or moving to a Capitalism with Communist tendencies system, and peaceful handover of Hong Kong and Macau ending Western Empires in Asia.

China’s main issue must be a rogue North Korea with nuclear weapons attacking South Korea or Japan or economic collapse or famine again with refugees streaming across the Yalu into China. And the potential for reunification reforms as with East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

And more realistic is such growth in a demilitarised Korean peninsula, and removal of US troops if not also from Okinawa. And eventual peaceful reunion with Taiwan, as with Hong Kong, as China’s economy and democracy expands.


~~China Off-Track~~

But recent Chinese developments are those of an expansionist naval power.

If the China’s second-hand Ukrainian aircraft carrier is largely junk , the submarine base on Hainan isn’t, nor the ongoing Paracels conflict with Vietnam from the last days of the American War. And the Spratlys bases and Nine Dash Line around all the South China Sea, as far south as HCMC. The ICC only adjudicating in favour of Philippines this month.

But now a Chinese naval base in Djibouti on the Red Sea-Suez Canal route a few miles from Camp Lemonnier, the main USMC base of Africa Command.

The Suez Canal is likely to be increasingly important for the EU and China as the main trade route to Europe, and part of the Silk Road-Silk Belt policy. And Gulf oil will be less important with renewables eg even Saudi Arabia’s 2030 national plan focused on renewables not oil, and Desertec solar in the Sahara.

UK imperial vanities have faded and been lost in EU and UN oversight. But there’s also a lack of focus on resolving the conflicts across Central Africa.

Say with reintroducing the Desert Rats SIB battalions of East Africa, and existing UK training bases in Kenya, and, say, a Royal Marines focus on West Africa’s jungles and river deltas, following the success of the Sierra Leone civil war, and French Sahel zone, and dangers of Ebola and now Yellow Fever.

Afghanistan and Iraq have shown the incompetence of much UK military planning as cited by the generals themselves in the latest defence report, while a Royal Navy base in Bahrain looks just so much waste. As is a UK-Arabian trade policy consisting almost totally in arms sales and Germany calling for an EU arms export ban.

As an aside, Pandemics are a massive danger: Haiti cholera and Nepalese troops a concern with Kent’s Ghurkas, and shambolic NHS and UKIP-racism. And USA now calling for blood-screening for the Zika virus. All the more need for the Left is Life policy and blood donations with UK’s military and police and general need for blood and organs with advances in surgery.

While the USA’s Africa Command is failing with just desk-troops in Stuttgart recording the atrocities rather than say 82nd and 101st Airborne rotations through East Africa. The Economist details US troops numbering just c.7,000 in Africa.

And as always the lack of say a Ministry of Reconstruction for post-conflict development.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/16/un-peacekeepers-in-south-sudan-turned-blind-eye-to-rape-and-abus/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/05/21/map-the-u-s-currently-has-troops-in-these-african-countries

Kony and the Nigerian girls still missing, Congo and Somalia broken, and Sudan in flames again.

Almost every nation in Central Africa last week cited by Human Rights Watch as Not Free (and Swaziland and Mauritania beyond it) and jiggery-pokery of presidential terms extended under disposable constitutions.

The UK's contribution to UN Peacekeeping and UN Police is abysmal: Canada this week announcing an extra 150 UN Police.


~~Barracks Bloat~~

Rather USA faces a top-heavy military spend of almost 50% on the Department of Defense: 1M US troops based in the continental United States and barely 100,000 abroad in Germany or Japan or Korea combined. Even the Afghan War amounted to no more than 100,000 US troops.

That’s for the American taxpayer to decide what’s best for them, but what an unleashing of industry and innovation in say the solar panel or healthcare industries, from reduced spending and personnel in the military?

The UK could benefit more from a Carers Army, and army of teachers, with even further reductions in the 79,000 UK military. And an admiral for every ship whether at sea or a land base is absurd bloat.

The cry, from the military and their kit manufacturers, of it’s the smallest military since the Boer War should be met with the cry of yes: no empire and no wars so that’s a good thing. Especially with the MOD recent record of losing wars and habit of providing the wrong kit.

It’s certainly more than an internal security force of c.10,000 troops and a dozen ships typical for most larger nations.

And it's likely to be under 50,000, with the long-delayed Cold War dividend of the 20,000 in the British Army on the Rhine, bizarrely defending the German Army and its lower NATO 2% figure of 1.3% - and wasteful German conscription brought back for a day last week then hastily cancelled.

And shouldn’t, as a minimum, the medical and engineering teams within the military be forwarded to Africa rather than sat around in Albuquerque or Aachen?

Even the much heralded Pivot South is a mere 1,500 US troops in Darwin.

Ever more expensive military kit rusting away in broken cities and failed medicare makes Eisenhower’s warning on the weight of the military–industrial complex largely true.

Perhaps every British embassy and trade mission should actively exclude the military and same-old same-old faces such as The City and Rolls Royce, largely capable of funding their own trade activity on their own dime, and include more SME’s in innovation and growth sectors to kick-start the huge UK economic targets.

While thousands of nuclear weapons pointing into the sea, rather than enemies real or imagined, is a peace dividend not yet fully realised. The former general in charge of USA nuclear weapons estimating a need of no more than 300 warheads not 12,000 for the ultimate security policy, or revenge attack.

And with and a far greater risk of Chernobyl or Fukushima or Sellafield accidents and contamination, or a Nuclear Winter if used, Hinkley must surely mark the beginning of UK’s 15 elderly nuclear power stations being retired, as in Germany and Italy and Japan.


~~China's String of Pearls~~

Chinese bases too at Karachi and Gwadar in Pakistan, and Oman’s Salalah and Seychelles and Myanmar stretch Chinese influence into the Indian Ocean. As Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan placed it within reach of Balochistan's warm water ports.

