Tobias MP and Yellow Peril 2.0 for China and 77th Brigade?

The Tobias Ellwood MP article in last week’s Mail on Sunday (and a full page no less) was chilling for several reasons.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-7592503/TOBIAS-ELLWOOD-China-winning-war-West-cyber-space-dark-moon.html


The blaring headline of:

"From cyber space to the dark side of the moon, China is waging war on the West - and it’s winning"

is concerning not just for Pink Floyd fans worried that China’s counterfeit music industry extended from their back catalogue to the Moon itself.

But also that a former Defence Minister was peddling such Yellow Peril 2.0 nonsense in the 21st century.

And all the more concerning with Tobias not just as a Colonel Blimp eccentric MP hyping up the military and its tax budgets, but somehow extending a minor captaincy in the Army into a Lieutenant-Colonel role in the 77th Brigade, the military psyops function.

No doubt Bill Cash MP or the fightin’ bank manager reservist Mark Francois MP, or Nigel Farage already struggling into khaki to wind up pensioners that won the war and lost the peace, will chip in with some impassioned nonsense about an EU Army - presumably that merely NATO functions without USA and Canada? Or the existing Battlegroups?

It’s not China but the EU threatening the White Cliffs of Dover?

### 77th Brigade waging war on UK? ###

The article though reading not so much as China waging war on the West but the British Army waging war on the home front rather than abroad with such propaganda?

A London FBI office necessary - without similar 77th Brigade COINTELPRO or Snowden GCHQ/NSA mass surveillance - as the UK FBI NCA and CPS and Fraud police bumble along in the wake of white collar criminals yielding terror support in Londongrad and Londonistan.

Bill Bratton long overdue on being airlifted into UK from The Big Apple for his Broken Window and Facial Recognition musings on Learmonths Learjet. Cressida Dick's Met Police setting up facial recognition vans without Parliament or council approval does seem more apt for the streets of Shanghai rather than Sidcup.

While spycops shagging green protestors on the rates for years seems extraordinary.

While the Sacoolas car crash diplomacy perhaps unthinkable in a Chinese variant but certainly showing the need for diplomatic immunity reform even a specialist Extradition Court whether for Assange or City traders facing USA prisons and death penalty.

While as friends and allies, the UK military could easily invest in Keep Left signs for the half-dozen USA drone and radar bases.

Britain may be the USA's, rather than China's, Airstrip One and unsinkable aircraft carrier to rival Eurasia's Japan, but it’s certainly not the 51st State - that’s Puerto Rico and Kent Spitfire AOC no doubt calling for Resilience reforms there and the Bronx - nor the Lower 48.

USA diplomats and troops and even Mike Pompey aren’t in Kansas anymore, certainly on basics such as Road Safety.

While if Northants Police aren’t as incompetent as oh-no-its-Surrey-Police in Deepcut barracks or Perelichnyy and Salisbury GRU assassinations then Parliament must be questioning how the Foreign Office and Police allowed Sacoolas to slip away in a reverse-rendition to hide in the White House broom cupboard.

Perhaps a wider issue in reducing 43 police forces tripping over each other or out of their depth.


### China military or computing superpower - and UK DARPA ###


Reading the Tobias article in detail there is one very fair point on the China lead in Quantum Computing with a £7.7BN investment in just one site. While the USA investment of £155M per year overall suggests it’s wisely spent with Google announcing Quantum Supremacy this week with Project Sycamore processing 10,000 years(!) worth of data in minutes.

Senor Ellwood remains silent though as to what if any UK investment, or EU, there is in Quantum Computing. A shocking failure not in Chinese battalions poised to make the Isle of Wight or Isle of Thanet the Hong Kong and Macau of UK. But in the UK-invented-here-and-monetised-in-USA syndrome that’s frittered away the Turing bombes lead in computing or Berners-Lee formulation of the World Wide Web.

Even Dominic Cummings pausing from laying waste to UK governance and the Boris Coup has urged as Michael Gove’s assistant calls from myself and others for a UK DARPA.

That military innovation paying back in USA not just with B2 bombers or F35 jets - both likely left to rust with drone replacements - but that Turing lead in cracking German Uboat military codes or POTUS Clinton opening up not just the nuclear launch function of packets of the internet but the GPS missile positioning system used for 5G EV cars.

And Kent’s broken streets familiar more than most regions with the rocket technology of the V1 and V2 that yielded the Apollo Moon landings.

The Chinese not launching missiles this week but a 5G Smart Town already. Film downloads in one second and EV cars and river and canal cleanup by robots are leaving UK standing in the dust of China’s typhoon of innovation.

Monsieur Ellwood confusing a Chinese military parade of just 15,000 troops out of 1M troops as somehow more militarist than UK’s Changing of the Guard.


