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

With the clocks going forward in UK for the start of Spring (this note being written on Maundy Thursday as the Queen distributes money for Easter a sort of medieval Basic National Income prior to the robotics surge of TrumpDavos15Friends as ABB that will cause tremors across Asia as well as USA and Europe) the clocks are ticking in Thailand too. Not just the kerfuffle over Deputy PM Prawit and his 22 or 25 watches borrowed from a friend who subsequently died. It could happen. The wall murals of a clockface highlighting public concerns though for Uncle Tu and his old army buddy. If not the writing on the wall then a picture. As a keen watch fan (Breitling seeing as you ask, my concern, despite the increasingly bizarre John Travolta ads, is as much the awful naffness of Richard Mille watches on the Deputy PM's wrist. As bizarre as PM May’s leather trews fashion shoot. And watches for $1M each? Surely the kind of fashion faux pas and own goal that Victoria Beckham would steer Dav...

Beyond Finland's snow and Nokia, and the Birmingham DFID landmine exhibition, UK Trade Envoy to Bangladesh Rushanara Ali MP must be keen to develop support for the refugee camps on the Myanmar border, as well as longer-term rail upgrades through to India. The ASEAN Rail project for example now linking Thailand and Cambodia through to Battambang - and now the more difficult phase between Phnom Penh and HCMC that was delayed by WW1 and WW2 and the Khmer Rouge- has at long last almost every Asian capital connected to rail. That's a lot of Indian and Thai rice that can be moved more easily into and through Bangladesh and Myanmar. And the Bangladeshi restaurants and cuisines that comprise most of UK’s Indian restaurants. And the South Asian diaspora of c.50%#### of UK immigrants beyond restaurant kitchens to the NHS operating rooms and GP waiting rooms. While Brand USA tourism aims on India tourism could be served up faster and more easily with UK and India and Bangladesh e...

Skating over Total Oil (Davos#7) and their Myanmar war crimes woes, to detail more of the #DavosTrump15Friends form article #1, a DFID fair last week in Birmingham - UK, not Alabama - highlighted MAG's excellent landmine clearance work from Laos and Cambodia - surely relevant in clearing the minefields of Egypt and Libya and Tunisia from WW2 by EU and USA, especially UK and Germany and Italy. That regardless of the spur of a Morocco World Cup in 2026, or Desertec, and Neom activity to the North African and Arabian economies. Prince MBS this week visiting USA after UK to detail his excellent Vision 2030 activity. 2018 is already for example the Year of Engineering with the Proud Sappers of the Royal Engineers active beyond Kent in reconstructing Sudan and placing it on the road to peace and prosperity. Even the reconstruction of Libya is already overdue (Europe's Mediterranean shores in flames and thousands of drowned refugees a sorry indictment of 2017 as the Year of t...

Kent's Spring and tourism season off to a chilly start with a few days of snow and cold weather. But not quite as cold as Davos. Perhaps though a foretaste of ingrained Climate Change with extended colder winters and hotter summers. Horrifyingly the Daily Mail citing 10,000 extra NHS deaths in just January and February - by way of context for that grim toll there are just 1,700 UK road deaths each year. The bad weather all the more reason for greater UK Resilience efforts - the Johnson and Johnson Resilience Box a useful tool for every kitchen. And wider concerns over the National Grid and NHS database cyber attacks from the Salisbury spy poisonings - the UK with just 6 days of Winter gas supplies in reserve. After the kerfuffle of UK and Russian embassy exchanges and Putin confirmed for another 6 years as Russian leader all the more reason eventually for a New Yalta on UK and EU and Russian relations, beyond merely NATO and KGB militarism. Much as Morocco and its 2026 Wor...

The rigor moris of Brexit has long set in with UK paralysed at Westminster and Holyrood and Cardiff Bay over the conundrums and what-ifs of Brexit. Whitehall's mandarins rotting where they sit in trying to execute an impossible trade policy. Brexit has for two years paralysed government with nothing being done. Our expensive politicians and civil servants seem to gotten the country into a pickle of their own making. The dreary daily litany of EU cherrypicking or having cake and eaten and fantasies of frictionless trade are unlikely to butter any parsnips or bake any Kent apples into American pies. UKIP all the more bizarre in Kent - and a wider Conservative issue as what David Cameron wisely termed UKIP fruitcakes and loonies drift back into the Tory ranks - with its reliance on UK and European tourism and trade. And Dover as Europe's largest port ferrying the car parts of the Midland Engine that keep Toyota and Ford and Nissan and Kent's James Bond's Aston Martin...

An excellent and horrifying article by The Sun on 1st March provides food for thought for UK and Thailand. Across pages 16 and 17 Chief Feature Writer Oliver Harvey details nine deaths on Koh Tao since 2012 under the headline "This isn't paradise it's Death Island" and "Backpackers hotspot haunted by 9 tragedies". The most infamous deaths being the murders of Hannah Witheridge and David Miller and subsequent arrests of Burmese migrants Wai Phyo and Zaw Lin. But also Kent tourist Christine Annesley found dead near Sairee Beach on 21st January 2015 and Belgian tourist Elise Dallemagne found hanged in May 2017. And a petition of 15,000 names to be delivered to 10 Downing St yesterday Tuesday 6th March, is calling for an investigation into the deaths, by Pat Harrington the mother of Ben Harrington, killed in 2012 in a moped accident and possible robbery. Beyond the personal tragedies of each death there are clearly wider concerns for the UK and Thai tour...

A Sun editorial on Kent panic buying for milk, and fighting in the aisles in sleepy Lenham before the police restored order and no doubt a good ticking-off concerning. Proof again if it were needed of just 3 meals from chaos without effective Resilience. The Royal Marines rightly something of a scapegoat after the shoddy RM and RN response to Caribbean storms - late ships, broken beach equipment and forgetting their guns it was more of a badly organised stag do than Resilience response - last Summer (the storms will happen again Royal Marines don’t forget to write it in your diary even without the Commonwealth Summit!). The Royal Navy invariably effective only when run as privateers or by the Army. All the more concerning as RM was right to bang the table about the loss of HMS Ocean amphibious landing ship - again a shoddy trade for the vanity project of aircraft carriers. Perhaps the Royal Marines rot set in with leaving Deal in Kent for the clotted cream and caviar luxury...