While Walvis Bay in Namibia, the Argentine space telescopes supposedly funded by the Chinese military, and Azores are the keys to China’s nascent Mahan-esque naval strategy. As with the British Imperial bases before, as coaling or resupply facilities.

But to what purpose now beyond stirring Yellow Peril or Reds Under the Bed twaddle?

None.

Except military overspend.

Modern ships already circumnavigate the globe – the Panama Canal now widened for mega-ships – and with almost no crew, and will be ever more automated.

Certainly China could buy up Guantanmo Bay in Cuba or the whole Panama Canal Zone, or the Falklands ahead of the Magellan Sanlucar anniversaries in 2019-22 across Spain and Portugal, and close the locks on all the sea routes.

But Mahan could be considered merely backward-looking on the primacy of seapower, now raising only the possibility of conflict with ASEAN or India.

And with trade routes that don’t rely on the sea anymore. Easier and faster hi-speed rail routes are already in place to Duisberg and Rotterdam, and down as far as Madrid, in Europe.

Netherlands is already leading the way with integrated IofT freight through Rotterdam, Antwerp and Schipol.

And the final overland links of a Gibraltar-Morocco road-rail bridges or tunnel, linking through to Cairo and Tel Aviv and Beirut, are minor connectivity tweaks.

And only the last few miles of the Cape to Cairo route are not yet in place, connecting Africa’s largest populations on the Eastern seaboard between South Africa and Egypt and facing the large Arabian, Indian and ASEAN ports.


~~Tunnel Vision~~

Even the Imperial Germany route of Basra to Berlin by rail is now viable again, and even with easier pipelines, before the last few drops of oil are left in the ground. And plans underway to link across the Arabian peninsula from Kuwait to Jeddah and Mecca and a tunnel or bridge through to Port Sudan.

Perhaps a reliance on oil and bling-bling architecture has been a distraction and failing in putting in place Saudi’s necessary transport infrastructure. Even the lack of planning for Mecca tourism and repeated deaths by crowds.

The Bering Strait Tunnel is now raised between Alaska and Russia, connecting Vancouver, the America’s largest Western port, to Shanghai overland, all without the typhoons and tsunamis of the Pacific Ocean.

Such a hi-speed rail route through to Europe and Asia would increase capacity for Latin America’s markets too, especially with the new FARC ceasefire this week ending Colombia’s civil war.

And none of the infrastructure more technologically complex than Denmark’s Oresund Bridge to Sweden, or the Channel Tunnel, or Crossrail or the Australian continental roads and railways, especially with the surfeit of AU, ADB and AIIB financing available.

The success of the Rio Olympics and economic sector adjustment through healthier eating and sugar taxes etc, whether Cuba sugarcane or Argentine corned beef, are a spur to much greater UK-LatAm activity - the Fray Bentos factory is unusual in gaining a UNESCO World Heritage listing in Uruguay.

And there’s the potential for UK and German automotive success.

The resurgence of UK trade with Latin America with the opening of Cuba, must be key for VW too, Europe’s largest auto company active in the resurgent UK auto industry. UK’s largest car exports for 12 years with dynamic companies such as Landrover and its 4x4 are best-placed to expand Europe’s and ASEAN’s automotive industry into the Americas and loosen the dominance of GM.

Regions such as Antofagasta perfect for the Circular Economy of recycling yards and screwdriver assembly, and accessing both Chilean and Argentine ports on the Pacific and Atlantic, even existing SEZ zones such as Tierra del Fuego.


~~UN connectivity~~

An Eire-Northern Ireland-Scotland route is no more strategic than speeding up the delivery of goods to those nations, and removing traffic jams on England’s roads, and hopefully without Belfast’s Semtexit from the Brexit silliness of the last few weeks.

Certainly there is also a setback in terms of UN reform - many of the above connectivity plans approved but drifting under the UN - with rather weak candidates so far, given the initial advances in the UN Secretary-General election by Denmark’s UN president, and an overdue merger of UK and French seats into an EU seat, and a place at the table for India and African Union.

Such UN reforms as, with the innovative UN Women programme, would focus on Indian and Africa programmes for UNDG30 - and downsize everything else into a UN-ROTW for want of a better term. Kofi Anna's aim of moving the UN offices from Geneva and Vienna and New York into Africa has also stalled.

While tobacco (5M deaths each year), coordinated space exploration and cancer (8M deaths each year), air pollution (13M deaths each year) have been ignored or downplayed in the UNSDG30 goals so far. The existing goals would save c.30M lives each year, the total of WW2 deaths over 5 years.

Upto 450M lives saved or extended by 2030, isn’t yet taken as seriously as it should be. With say G20 0.7% target for 90% of world trade.

And the potential is now for national goals of longevity say age 100 initially rather than humanity organically inching upwards by 2 years per decade.

Time for Change
@timg33


Misc

* Time for Great British Thai OTOP: RoiEt jasmine rice, Sisaket mushroom crisps, Surin silk and silver. Time for Change timg33

* Time for Free Economy already underway: Finland wage trial in 2017, Swiss vote and Utrecht trial. British Gas Freetime free utilities. goo.gl/QspsOZ Time for Change @timg33

* Time for Eastcliff bandstand repairs: Grade 1 listed, Victorian Society and Sgt Pepper anniv 2017.

* Pleasurama finished. Kent's largest council corruption scheme. Time for site clearance. Another Summer wasted.