### China weaponising cat videos on Ellwood's watch? ###


While citing the Chinese versions of Facebook or Amazon in Tencent and Alibaba or Baidu GPS as threats to the West is simply rather hysterical. Presumably 1.5BN Chinese want to watch cat videos or buy Duchy Original biscuits or Irn-Bru (made in Scotland from girders) in their own language and for rapid home delivery as much as in the West.

As with the new Battery Innovation Centre (7 day charging for any device in an hour?) in the Midlands Engine shouldn’t Senor Ellwood roll up his sleeves on a UK Supercomputer. Even basics as an Atlanta or Stockholm UK Disease Center - whether Pandemics of Flu or TB or Ebola or the big battalions of tax funds deployed against Cancer and Dementia and Diabetes and faster cures.

A UK DARPA could yield a DNA Bathroom Mirror in moments with Philips- and certainly strategic stock and factories of vaccines as East Kent’s rusting Discovery Park, previously the largest inward investment site by Pfizer USA. Pfizer China at the site would hardly be a fiendish Fu Manchu plot for cancers cures.

Herr Ellwood could make a wider and stronger case for Realpolitik with China: few Brits or Mail on Sunday readers would be keen on Uighur gulag camps or organ harvesting or thousands of death penalty executions or Falun Gong religious persecution.

But that’s bog-standard one party authoritarianism rather than anything peculiarly Chinese. And no doubt more liberal factions in the Communist party and China will be urging changes.

Presumably Davey Cameron should be parlaying rather than kowtowing with China and his venture fund from the successful Xi roundtable in his Cotwolds pub.

Indeed President Xi seems rather wise in learning from the Tiananmen Square debacle and deaths in a light-touch response to the Hong Kong protests. Those protestors soon swapping the Union Jack as an emblem of democracy for the Stars and Stripes on realising UK would do nothing to help and indeed how UK ran Hong Kong as an undemocratic fiefdom before the Chinese Takeway of 1997.

China resolute too in the provocation of USA spy planes overshooting and landing in its territory.

The 70th anniversary of the liberation of China from foreign rule alluded to by Senor Ellwood and the horror of the Opium Wars forcing heroin addiction en masse to the Chinese yields a China focus as always on internal rule rather than foreign adventurism - no matter how much Tobias and other MOD chaps try and stoke up a threat for army budgets.

China's border safeguards of Tibet and North Korea in the early 1950’s only leading to minor border disputes with India and Russia and the 1979 Vietnam incursion. All hardly suggest any vast Chinese military plan or Communist Brotherhood.

### Trump bromance and OBOR growth for North Korea and Northern Powerhouse? ###


While President Xi could perhaps do more in supporting the bromance and thaw of POTUS Trump with North Korea. Nobody - least of all the Chinese - want famine or sarin stocks and nukes out of control in Pyonyang - or leaking into Damascus and Karachi. Or Chinese investments in Canary Wharf or Wall Street.

Osama was found in Karachi not Chengdu and perhaps Obama or Davey Cameron and now POTUS Trump and Mike Pompey should have been found more often in Beijing drumming up trade and a Great FireWall of China with NSA and GCHQ for web and institutionalised hacking protocols.

Indeed Monsieur Ellwood could be urging UK and EU and NATO support for the 1953 Korea peace treaty to be signed and bridging the trade gap for a United Korea. President Xi so far missing the golden opportunity to urge reduced USA troop levels and demilitarised limits beyond the DMZ to the Yalu.

While Signor Ellwood is plain wrong in citing the Chinese Space plan to the Moon has no agreed rules. Rather the 1957 Outer Space Treaty applies to all nations in preventing the militarisation of space.

A treaty weakened not by Chinese space exploration but the POTUS Trump formulation of a Space Command as a military function.

While the routine American citing of China as an enemy is only likely to deliver that spectre beyond the Inner Islands strategy. Perhaps China will become more like Taiwan or Hong Kong rather faster than needing to deploy and destroy those islands - or seize Guam and Hawaii and Vancouver or Alcatraz island.

UK as weak in San Diego and USA Pacific strategy as in Caribbean Resilience. And the Commonwealth.

Senior Ellwood in his Yellow Peril 2.0 fantasy forgetting the supposed Chinese octopus tentacles of OBOR reaching now to Kent and Sevilla and this week Serbia. Or rather should be seen as a welcome Chinese lead on trade integration as India and China become the world’s largest economies alongside USA and EU.

China’s growth perhaps of more concern to Putin’s Russia with its Far East provinces just 8M people and severe border disputes, even without the Bering Bridge, facing 1.5BN Chinese.

