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

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: ...

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 industr...

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 reall...

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 reall...

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-aby...

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 Su...

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 Sp...