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

What to do about the BHS scandal? Over 80 stores closed and 11,000 jobs lost and a pension black-hole of £500M. A business sold for a quid by Philip Green styled as Sir Shifty by the Daily Mail, and Lord Grabiner the Chairman, styled as Lord Grabafee by the Financial Times. The backdrop of Dominic Chappell a serial-bankrupt buying the business for a quid seems as absurd as it is crooked. For crooked is what BHS seems to be – not just a business deal gone wrong. BHS was producing lavish profits while the sale was lumped in with various other Green property deals. Fishier than the fish swimming around his super-yachts on his Summer holiday. And most dubious of all if not downright criminal was secret shareholders not listed in the plc accounts – who were also suppliers to BHS. A rat’s nest of financial jiggery-pokery it what it seems to be. But there’s more. Not content with destroying BHS, Lord Grabiner still sits on the woolsack in the House of Lords, presiding over leg...

Chinese investments in UK are under scrutiny at the moment. The new Hinkley nuclear power station and the nuclear industry are the main consideration, thankfully delayed for review by the new PM Theresa May regime on cybersecurity fears. Certainly China could hack into nuclear technology – it has floors and floors of cyberhackers in PLA buildings and uniforms on various projects. While the Chinese nuclear company CGN – part of the Hnkley consortia - has been arrested in USA for nuclear espionage. And there are even cybersecurity concerns over the new UK electricity SmartMeters – all the lights going off at once everywhere isn’t ideal. That said, the Hinkley deal is just an awful business arrangement – hugely expensive now and in the future and highly contaminating with faulty technology, and electricity 3x the current rate. Awful. UK nuclear technology is fairly awful in general – Sellafield power station from the 1950’s phase of weapons production is still hugely contaminated...

Dear Editor Your Letter of the Week in last week’s Kent On Sunday from Richard Styles, Town Clerk of Ramsgate Town Council: “We welcome DFL’s and work hard to improve” is rather concerning on several points, not least that so much of it was self-serving tripe. Leaving aside the rather nonsensical debate on sweary-tattooed Locals or DFL’s – how would anyone know one from the other, or particularly care? And let’s leave aside whether he was writing in his official capacity, with councillor-approval. The serious point though made by the previous correspondent, is that Ramsgate along with several other Kent coastal towns – as well as the inland Crap Towns - has suffered from the KCC, London councils and central government policy of social dumping from prisons or inner-city estates or drug clinics. The Howes barracks London council scheme in nearby Canterbury is that policy only magnified and foolishly perpetuated. A generation or two later on, and the problems of an...

How refreshing for Thailand to take the lead on producing the next list of 20 corrupt officials. http://www.nationmultimedia.com/politics/New-list-of-corrupt-officials-30294425.html And also PM Prayut’s firm use of S44 to remove the Bangkok Governor Khun Paribatra on corruption allegations. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-3757875/Thai-junta-suspends-Bangkok-governor-graft-probe.html And an open way in dealing with the fire engine corruption amongst other such issues. A sharp contrast to the murk surrounding Freedom of Information – and more effective EIR at the EU for scrutiny of any European public sector costs and policies - at Kent Fire Brigade, and purchase for fire engines and fire station build costs. Can a garage for two fire engines really cost $12M? In contrast, UK is dragging its heels - and still only 10th in the Transparecy International corruption rankings. Only in the last month has the dynamic Eric Pickles MP been appointed as an Anti-Corrupti...

Liam Fox seems to have slipped back in time to the 1970’s sitcoms for his ideas on business. The free trade world of Terry and June or Leonard Rossiter’s Sunshine Desserts seems to have informed his views on fat, lazy businessmen playing golf on Friday instead of exporting. All good knockabout stuff for the good doctor to amuse Young Conservatives down in London from the farm to hear what a great success Brexit will be. Or perhaps to tee them up for the bad news as Brexit unravels. But there is more than a grain of truth in what Liam says. Peter Hargreaves, founder of financial services company Hargreaves Lansdown, also backed Mr Fox, saying: "We have a lot of very good entrepreneurs in Britain, but there's no doubt that there are also some in boardrooms who don't deserve to be there - they're idle, incompetent and ineffective." And let’s face it, British Business – or certainly British Big Business – has not done well recently. The 2008 Recession d...