Perhaps an Asian EU of China, Mongolia, Koreas, Taiwan and Japan as relevant as the EU to Russia.

Certainly Russian membership of EU would remove any Western invasion threat. And end Russia as The Great Provocateur with Venezuela troops or South African or Far East bomber jets. And free up the economy from the shackles of military and nuclear overspend.

Russian tech failure even greater than UK and Europe’s. Why has UK not created Facebook or Germany Amazon or Russia Google while American immigrants have? And Chinese citizens quickly copied them?

Questions that would yield less tax on guns and tanks and more on human capital and digital futures.

POTUS Trump wise not just - as any POTUS - to call for EU and NATO nations to pay more for the 30,000 US Army Europe troops nearing the end of their 1942 mission no doubt as the post-Putin Russian regimes link into Europe, and the shores of North Africa and Levant.

An Elbe Brigade so outrageous?

Certainly less monstrous than the UK delays on Murmansk Convoy medals or Ghurka pensions or Pacific Nukes Guinea Pig National Servicemen.

Or the ending of USA Forever Wars misfiring in Syria recently but right in terms of Senate scrutiny of the War Powers Act and Africa Command troops and Arabian bombings of wedding parties and Afghanistan the longest war for USA.

And all so badly run for years against motorbikes and transit vans and mobile phone bombs and mudhuts.

Perhaps Monsieur Ellwood should be concerned that such military failure could encourage Chinese expansion. Certainly the floating junk of the UK’s two aircraft carriers (and 40 admirals - what are they all doing? Seconded to 77th Brigade to write Ellwood’s articles for him?) is expensive waste compared to the cybersecurity threat for both the military and civilians.

Perhaps the Ellwood article won’t be the last 77th Brigade psyops work hyping up a China or Andorra conflict or the old standby of the Russian bear - or pushing for more military tax spend. The HMS Bloomingdales and HMS Macys aircraft carriers the world’s most expensive coral reefs? Certainly if not material for the Great Barrier Reef then too expensive and threatened to sail beyond the bars and nightclubs of Manhattan it seems.

Certainly the upcoming NATO Summit will be calling for the random 2% spend target again and some of the Ellwood armchair warriors no doubt calling for the UK to reach a vanity spend of 3%.

With NATO struggling to manage one set of bullets or armoured car spares for its nations in 70 years suggests a deeper weakness beyond the Afghanistan failure.

Wiser heads such as Kent sister state Virginia’s Citizen Kaine arguing for a tighter review of the War Powers Act - as is UK Redshirt and Zinoviev Czech spy Jeremy Corbyn.

POTUS Trump again wise in drawing down Border Wall funds from the bloated Pentagon budget and no doubt listening to the likes of Senators Kaine and Warner on the impact on Virginia shipbuilding. And Thailand’s Senator Tammy Duckworth highlighting the potential for not just in Illinois earmarks but in Five Eyes and Five ASEAN Eyes work for Med refugees and Asian ISIS and heroin.

Field Marshal Ellwood might well recruit quietly capable khaki voices such as Johnny Mercer and Kent’s Tommy Tugendhat - no doubt aware of the New Weald Order in Kent corruption and corporate manslaughter with Infratil etc - with Ben Wallace in moving beyond khaki China groupthink to reform by mergers of the RAF and Royal Navy under the Army again in the Era of Drones.

An Army reduced to 50,000 troops more viable alongside 5,000 each in an unmanned Navy and Airforce, and EU average spend on NATO of 1.5%. And swarms of arms limitation talks.

Even coordinating UK and USA and Australian shipbuilding for value and ASEAN Resilience.

Or formulating Kent’s Royal Engineers as a core function of UK UN Peacekeeping - and UN Policing - and Desert Rats 2.0 across the Sahel. President Xi wisely already securing the Suez trade route at Djibouti and Mali hispeed rail on the Atlantic seaboard while UK burns tax-cash and allies goodwill in the Falklands and Gibraltar and Akritiri development delays rather than Oman and Neom.

For Monsieur Ellwood forgetting in his article to mention either the Climate Change or Terrorism - no stranger he to the latter with the sad death of his brother in Bali terrorism, or PC Kenneth Palmer at the gates of Parliament. If he can’t see take off the rose-tinted HUD of the Army and see the threat of ASEAN terrorism or Resilience then who can?

From Davao to the Chinese border with Myanmar the UK and UK military having little to no input to the waves of Shan crystal meth landing in UK and USA and Australian shires (all with the largest ever hauls in recent months). Nor the surge in heroin from the retreat from Helmand after the investment of years of British blood and treasure from the Khyber Pass to Kwai river.