* Foolish £8m fire station and 2nd swimming pool

* very surprising £20M parkway waste continues and £480M SELP tax costs - rule of thumb at least 30% tax wasted? c.43% tax GDP regardless of any political party

* excellent TDC Margate Beach volleyball - and CCU Sports activity, plus FA Summer Schools next year and Visit Kent

* Time for end of Ian Driver High Court ban and £20k fine and Kent Police Domestic Extremist random cops database: outrageous abuse of an elected councilor and MP's

* Cyprus and Australia holidaymaker death: need for Kent Police Int Unit Eurasia oversight/centralised point with GMP Americas, for UK citizens abroad eg Joshua French Congo Death Row

* Falmouth largest UK cocaine haul - again. Too many East Kent junkies and dealers - lack of supply in future, increase jail sentences and NHS programmes

General inaction on points that interest me:

- Pavilion Wetherspoons end
- KORA office
- KU/CCU roles and Chula etc
- Green/Grabiner and BHS scandal with One Essex Court fraud - restarts next week
- concerning both Italy and Bagan earthquake - disaster repsonse, thermal radar, forecasting etc etc


* M20 Bridge collapse today: shambolic highways management and Stack, previous Bank Hols etc etc - full review needed

Bank notes in Ponderland and Thailand and UK

Khun Sutapa Amornvivat of SCB Bank writing at InPonderland last week, as always, makes an eloquent point on the crisis facing the global banking industry.

As she pointed out the previous month, automation will increase its impact in that industry whether branch closures and ATM consolidation or the flash-crash AI hyper-dealings of the stock exchanges and is worth wider consideration.

While her latest article highlights the Bank of England now offering its record low rate of interest in 622 years. Japan is mired in sluggish growth as the Abenomic arrows miss their target, although popping up at Rio as a Super Mario computer game character to launch Tokyo2020 seems to have hit the mark.

But almost daily banking scandals whether the LIBOR fiddles in the City, billion dollar fines for HSBC money-laundering through Mexican and Japanese banks or accounting fraud in corporations such as Olympus losing 80% of its shareholder value reduce public faith in many banks and the wider industry.

And if as she says the USA has weathered the 2008 banking crash better than most then it must surely be fractional, with both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae being nationalised (and also RBS in UK) amid the wreckage of trillion dollar bank bailouts.

More money has been printed for the banks in a few short years than has ever been provided in Third World aid.

So much so that progressive bankers such as Woodward Investments in UK this week have now called a halt to City bonuses as distorting both the market and corporate growth. And the debate around Maximum Salaries, Working week adjustments and Intra-company Inequality can only grow.

~~Future banking~~

And therein lies the substance of Khun Sutapa's point in ensuring a banking system that works for the good of all rather than just the banks.

The social movement of The 99% is gathering pace though riots and revolts and eventually political power with say Podemos in Spain, Five Star in Italy and even UKIP protests in UK throwing petrol on the fire of the far right on the rise across much of the EU especially Hungary's Jobbik and Austria's Freedom Party and France's FN.

The bank reforms subsequent to 2008 have hardly begun, with CET1 Khun Sutapa mentions, and Basel3 being mere minor percentage adjustments of the deckchairs on the banking system’s Titanic.

Though, UK is progressing apace on various reforms – hopefully not delayed by the Summer of Silliness of Brexit which looks likely to be cancelled on Parliament’s return in September. As if losing the AAA credit rating and causing jitters through every stock market wasn’t bad enough for UK plc.

The latest banking reforms are already unveiled with for example, by 2018, every UK bank required to issue a comparison app for the cheapest current account rates and overdrafts including capped overdraft rates. No more extortionate $20 charges for a $1 overdraft error.

Here in Kent - hardly the epicentre of the world financial industry I would be the first to admit – the stellar bonuses in the nearby City distort the Kent property market for mansions and farms each year.

Yet even here in East Kent we have had reforms under Mark Carney Governor of the Bank of England launching the new £20 note with the artist JMW Turner to be introduced in 2020 (and a £10 note with Jane Austen for 2017) just 3 months ago at the Turner mega-Arts gallery in Margate.

And Victoria Cleland the Cashier for the Bank of England (her signature appears on each note, which must take her hours) spent time at the National Trust’s Chartwell, the home of Winston Churchill, and just a few miles from Kent’s Chevening mansion, now the base for not one but 3 Foreign Secretaries and named for the British Council’s UK scholarships.

Victoria was launching the new Winston Churchill £5 note for next month, the UK being the first major economy to switch to plastic polymer notes and ending the Treasury’s 322-year tradition of paper money. The long-lasting notes, hopefully avoiding any Weimar bonfire of hyper-inflation, will last 5 years rather than 2 years, saving £100M over 10 years and allowing for new counterfeiting features.

But for Thailand that’s all well and good, and no doubt SCB are already updating their systems for the new UK notes (the banknotes have a tendency to stick together when new which may be even more problematic in tropical heat).

And the UK has already seen its first full year of electronic money replacing paper currency. On my trips to Thailand the electronic passport cards that now replace travellers' cheques attracted some curiosity in some banks, so expanding banking training could be useful.


~~Future Finace Reforms~~


As with DTAC - active in progressing mobile banking - such literacy and training programmes are as vital as cybersecurity, the latter key given 10,000 ATM's across Thailand hacked just this week via the redoubtable Bank of Thailand and GSB.

Surely too the Thai banking industry bouncing back from the 1997 Crash – I stopped counting as the baht rose from 45 to 84 to the pound then – must be considering expanding its UK and European operations to boost the Thai economy given a 92% fall in Thailand’s FDI?

London for all its LIBOR faults is still the centre of world markets and surely just one branch of Bangkok Bank in The City is not enough for the Thai bank industry and economy?

Indeed with calls from government for UK challenger banks to have most-favoured legislation such as the USA’s Metro bank and Richard Branson’s Virgin Money to increase activity to break the stagnation of the too-big-to-fail Big 5 of Lloyds etc, shouldn’t the more dynamic Thai banking centre expand to UK?

SCB itself has played somewhat safe with expansion to Cambodia although the rather peculiar Cambodian Commercial banking detracts from the normally excellent SCB advertising, and Central dept stores has retrenched from Italian expansion (perhaps wisely given the Mafia-isation of the Italian banks as Khun Sutapa cites) to Central Vietnam.