Dear Editor The Economist last week in “Cut Price Logic” page 14 and “Ceiling Whacks” page 68 seems to be overly-taxed in explaining the new Kenya interest rate cap, in not one but two articles. To describe it as “crude meddling in the market” seems excessive given you cite the World Bank and over 76 nations with similar policies in place including such flimsy economies as Germany, Japan, USA and UK – even 35 out of 50 USA stares with their own specific laws on interest rate caps. It’s scandalous that The Economist arguing for Wonga payday loans with interest rates over 1,000% (and the UK allowing it for so long) moves beyond free trade to price gouging in a monopoly/limited market. While the UK before introducing weak price caps on the outrageous payday loans had regulation only on a 25% limit for microlenders and credit unions for distress purchases such as baby clothes or food. Surely the Economist should be arguing for a UK and EU-wide cap of say 10% as in Germany? As par...

I’ve written previously on celebrity chefs and their important work for UK tastebuds and the wider economy. Jamie Oliver for example and his sugar tax work. And it was good to see the dynamic Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall sharpening his knives again and writing in The Sunday Times last week on plastic and the food chain. Chefs and plastic? Tupperware boxes? Well, not quite although there is the excellent news on the microbead plastics ban in shower gels and face creams and cosmetics. The UK washing 80 tons of these plastics literally down the drain and into the sea. Even into Arctic pack-ice. And, of more concern into fish. Which of course we eat and the plastic is in us as easily as if we’d eaten the bar of soap or drunk the shower gel. A sobering reality given the mercury poisonings of Minamata in Japan and Thor mercury in Cato Ridge and Margate – the latter still, as with the Infratil missing monitors scandal, without acknowledgment let alone clean up by Kent’s politicians and...

If I sit up and take notes when the South Korean Ambassador to ASEAN cites ways to improve the economy as per my previous article, then that’s x100 in terms of attention when Japan’s Foreign Office raises concern over Brexit. Japan’s MOFA has published a 15 page report on its concerns over Brexit from extensive discussions with the 1,000 Japanese companies in UK. A source of 440,000 jobs and innovative companies such as Kent’s Hitachi at Ashford and HS1 (also the latest contract for SouthWest trains increasing orders for carriages with Bombardier etc) and Kent’s Fujifilm in Broadstairs. And Sunderland’s Nissan factory producing more cars than the entire Italian automotive industry. And Honda and Toyota in the Midlands keeping UK industry on track. The Japanese Ambassador in UK also took the unusual step c.3 years ago to raise concerns over any potential Brexit. So a 15 page memo issued around the G20 Summit is a major concern for UK plc. And the points are all fair ones. ...

Like most people I suspect, if the South Korean Ambassador to ASEAN gives his views on improving the ASEAN economy, then I pay attention and take notes. Suh Joong-In writing in the Bangkok Post and Jakarta Post makes some good retail points in particular, last week. South Korea of course is one of the Asian tiger cub economies driving blistering growth and prosperity in just a few decades. Short-circuiting a process that took hundreds of years, if at all, in most countries. And after having been successfully bombed back to the Stone Age during the Korean War. Ground Zero indeed. In my MP candidacy I talk of the Meiji reforms needed in UK – as successfully implemented in Japan then South Korea by its governments and chaebols after 1953 in rebuilding a divided and destroyed nation. The sparkling lights of Seoul’s skyscrapers, dulcet tones of K-Pop and fizzing internet economy are testimony to the South Korean success. As is the lights-out poverty and famine in neighbouring Nor...