Pandemics yielding no mention in the Ellwood article - that the main UK strategic threat not the Chinese navy but Flu and TB as well as biochem weapons. Chief Pughsley of Kent Police vigorous in gasmask testing at Bluewater and Canary Wharf for sarin and ricin. Those North Korea chemweapons stocks are surely low hanging fruit for Xi and Trump and Kim efforts?

Syria requiring more boots on the ground not less in combating dictatorships and poverty that are UK threats. Not pandering to Al-Yamamah and GPT arms corruption in Saudi or propping up Gadaffi and Saddam. And no doubt the next Zimbabwe or Equatorial Guinea dictators.

The latter Thatcherite Wonga Coup failing but more susceptible to the withdrawal of USA oil companies and Riggs Bank sanctions.

Perhaps the greatest NATO and EU failure in over 15,000 refugees drowning off the shores of Tripoli. That the more horrific in the Royal Navy provoking the Russian bear in its Black Sea backyard - Crimea 2.0 - rather than working with the US Coastguard in the Med and indeed the Channel and Frontline Kent.

The 39 Chinese and Vietnamese lorry deaths from trafficking perhaps laying the ground for rapprochment with China and Vietnam beyond the pricey tax jibber-jabber of Strategic Dialogue or cookiecutter industry sectors or empty guff of the inevitability of Thucydides traps for China and UK or USA.

Perhaps the only inevitabilty is Monsieur Ellwood and comrades in arms talking up such twaddle on the rates.

And a Parliamentary review of how far 77th Brigade psyops is deployed on UK audiences in peacetime.

Time for Change
@timg33

Here’s £100M worth of Damn Good Advice on advertising Brexit Boris

The Boris announcement of £100M for an advertising campaign for Brexit struck a chord as I was rereading United States of Advertising guru George Lois’ memoir Damn Good Advice.

Lois famous for the passion of Muhammed Ali cover for Esquire magazine of The Louisville Lip struck by arrows in St Sebastian style for being martyred over refusing the Vietnam draft.

Lois, one of my advertising gurus along with Osborn (Alex not George), and even stuffy old David Ogilvy, and Drayton Bird DM guru.

I was pondering though the Lois 20 Times Square property branding (a number 20, a multiplication sign and a square - and a healthy dose of creative genius) for an article on the NYC Hudson Yards.

But the potential waste of £100M of tax funds on a Brexit propaganda campaign shovelled into less than 3 months before the Halloween exit of 31st October stuck out.

I would point out I’ve worked on various ad campaigns for Labour and LibDems, and Public Health and NHS too, but the vast majority of my advertising works for consumer goods whether tourism or planes, trains and automobiles along with washing powder and food.

The stuff of life.

And gaining every creative and effectiveness award in the world, from UK to USA and Europe (Asia soon) along the way, even the UK’s largest ad agency at one point although, as with many ad agency conglomerates, that was largely financial engineering rather than creativity.

So here’s £100M worth of free advice Boris.

Don’t. Do. It.

I’ll send an invoice for £33M per word in the post – the full stops are free.

Why not to do it?

Well, in all sincerity, who isn’t aware of Brexit in UK if not the whole world? New Foreign Minister Dominic Raab hardly needs to detail the topic to EU or world leaders as he start at the ASEAN-EU meet in Bangkok. And it’s worth a refreshing pause to see that Australia, Canada and USA and Eire and EU amongst the first to wish him well.

Although warm words apply no Kerrygold butter to Brexit parsnips.

And with 100% awareness you don’t need to spend £100M for 3 months worth of advertising.

And to persuade or reassure Remainers and Brexiteers? Again you don’t need advertising to do that in 8 weeks or so (American Princess Meghan’s September Vogue cover is already out to rival American Princess Soma – better hurry up Boris with those copy deadlines if you are going to do it).

Even if it would work.

Or the media owners didn’t stick up their prices, and the public, over such a bloated Autumn windfall that the PM has now alerted them to. Heinz baked beans might 57 varieties of reasons to be miffed at media space being held back or over-priced too.

By Xmas a failed Brexit may not amount to a hill of beans, but those unsold tins of beans and soups and ravioli, surely will, especially after stockpiling already.

Sure, some of the larger agencies would take the money and run ads day and night on television and online. And press ads and supplements along with posters on every billboard from Downing St to Acacia Avenue.

And it would hardly persuade one person one way or another.

At worst it would seem to be propaganda. At best it could help the advertising budget of the excellent Remain newspaper The New European – why no Eurostar ads or British Airways or AirFrance or Hilton hotels? Remoaners not likely to travel to Europe?

And it would be utter waste: most UK ad budgets under £10M for a whole year. Kellogg’s cornflakes for example spending $750BN globally on advertising. Presumably a sensible portion of that on in-box bioplastic toys (Disney or DC or both? that Carrie wouldn’t need to pick out of the Plastic Patch oceans.