Although to be fair Mario Renzi is active with the European Central Bank this week on reforms of the Bank of Italy's towering $3BN public debt and massive unemployment.

And with the Thai G77 Chairmanship ebbing away this year at the UN, shouldn’t SCB be active with the dynamic Khun Pisit of Exim Bank who has called for a Team of Thailand to boost and restructure the Thai economy faster?

Plans for the new UK sugar tax can only impact positively on UK and Thai waistlines - but negatively on the Thai sugar cane industry – as will the rollout of UK Graphene to the car industry be negative for the Thai rubber industry, and Chinese steel industry, but potential for support for Thai farmers and SME’s for forward-thinking banks and financiers.

And if as Khun Sutapa calls for a reformed banking industry as a key pillar of the economy, shouldn’t there be moves to further capitalise on what Barclays has begun with an end to trading in a basket of food commodities such as rice or cooking oil? That alone would be a boost for Thailand's farmers and SME's and consumers.

The UK has fallen behind German dynamism for the moment in not capping interest rates at 10% - hence the scandal of UK payday loans with 1,000% interest rates. Quite how such Zimbabwean interest rates pass the UK regulators is astonishing. And even payday loans firms like Wonga were censured by parliament for advertising to poorer communities as with say Newcastle United football shirts sponsorship and stadium advertising hoardings.

Newcastle's Magpies being something of a football club in woe as it is also owned by Sports Direct sportswear retailer and (with Wetherspoons pubs on zerohours)Mike Ashley, recently dragged into parliament and fined £1M for being one of the worst offenders on failing to pay the minimum wage and zero hours casual contracts.

With a banking industry serving all, the future of what I call the Free Economy is already beginning in Europe with British Gas introducing its FreeTime service for one day of free electricity at the weekend, 20M new Smartmeter electricity meters (with peculiar advertising essentially confirming that the previous meters simply made up a cost) capped for the cheapest rates, and both Switzerland and Finland active around the issue of a Basic Citizen Income not dissimilar to the UK’s Universal Credit welfare reforms.

Capped train fares and other utility prices can only follow and profit levies for monopoly services.

At the very least such Citizen Incomes, as the innovative Yingluck Rice Pledge Scheme tried to do, should reduce welfare admin costs and at best flush money through the economy by retaining it in citizen’s wallets, whether those wallets are digital or not.

I’ve advocated a One Gov system too, of a free bank account and email and mobile phone number at birth to reduce such public costs and provide fully electronic banking and public services etc.

~~Future Thailand and UK~~

With millions unbanked in Thailand and ASEAN, and calls by Rockefeller Foundation in Thailand and Prudential and City UK in London under the new and dynamic of Miles Celic, that seems an opportunity for progressive bankers such as Khun Pisit and Khun Sutapa in both EU and ASEAN.

Thailand’s advance to universal free healthcare is only likely to increase from the TRT 20THB system provided funding is geared to such expansion – and I’ve often wondered why the likes of Panasonic or Philips here at the fringe of Benelux haven’t grasped the nettle of a Digital DNA Bathroom Mirror in advance of the UK NHS DNA rollout by 2019.

Perhaps a JV with a dynamic bank would be ideal in terms of fast-forwarding retina scan and digital fingerprint technology for dual purpose cyber-security and medical analysis?

And again progressive banks such as SCB or Exim would be active with the good folks of True as well as DTAC in mobile banking and transactions ideal for the new True 20BN THB Digital Park mega-investments and value-added jobs in customer service as an adjunct to Thailand’s skills in tourism and hospitality.

And no research exists as yet on the Thai 50,000 expats in UK sending money home, but the Philippines BSP places high value on the Pinoy dollar brought home: over $18Bn of remittances, some 12% of GDP. Surely an open goal for dynamic think tanks in Thailand such as Rockefeller and TDRI?

Against that backdrop, surely Thailand and SCB should be tuning up their financial instruments for a Greater future with Britain and bank reforms.

Tim Garbutt is a Director of Sincerity advertising agency, opening offices in BKK and ASEAN, and director of Surin School charity, the first school built in Isaan and standing for parliament in UK on better relations between UK and Thailand and ASEAN.
@timg33

Kent asbestos horror and NHS in freefall - #2.0 amend

Tim Garbutt, KCC 2017 Leader and MP 2020 candidate said:




"The latest asbestos deaths figures in Kent (weblink below) are truly shocking on two counts.



http://www.kentonline.co.uk/dartford/news/grim-toll-of-asbestos-deaths-101064/



Not just the needless deaths: asbestos has been banned for decades - even when I was a boy the school riddled with asbestos was a notorious horror.


And these figures don't yet detail the schoolchildren and teachers killed or their lives cut short with ill-health by inaction from our councils and schools.



And secondly, for all 13 Kent Districts - and 400 Kent schools - to have no complete asbestos registers, and no central review and cleanup campaign at KCC is horrifying corporate manslaughter given the KCC £2BN budget - the GDP of a small African nation.



And KCC has direct control of Kent Public Health - even access to the UK NHS total budget of c.£150BN.



Schools even close for almost 3 months each Summer so there really is no excuse for these continued deaths.



And with Britain celebrating it's superb sporting victories in Rio - and the dynamic Margate UK Beach Volleyball Finals this weekend - we have the sporting and health legacy from 2012 not just frittered away in Kent, but actively polluting the public with asbestos.



As well as pollution sites such as Thor mercury - Kent's Bhopal and Minimiata rolled into one, Medway and Stour pollution - Kent's Klity Creek, the Infratil-Gloag-Manston monitors scandal, and the Northfleet intestines children.



We have almost all Kent and SE hospitals, detailed by BBCTV in Special Measures, with 2M people facing even worse medicare and Kent's horror of cot-death babies left to rot in hospital wards and thousands of Kent citizens being treated in hospital corridors.


Just this week 3 Kent hospitals (and a further SE hospital) in the top 6(!) of mixed-sex hospital wards banned years ago.


And UK one of the worst in EU for under5/maternal deaths: double Sweden's 3 deaths per 100k.



And we have the monstrous scandal of 12,000 UK deaths from medical errors - operations on the wrong patient(!), wrong body part(!) or wrong drugs.



Even UK excellence in Cataract surgery is now plummeting to one of the worst in Europe as detailed in the Daily Mail. And 3,000 extra Kent pensioners are dying off in the Winter for lack of heating and Flu vaccines.



By comparison the UK only has 1,700 road deaths: car-crash Kent hospitals indeed.


And wasteful bloat of £8M fire stations instead of the Olympic 50m swimming pools for every UK county called for by Tracey Crouch MP the UK 's dynamic Sports and Tourism Minister.



I fully support Tracey's Sports activity as well as:



* all Kent schools cleared of asbestos within 2 summers

* permanent Chairs for Vaccines, Cataracts, Cancer etc at Kent's and UK universities instead of Beckham Studies nonsense driving down UK education standards

* central register of all Kent asbestos sites and deaths

* expansion of Discovery Park and Sittingbourne Science Park for vaccines, DNA manufacturing etc

* develop the Left is Life blood and organ campaign, to end blood and organ shortages

* develop expat blood exchanges abroad, and formal NHS African and ASEAN Pandemic/hospital links

* faster rollout of NHS DNA testing and Cancer reduction




Surely Kent Police should be active in ending this monstrous corporate manslaughter on the rates along with this week's Zombie knife and machete and samurai swords bans.



I will be writing to the Chief Constable when he's back from his holidays before his next holiday, as to a crackdown on such problems and whether he should call in the Belgian Police to patrol Kent's broken hospitals, and Benelux-NHS programmes.



These horrors wouldn't even be allowed in Broken Nations such as Sudan - where we need more UK Police and NHS exchange programmes. We have First World Kent being run down to Third World levels before our very eyes.


If not pushed back to the nineteenth century of cholera and TB and no antibiotics at all.



Florence Nightingale would be turning in her grave at these horrors, and so will more Kent citizens."




Time for Change

@timg33


Misc:

* a rather bizarre merger of the RTC and TDC Stolen Valour by-election and only 25% turnout in each but different candidates winning - at least a sort-of reduction in doublehatters - but astonishing Broadstairs Town Council £40k salary. To do what? And how much for the other secretive Town Councils?

* Front page of Daily Mail today 23/8/16: a medical error repair operation every 90 minutes - over 6k up from 2k.

* Pedzone watch: thanks for info:
-policecar(!) yesterday 11am
-G4S cashvan and Loomis cash van yesterday
-G4S cash van 1-2pm

Please let me know the reg nos

* A strange Twitter comment from Visit Thanet on dogs on beaches in the Summer? Yet BBC reports on guidedogs being banned by Kent shops and taxis?

Kent asbestos horror and NHS in freefall - #2.0 amend

Tim Garbutt, KCC 2017 Leader and MP 2020 candidate said:




"The latest asbestos deaths figures in Kent (weblink below) are truly shocking on two counts.



http://www.kentonline.co.uk/dartford/news/grim-toll-of-asbestos-deaths-101064/



Not just the needless deaths: asbestos has been banned for decades - even when I was a boy the school riddled with asbestos was a notorious horror.


And these figures don't yet detail the schoolchildren and teachers killed or their lives cut short with ill-health by inaction from our councils and schools.



And secondly, for all 13 Kent Districts - and 400 Kent schools - to have no complete asbestos registers, and no central review and cleanup campaign at KCC is horrifying corporate manslaughter given the KCC £2BN budget - the GDP of a small African nation.



And KCC has direct control of Kent Public Health - even access to the UK NHS total budget of c.£150BN.



Schools even close for almost 3 months each Summer so there really is no excuse for these continued deaths.



And with Britain celebrating it's superb sporting victories in Rio - and the dynamic Margate UK Beach Volleyball Finals this weekend - we have the sporting and health legacy from 2012 not just frittered away in Kent, but actively polluting the public with asbestos.



As well as pollution sites such as Thor mercury - Kent's Bhopal and Minimiata rolled into one, Medway and Stour pollution - Kent's Klity Creek, the Infratil-Gloag-Manston monitors scandal, and the Northfleet intestines children.



We have almost all Kent and SE hospitals, detailed by BBCTV in Special Measures, with 2M people facing even worse medicare and Kent's horror of cot-death babies left to rot in hospital wards and thousands of Kent citizens being treated in hospital corridors.


Just this week 3 Kent hospitals (and a further SE hospital) in the top 6(!) of mixed-sex hospital wards banned years ago.


And UK one of the worst in EU for under5/maternal deaths: double Sweden's 3 deaths per 100k.



And we have the monstrous scandal of 12,000 UK deaths from medical errors - operations on the wrong patient(!), wrong body part(!) or wrong drugs.



Even UK excellence in Cataract surgery is now plummeting to one of the worst in Europe as detailed in the Daily Mail. And 3,000 extra Kent pensioners are dying off in the Winter for lack of heating and Flu vaccines.



By comparison the UK only has 1,700 road deaths: car-crash Kent hospitals indeed.


And wasteful bloat of £8M fire stations instead of the Olympic 50m swimming pools for every UK county called for by Tracey Crouch MP the UK 's dynamic Sports and Tourism Minister.