£100M of a Boris Brexit would become heavy duty wallpaper covering UK eyeballs, and failing to make the case as to why such a short-sighted is clearly needed. Or not.

£100M could even fund a decent-sized Tom Cruise movie (in a Bozza wig?) – a Cruise Control Brexit rather than crash and burn? Sir Thomas of Mapother IV might do the acting gig for a gong and support for UK-USA media.

But such funding could even, with a General Election looming, be seen as yet another violation of UK’s increasingly tarnished election rules, and a bridge too far to USA money politics.

With 3 Prime Ministers in favour of Remain but floundering around like stranded kippers to pretend they want Leave beyond a few votes, throwing money at the problem won’t solve it. And certainly not with the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister and Trade Minister (cheese and pork exports Ms T?) with the G7 UK and world airwaves at their command.

And couldn’t £100M (or £90M: if you really, really, really think a Brexit campaign would be useful, just waste £10M) be better spent on say nurses and teachers – even a Teacher or Nurse Day as a UK bank holiday a la Thailand societal reforms– recruitment.

Sending the MOD/RN Prime Minister branded jacket off to a charity shop (to sit unsold next to the Hague baseball cap?) and begin nuclear disarmament talks. £30BN or so saved on rusty and warehoused nukes and subs might even fund a worthwhile Brexit ad campaign.

And what would that Brexit campaign cover? A picture of Boris’ face with a Macca-style thumbs up, and Brexit is Great slogan underneath his tousled haired fizzog, day after day for months and months on every television and website and newspaper front page?

Millions of Brits registering to vote (16 and upwards, no Battlebus or Russian or Yankee jiggerypokery please, although how would we know?) on www.borissaysbrexitisgreat.com or #bozzabrexit?

Perhaps not. And perhaps the charlatans of Cambridge Analytica have proved Govey right in his fear of some experts and election shenanigans as bad as the Battlebus fraud here in Kent and eslewhere.

Buy a Kindle for all 11M UK schoolkids – with a Brexit screensaver or, shades of 1984, Vote Big Brother Boris if you must – and review literacy standards of 8 years old at age 16 as somehow acceptable in First World Britain.

Unless slipping down the G7 league table to G25 or so now (those decades of Big Tobacco and HFSS Foods and Cancers and Social Care failures are already starting to bite into UK mortality and productivity aren’t they?), and tumbling further in a post-Brexit UK of Honda closures, Vauxhall Ellesmere Port closures, East Kent 007 Aston Martin cutbacks, EU Medicines Agency closed, 40% on UK lamb exports and 10% on cars is WTO viable.

Even here in Meiji Kent, just a stone’s throw from Calais and EU markets and tourism, and with Farage and UKIP demolished, the Japanese must be laughing up their kimono sleeves at Britain winning the war and Japanese mega-investment with Nissan Sunderland et al - but losing the peace and then losing the EU and largest and wealthiest trade bloc in history.

Perhaps those lamb export extra tariffs not so bad for Kentish lamb rather than trade with the Kiwi Killers of Infratil, or the monstrous stench of live sheep exports through Ramsgate port. And that port viable as a Discovery Park/Pfizer SEZ Freeport and Ostend ferry again as part of Seaside Sea Changes?

Certainly UK vaccines will need to be produced in bulk – shouldn’t that have been done strategically anyway rather than spaffing £100M up the wall on some frothy ads - or after heavy delays at Dover (£70M a day if closed) Port (UK and Eire's largest) work their way through the clogged arteries of the UK road system.

Even experts like Govey must see that his daily Brexit meetings are a fool’s errand and a waste of time – unless there’s free Jaffa Cakes and exceedingly good cakes.

Or, oy vey, perhaps Labour and Jezza C’s LatAm-lite revolution could win the general election, perhaps Govey’s fellow-Jock, Foxy has hidden a dram or three of his favourite breakfast whisky in the Cabinet filing cabinet to drown the win-or-lose sorrows of Brexit.

So here’s £100M of free advertising advice again, Boris:

Don’t do it.

To help, I won’t even charge for the full stops.

Time for Change
@timg33

Letter to Parliament on Dreamland etc corruption

Hi Meg

In your PAC Chair role can I flag up the very fishy sale of the Dreamland amusement park site in Margate - the largest site in Kent.

I've copied Madeline Homer and Tim Howes as TDC council CEO and lawyer as the sale featured in no recent election manifesto.

Nor were tenders issued for competition - and the sale was nodded through in a 6 minute unanimous council debate last week - lead by Bob Bayford TDC Leader previously Deputy Leader in the Ezekiel regime jailed for council fraud for similar compulsory purchases.

Dreamland and Pleasurama and Manston stink of council corruption.

TDC as you know is one of UK's most corrupt and incompetent councils and has form with:

* Grayling fishy ferry of Seaborne without ships
* Wetherspoons mega booze barn
* Brett port aggregates #1 and #2
* Pleasurama mystery insurance fire and BVI tax haven
* Manston airport - Infratil removed monitors/pollution data and sudden sale to Delware/Swiss tax haven company Riveroak last month - PAC previously questioning the Gloag/Stagecoach owners.

Riveroak owned by Tony Freudmann who busted Manston with Wiggins previously and featured in Private Eye Rotten Boroughs for managing to be struck off by both the law society and as a council CEO.

An interesting point would be the missing Manston fines and tax rebates for corruption.

You and fellow parliamentarians will be suffering excess air pollution as Manston was the main report site for the South East and London.

Slightly more positive the KCC Toxic Three are now reduced to only leader Paul Carter with the resignation of Geoff Wild KCC lawyer and involved in Manston.

Sands Hotel and Arrowgrass Caymans Island company are the new owners apparently although FOI/EIR requests are ignored.

Can this be reviewed as part of the white collar criminal and enabler functions at PAC of companies such as Lord Grabiner's One Essex Court etc?

Madeline and Tim I'm sure would relish being interrogated by PAC, or police, if TDC remains silent and secretive.

I struggle to see why they haven't resigned their £150k salaries from this rotten borough.

Certainly the Dreamland sale should be suspended and called in.

Best wishes and keep up the good work at PAC.

Kindest regards

Tim

Cuba Renaissance on track with UK and A Different Gringo strategy?

Certainly a Cuban Renaissance with UK is underway with dynamic new Ambassador Stokes and the first UK Royal visit to the Communist nation by Prince Charles and Camilla earlier this year.

Charles lounging next to John Lennon on a Malecon bench, before leading British Classic Cars through the throng of USA sanctions 1950's classic cars. Those Chevy's and Cadillacs probably powered by old lawnmowers or offcuts of vintage John Deere tractors - Nothing runs like a Deere after all, or after 60 years of sanctions.

Although none of those vehicles capable of lobbing a nuke onto USA in some notional rerun of the 1962 Missile Crisis. While North Korean tractors towing its missiles in parades before returning to the fields, a testament to POTUS Trump in moving beyond Cold War frameworks and forbearance on USA military action as with Iran's nukes programme.

Prince Charles also pausing over a Duchy Original biscuit to view a Cuban organic farm - certainly a Communist - and Caribbean - economy powered by sugar and tobacco is unlikely to cause a seismic shift in its population's fortunes.

Prince Charles flying off from the rabidly successful Cuba visit, and around the Caribbean Commonwealth, rather than cruising away via East Kent Core Company Saga Cruise ships, although Camilla launching the latest ship - that in search of new ports or trade freeports - in Dover last week.

While Ambassador Stokes LVO (Licensed Victuallers Organisation) is best placed to consider the future of both Havana and Bacardi rum in UK supermarkets.

While Cuban culture is cooking on gas with Onel Hernandez the first Cuban player to join the UK Football League, at Delia Smith's Norwich City and Carlos Acosta showing a clean pair of Cuban heels to rival the Bolshoi at the London Ballet.


### A rum do for UK to miss Cuban Rail? ###


But Ambassador Stokes is surely building up a head of steam over the massive potential for UK-Cuban trade in the refurb of Cuba's miles of rusty railways. The former Vietnam Ambassador no doubt pondering the wisdom for Cuba and UK of the first 19 Chinese trains for Cuba and promises of another 200 sets next year.

Certainly the miles of rickety Vietnamese railways no great advertisement for such activity - especially as ASEAN now signs off the HiSpeed loop from the Bangkok hub into China. The BKK-PP link is now delivered from my 2015 MP manifesto and work for PP-HCMC and Kwai upgrades to Yangon confirmed which is positive for a UK Strategic Rail Group to secure UK transport exports.

China's pace in hispeed rail matched by its crashes, and abroad its investments stalling as in Ethiopia: a railway built without the necessary infrastructure is a pub without beer.

Britain taking no lessons in rail from anyone: inventing them with the Crab and Winkle line at Canterbury to the East Kent coast at Whitstable. The new LNER East Coast hispeed trains. And Kent's success with HS1 and Eurostar and Channel Tunnel, reducing shorthaul EU flights and securing the London 2012 Olympics and potential for HS2 and HS3.

And that UK success not just for UK with East Kent Hitachi and Balfour Beatty or East Yorkshire Davos 15 Siemens, but Bombardier and Dennis buses from the Midlands to Northern Powerhouse to Northern Ireland and Canada for the all-important Climate Change seamless public transport that can unblock many town centres.