I fully support Tracey's Sports activity as well as:



* all Kent schools cleared of asbestos within 2 summers

* permanent Chairs for Vaccines, Cataracts, Cancer etc at Kent's and UK universities instead of Beckham Studies nonsense driving down UK education standards

* central register of all Kent asbestos sites and deaths

* expansion of Discovery Park and Sittingbourne Science Park for vaccines, DNA manufacturing etc

* develop the Left is Life blood and organ campaign, to end blood and organ shortages

* develop expat blood exchanges abroad, and formal NHS African and ASEAN Pandemic/hospital links

* faster rollout of NHS DNA testing and Cancer reduction




Surely Kent Police should be active in ending this monstrous corporate manslaughter on the rates along with this week's Zombie knife and machete and samurai swords bans.



I will be writing to the Chief Constable when he's back from his holidays before his next holiday, as to a crackdown on such problems and whether he should call in the Belgian Police to patrol Kent's broken hospitals, and Benelux-NHS programmes.



These horrors wouldn't even be allowed in Broken Nations such as Sudan - where we need more UK Police and NHS exchange programmes. We have First World Kent being run down to Third World levels before our very eyes.


If not pushed back to the nineteenth century of cholera and TB and no antibiotics at all.



Florence Nightingale would be turning in her grave at these horrors, and so will more Kent citizens."




Time for Change

@timg33


Misc:

* a rather bizarre merger of the RTC and TDC Stolen Valour by-election and only 25% turnout in each but different candidates winning - at least a sort-of reduction in doublehatters - but astonishing Broadstairs Town Council £40k salary. To do what? And how much for the other secretive Town Councils?

* Front page of Daily Mail today 23/8/16: a medical error repair operation every 90 minutes - over 6k up from 2k.

* Pedzone watch: thanks for info:
-policecar(!) yesterday 11am
-G4S cashvan and Loomis cash van yesterday
-G4S cash van 1-2pm

Please let me know the reg nos

* A strange Twitter comment from Visit Thanet on dogs on beaches in the Summer? Yet BBC reports on guidedogs being banned by Kent shops and taxis?

The Times letter: Manston and Thor corruption and whitewash

Dear Editor



Writing in The Times yesterday the former Country Life editor Clive Aslet is right to raise the issue of the appalling incompetence of council planners, with only planner one sacked out of c.12,000 in decades.



Yet bizarrely Clive, as a Ramsgate resident like myself, then cites Manston airport as benchmark potential for yet another bog-standard housing estate, or mini-New Town.



Clive knows full well the background of rampant corruption by Thanet District Council and Kent County Council with Infratil and Ann Gloag’s $1 purchase of the Manston site after the pollution monitors were removed and data and fines faked for corporate manslaughter. Infratil even allowing IranAir sanction–busting flights via Europe’s main gunrunning airport at Ostend.



And the Manston site (whether as airport or new town) on the East Kent drinking water aquifer for East Kent’s 250,000 people is a Flint, Michigan concern. I know you couldn’t make it up.



Clive even forgets the so-abysmal-it’s-laughable-if-it-wasn’t-horrific Thor mercury contamination, a Parkway airport-railway of £20M of DofT funds for Manston even when the airport is bust, and just this week both Pleasurama and Dreamland sites going bust amidst BVI and Panama tax haven council corruption.



Even Thanet MP candidate as was, and current MEP, Nigel Farage refuses to speak up on Thor Mercury Margate and Cato Ridge horror – the former, Kent’s Bhopal.



Clive knows all the above because I met him several years ago at the start of my MP campaign to “Stop the Pollution, Stop the Corruption, Stop the Construction”: @timg33 and http://lovekentloveramsgate.blogspot.co.uk/ to discuss these very problems.

For Clive now to squeak up in The Thunderer on the Manston mess suggests he’s part of the planning problem not the solution.


Rather, why doesn’t Clive support both a Belgian Police investigation, if Kent Police feel incapable of doing so, and a Magnitsky List of corrupt or incompetent planning staff.


That would ensure the likes of Howes, Raymond and Fibbens at TDC, as well as the Gang of Four and KCC Toxic Three councillors couldn’t damage other publics and public planning projects with whitewash on the rates, while picking up their paychecks and pensions and payoffs for as long as possible.


Clive knows Manston is a council abomination and not something to emulate.



Tim Garbutt, Ramsgate


Misc:

* Only in Kent: the £1M Kent Fire station in Ramsgate has ballooned to £8M - about half of Ramsgate's annual tax budget and 10% of Kent Fire's annual budget(!). And demolition of the swimming pool begun - without a builder even appointed. The land gifted in perpetuity for leisure and sports not a vanity project - all the more bizarre to destroy a swimming pool and football pitches during the Rio Games and heightened interest in the 2012 Legacy. And of course, only voted for by the 6 firemen themselves in a consultation c.4 years ago with 200 public votes against.

All for a garage and office. That already exists rate-free with the existing fire station right in the centre of Ramsgate.

http://www.kentnews.co.uk/news/kent_fire_chiefs_hunt_for_8_million_contractor_to_construct_ramsgate_station_on_derelict_swimming_pool_site_1_4659289

* Doctor Mengele will see you now: horrifying that almost all Kent and SE England's hospitals are in Special Measures - 2M people without adequate medical care. Increasingly I think almost any public sector budget could be cut by a third without affecting the service, if not actually improving it, and Special Measures processes just aren't sacking even people for such shoddy services. And ensuring they don't pop up somewhere else in the public sector after a payoff for failure. More later.

* Silence so far on the £500k OLAF/GIAA Port fraud crime and refunds.

* Silence on long-delayed misc ASBO and Local Plan issues such as 100SE Rd gardengrabbing, Tonis noisy newsagent, pedzone parking and so on.

* Silence on Green and Grabiner and Glick QC etc with Oxford St flagship store closing after 88 years and a failed Sports Direct sale and £1M payback from minimum wage problems - astonishing that zero hours contracts aren't banned as yet. A minimum contract of one day/8 hours per week for companies over £1M?

* Silence on Discovery Park building bungalows(!) at the site rather than the STEM jobs of the future. Only in Kent again.

Kent Cops on the Run from Kent Corruption?

A superb article in the Daily Mail on FOI and Police Chiefs’ secret allowances and expenses and holidays and so on:

Day #1: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3728672/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-Senior-police-behave-like-spoiled-princes.html


Day #2: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3730599/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-Culture-greed-police.html


Certainly hidden costs of upto 21% and 64 days holiday is outrageous in the Age of FOI.

Kent Police don’t come out of it too badly – certainly there are far worse instances with Essex Police lavishly paid for bumbling through the cement mixer drowning. It could happen.

Or Surrey Police and a 2nd Deepcut Barracks enquiry – after the previous half dozen. Five bullets could mean it’s a suicide?

And certainly it shows there are far too many of the 43 police forces with extensive management staff and back offices – all with the policeman’s fear of patrolling, or handing out parking tickets.

Kent Police could easily merge not just with Surrey and Sussex but also with the Fire Brigade and Coastguard and even parts of the council 101 service, certainly at night or weekends when the council offices are closed.

And there’s far worse with FOI Finchy at Kent Fire Brigade simply refusing to issue any details of staffing and salaries at all. Even the old chestnut of personal data is wearing thin given personal data applies to the public not the public servants, and the first principle of FOI is transparency.


You try: james.finch@kent.fire-uk.org

It’s only 10 years since the FOI was introduced in UK - and not one government dept routinely issues all salaries and staffing, cars and expenses etc.

Or as we’re seeing with the police, they do – but not all the extra allowances, just as we had with MP’s expenses being a secret salary topup.

And no news yet as to how the OLAF-EU/GIAA-DCLG £500k TDC Port fraud will be whitewashed away to be paid for by you twice, if not three times.

Once to pay for it.

And again in higher taxes to make up the shortfall.

Perhaps with a salary and pension payoff to hush it all up.

Yet here's a squad of KP detectives, as you'd expect, for a supermarket fraud:

https://www.kent.police.uk/news/appeals/0816/supermarket-manager-stole-over-%c2%a380,000/


Let’s not even mention the Dreamland £900k muckups and £30M in tax, or the latest BVI now Panama Pleasurama fraud.

I’m told by the police it’s illegal for them to hand out parking tickets. But maybe for cars parked on the pavement. But definitely not if they’re on double yellow lines. Supposedly.

While Chief Pughsley’s away on holiday the police are at play it seems.

And with the sacking of Judge Suitcase Smithy for being mentally unfit, which is a bit harsh as he was more of a Hurricane Higgins colourful character with his dreadnoughts and Da Vinci codes and missing BA selfie stick.


1st DaVinci: https://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/feb/03/high-court-judges-poor-judgment

2nd BA: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/11762535/The-High-Court-judge-the-3bn-airline-case-and-the-mystery-of-his-lost-luggage.html

3rd Resigned off: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/high-court-judge-unfit-to-face-inquiry-over-shocking-conduct-6lcplhgq2

And the scoundrel Lord Grabafee Grabiner from One Essex Court is facing more questions on BHS, and Judge Lowell Goddard a NZ High Court Judge (no wonder Infratil at Wellington get away with it) resigning from the child sex inquiry, the High Court is in freefall.


Only Ian Glick QC also from One Essex Court is clinging on with the Ali Bongo Barrister Guy Hollingworth – part-time magician and full-time crook. How could so many Judge and QC’s and BSB and SRA remain silent for such blatant fraud?

Only sackings and a Public Sector Magnitsky List prevents them popping up somewhere else and carrying on.

Only the Crying Judge expressed any concern, while the Wee Grey Scot and Teacups Judge and Judge Mann and Court clerks were happy to cover it all up.

What chance of a fair trial for the Infratil directors Fitzgerald, Clarke, Bogoievski and Charles Buchanan of Leaky Lydd in the High Court, in UK or NZ, with such judges?

And certainly a 1:1 ratio of one clerk to one cop for Kent Police’s 6,000 coppers is absurd.

Even more laughable than Local Craig Ramsgate's Chatham MP, and a magistrate at that – rivalling only Mayor Shonk for silence and roadhogging job titles - keeping shtum on Infratil and Thor mercury contamination. Kent's Bhopal polluting if not killing hundreds of people, cops and their kids included - as well as the dodgy election expenses and dodgy election processes so far. TDC can't even fill in the blanks in a boiler-plate election form.

Particularly laughable when Craig pipes up to randomly accuse Kent's citizens concern at armaments factories in Kent, of being carpetbaggers from London.

While Kent PCC Police Commissioner hardly comes out of the Police FOI Scandal very well.

Even refusing to name any of their staff under the "Meet the Team" heading(!):

https://www.kent-pcc.gov.uk/Team%20structure.pdf

A real danger too that the PCC becomes simply an extension of the poice rather than an extension of the public.

And why haven’t the Police Commissioner’s been raising concerns over expenses and allowances rather than the Daily Mail?

Ann Barnes in Kent was doing the job for nearly 15 years, and only raised tax and a few laughs. Even in the secretive and illegal Kent guncops increase beyond 1.99%.

The Met’s laughable display of balaclava cops playing at SWAT (motorbiking and abseiling and speedboating?) is all the more worrying if they’re sat around in the station finishing off the last of Barnes’ cupasoups and playing Russian roulette.

Silence too on the strange KP Domestic Extremist database of following and bugging elected councillors and MP's - no doubt Special Branch will be wiretapping the Chief Constable's phone to find out how that has happened.

While the excess of trousers and hats in next season’s Fashion Police parade could be better off spent on new kit for the good folks of Kent Police Brass Band, The Blue Blowers, tuning up for Sergeant Pepper’s anniversary next year. Perhaps a silky little number for the Eastcliff Bandstand catwalk.