### UK Big Ticket from Infrastructure to Movies ###


And UK Big Ticket Infrastructure from The Shard skyscraper to London 2012 Olympics. (An Havana bid building beyond the Senegal 2022 Youth Olympics? And apt for Isla Juventud and a memorial to Fidel's first imprisonment after Moncada Barracks Revolt), and Crossrail and SuperSewer.

Apt too with Fidel whiling away the days reading East Kent's the Dean of Canterbury and Julius Caesar (Caesar's recently discovered fort in Ramsgate, founding UK, surely another tourism fail by the County Barn?) and learning English via Vanity Fair and smoking JFK's favourite brand of H. Upmann cigars - some things beyond sanctions.

Churchill’s cigars also featured at his home in Chartwell West Kent.

But with Big Ticket Infrastructure of course UK leading the way on the first Metro/Tube/London Underground - the first of 200 around the world - again Havana no doubt considering how to preserve the Malecon for UNESCO status with transport links say to Varadero beach.

And if the first trial run of the Chinese trains is clunking through the 500 miles to Guantanamo then UK expertise as the safest railway in Europe is no doubt needed, much as Kent's level crossing are being upgraded.
The Castro handover from Fidel to Raoul to Miguel Diaz-Canel already seeing a developing internet and wifi, ripe for UK experience on Digital Rail and tube and bus.

In my politics work as MP and Mayor candidate I've urged A Different Gringo strategy for UK in Latin America. And that all the more relevant for Cuba and its Yankee Go Home philosophy (and much of Latin America) after the Bay of Pigs 1961 invasion, that also holed the Kennedy and successive USA administrations below the waterline until now.

Ambassador Woody in USA bathing in the luxury of a Special Relationship developing to an Extra Special Relationship with UK and USA and Treble Club of tripled exports. He might well be lighting an Upmann cigar with $100 bills after the success of the USA Year of Sports and NFL and baseball so far in UK.

And how different USA and Cuba would have been if Castro had taken up baseball with the New York Giants in 1948. Fidel preferring to swim with the sharks of Communist revolution rather than USA sports. Harvey Mackay a Baron von Football before Ambo Woody in developing NFL in Cuba, also cites Fidel's love of USA ten-pin bowling with his own rink in the basement of parliament.

Perhaps a Crazy Golf course down there too: the pyramid with the hole on top etc. To rival the new course in Rochester Cathedral?

Certainly that USA Year of Sports extending into media reforms of the Monroe Doctrine in UK and USA beyond just VOA broadcasts. The Cricket World Cup (no Cuban team?) in UK highlighting the slow death of a sport relying only on satellite monies rather than free to view broadcasts.

The quietly dynamic Lord Hall of BBC raising the issue of just 4% of UK sports on BBCTV yet 40% viewing suggests an overdue dedicated BBC Sports channel (and BBC Three resurrected?), if not greater cooperation with Channel Four's public remit as in the quick broadcast of the Cricket Word Cup Final with an advertising share.

Ambo Woody no doubt gnashing his teeth over the years lost in UK and EU with Channel Four ending its NFL coverage and innovative sports such as Sumo and Kabaddi. Much as Northern Ireland after 50 years of Troubles is now celebrating the Golf Open's return.

But regardless of the Brexit mess or an FTA chimera it must be a bureaucratic beanfeast yielding thin gruel compared to say Perdue Product range from the open range of Heartland USA to UK supermarket shelves whether Idaho potatos, Virginia craft beer or Illinois cornflakes.

Cuban sanctions a potential POTUS Trump foreign policy success, beyond NFL or World Series (baseball not soccer) transfers, before 2020 after the moves to United Koreas and Eritrea-Ethiopia successes?

Those voters in Little Havana in Miami, and warmer relations with their families 90 miles away from Key West, might be key than chads to both Republicans and democrats in the 2020 election.


### Cubans in East Kent Airfix and Hornby ###


A reduction of USA sanctions is certainly less of an upheaval than a Brigade 2506 action - but the Bay of Pigs a US-led Caribbean D-Day far beyond the usual US Marines policing and meddling missions through the Caribbean since the Platt Amendment or the Maine, even the invasion of the Commonwealth's Grenada.

An East Kent Core Company Airfix kit of Cuban soldiers and militia resisting the Americans, or Cuban troops in Africa may be irrelevant in the 21st century, although certainly UK and Cuban medicare links are viable.

And why not Cuba in the Caribbean Commonwealth eventually, perhaps even with Virginia Commonwealth and the other 3 USA Commonwealths as affiliates initially and ultimately hands across the Caribbean and Atlantic oceans.
Certainly Guantanamo is looking pointless as a military prison with just 40 Taliban prisoners and, as with Vieques, less relevant as a US Navy base.