And with a Belgian policewoman being cut to ribbons by a machete this weekend - it shows the danger of machetes and samurai swords and hipowered air rifles (banned in Scotland) being on open sale at Trade Station, Ramsgate rather than bought up and discontinued.

A much better use of police expenses.

And Kent Police certainly need to improve on FOI:

* monthly totals of drug raids and drug hauls: A Drug Den Raid Every Day underway
* 5% rape detection is horrifying
* FOI on guns and ammo and training bloat with only 6 shots fired each year, ISIS or not
* murders and cold cases (again KP doing better than most): Sunday Times detailing this weekend the UK murder detection rate falling from 23% to 13% despite forensic advances and c.1,500 unsolved cold cases
* merger of Kent and Surrey and Sussex Police and KP lead on Fire and Coastguard mergers, and council 101 Backoffice
* review of both Police and PCC Oath: to the Queen? Parliament and the Public runs things
* review of QPM: restricted to Police bravery and UN Police service in Sudan/East Africa etc, and review of George Medal - Prince Charles active in wanting to reduce Royals/amend Empire designations/Duchy of Cornwall etc

Time for Change
@timg33

Misc:

* Truly horrifying: 12,000 NHS medical errors each year in UK ie operations on the wrong person(!), wrong body part(!)and wrong drugs - by comparison only 1,700 road deaths. Car crash hospitals as we're seeing in Kent with 15,000 treated in the corridors and most/all Kent hospitals in Special Measures or closures for pension topups

* Too many junkies and dealers in Kent. Time for the Crackdown soon


* Misc articles: http://sincerityagency.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/misc-articles-updates-july-2016.html

* Excellent news that Hinkley stopped and HS3 to be built first - ludicrous Highways Agency and KCC separate Stack consultations suddenly announced today, the former with the cement mixers poised after the rubberstamp

* Superb new London Tube 24-7 service and aircon carriages by end of August, and c.3k new UK train carriages by 2019

* Superb City of Sanctuary project and Perfugium Miseris artwork with KCC dragging their heels on child refugees, and ensuring that refugees and care homes are evenly distributed across Kent and other counties not the usual East Kent dumping and dumped-on. An East Kent Council better for reform and oversight of the £2BN KCC budget

* Rumours around Vitoil and Libya Development Authority and Malaysian 1MDB Bank and Sangcom. The latter detailed MOD corruption with Saudi arms deals similar to Al-Yammamah with Kent's MP Jonathan Aitken previously

* Superb Adam Peaty swim gold - perfect for reopening Ramsgate's 2nd pool rather than a £1M firestation-garage and expanding parks and playing fields and tree planting

Thanks for reg no's in the pedzones, pavements and seafront in the last week or two, keep them coming:

* F662 HPX
* Loomis cashvan D612 OYW
* GK57 OGB
* LG11 WWF G4S cashvan

It is no cars after 10am on the High St, and none at all on the seafront pedzone - indeed the seafront/Marina/port from Miles Bar as with carnivals, should be all pedestrianised. As in most seaside towns. Plenty of free carparks without building more or using the pavement. Tickets and clamps and towed away not used often enough now.

@timg33

August 2016 update #1.1: Kent and Brexit mess.

High Court Judge Suitcase Smithy of BA resigns "as mentally unfit". You couldn't make it up. High Court in freefall. Time for Change


Time for Grabafee Grabiner of BHS barred from Lords and Bar. Same for Glick QC and Hollingworth crooks. Time for Change


Bizarre of Corbyn to cite Ramsate Town Council election win...just 485 votes and illegal procedure. Shambolic. Time for Change


Great British Scotland Fashion: @bespokekilts Time for Change


Horrifying Myanmar measles pandemic: c.30 dead. Completely unacceptable. Time for Change


Time for Team Refugee. Time for Common Ground. Time for Change


Brexit a mess. Lords reversal the right track. Time for Change


Time for Kent-Benelux: Alpro, Panasonic, Philips. Time for Change


Fab USN P22 1952 Rhine gunboat in Ramsgate. Marshall Plan when Europe fell apart. Time for Change


Fab new Ramsgate harbor neon arts: Perfugium Miseris. Time for Change


Dismal lack of Kent's Vincent Van Gogh, April-May 1876, or Spanish Armada remembrance, 29th July 1588 in Margate. Time for Change


The Bridges of Battambang. UK-Cambodia. Time for Change. @timg33 https://lnkd.in/eRXgwzY …


Something's cooking in Thailand's Kitchen of the World. And Britain's. Time for Change http://sincerityagency.blogspot.co.uk


Time for Kent Police Brass Band tuning up for Sgt Pepper 50th next year. #KentsBeatles Time for Change


Time for Tokyo 2020 Games and UK trade. Great new Sports too. Time for Change


Calls for Thailand Team by Exim bank. Time for Change @timg33


Time for UK-Sudan massive support: troops, UN Police, aid etc. Time for Change


Time for Khmer/TH art: return lintel to Buriram from San Fran museum. Time for Change


Surin Village School Charity: 5x school locations in ASEAN needed and donors. Buriram, Sisaket, Ubon, Siem Reap, and Battambang. Time for Change


KORA Kent Oriental Restaurant Association close to launch: 5x sponsors needed. Time for Change


Looking for University visiting professor role: advertising. Kent/ASEAN. Time for Change


Private Eye raises issues around: 1MDB Malay Bank, Vitol Oil and Libya Authority. And Sangcom. Time for Change


BHS Scandal, Kent Corruption and Grabiner a patsy. Time for Change http://lovekentloveramsgate.blogspot.co.uk


Time for City of Sanctuary and East Kent: Common Ground and Refugees. Time for Change


Kent Corruption: Dreamland bust today. Pleasurama BVI and Panama dodgy deals and Pav asbestos workers halt. Utter mess. Time for Change



Time for Change
@timg33

July Updates: http://sincerityagency.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/misc-articles-updates-july-2016.html