Fidel long refusing to cash the USA cheques (a great potential display for the British Museum, or even Cleveland's dynamic Museum, beyond Ethiopian loot stored in the basement out of sight?) for supposed rental of the occupied site.

And Cuba exercising restraint in not occupying the base or water plant or withdrawing fire brigade support.

The American taxpayer - whether in Little Havana Miami or Del Mar Lago may well consider the affront to Cuban pride of an imposed US navy base at Gitmo (and Bahia Honda long relinquished) and the cost, compared to Cuban and USA Coastguard support for drugs trafficking crackdowns between Mexico and Colombia.


### Cuba Libre or Riggsed democracy ###


While UK tax havens such as British Virgin Islands and Caymans no doubt costing the USA and UK taxpayer in money-laundering via Riggs Bank and Equatorial Guinea again (a modern day Haiti National City Bank?) perhaps more, than refloating Puerto Rico after the hurricanes and cleaning up Vieques from years of US navy target practice.

Certainly Ben Wallace UK Security Minister is on the right track for a crackdown of UK white collar criminals and enablers such as Lord Grabiner's One Essex Court corrupt barristers and Palmer Biggs lawyer fraud.

Kent's NYC spitfire AOC no doubt shaking off Communist accusations (NHS medical care and top-slice taxation strangely centrist to UK eyes) in the feverish atmosphere of the latest POTUS Trump tweets. And AOC no doubt pausing over a Cuba Libre to consider the value of Nyorican and Haitian and Jamaican caucuses galvanised and welded together in NYC.

Certainly they are more positive voices than Russian (is it even Communist any more?) tomfoolery, (beyond Crimea and Syria’s Latakia warm water port to rival Gwadar in sight of Oman and Hormuz), from the KGB playbook of Putin to prop up Venezuela and the tsunami of refugees breaking over Trump's Wall.

While Trump particularly short-sighted in trimming USA aid to Central America and the Caribbean with a Syrian-style exodus underway as affected Europe recently from Venezuela and Honduras and Nicaragua.

Walls and helicopter gunships go so far and so much less than consistent aid to refloat broken nations. A few more years of Brexit twaddle or Boris silliness and Kent refugees may be voting with their feet through the Channel Tunnel to Belgium.

And the largest ever cocaine haul in Philadelphia and latest cocaine submarine that infects American cities, whether Sanctuaries or not shows the value of more coherent USA and UK strategy in the Caribbean.

The wider Blue Economy no doubt of more value to the Caribbean and OAS than drugs subs - and Ambassador Stokes must be pondering beyond the chimera of USA sanctions the united front in Canadian and Spanish and UK tourism and investment in Cuba already.

The Canadian Commonwealth and the Six Companies no doubt keen to participate in hispeed rail beyond both Vancouver and Vieques. And develop Panama and the trade lifeline of its canal.


### Cajun Navy and US Coastguard? ###


While Louisiana again and no doubt Texas keen for UK and Canadian navy cooperation under USCG and the Cajun Navy for the next hurricanes, as well as hospital ships as USNS Comfort and even Virginia’s Operation Smile.
Perhaps hospital ships needed for Puerto Rice not just for Hurricane Maria but now massive Ricky Resign protests over the Governor.

And UK coastal MP's such as Johnny Mercer in Plymouth and Penny Mordaunt in Portsmouth (towns rusting in the sun on the Channel as here in East Kent) must be taking a fresh view on Royal Navy ship and staffing given two Admirals per warship bloat and rise of roboships and a UK Shipbuilding Masterplan for hospital ships and supply ships beyond vanity aircraft carriers too expensive to risk being sunk.

State Dept head Mike Pompeo perhaps holding off changing his name to Pompey in solidarity with Fritten Park, rather than Corbyn as a left wing regime, in the UK-USA Year of Sports.

And calmer voices needed not just on POTUS Trump race trash talk but on such issues as the horrifying fact of the Caribbean’s 38M people with the second highest HIV levels after sub-Saharan Africa. Perhaps nothing could be more vital for UK-USA and the ripple effect for Caribbean in closer links with universities, the NOASS hurricane systems and Atlanta pandemic disease centre.

While Ambo Woody must be pondering the potential with USAid of extra Durex condom and Always tampon factories for both public health and prosperity – even before considering HIV and Ebola vaccines.

The Mooch, hardly a Communist or Democrat, distinctly uncomfortable on BBC News at such rants. And Ambassador Woody no doubt laying aside the soft soap to translate UK concerns at such views and Darrochian and Khan petulance - compared to the mega-potential of the Treble Club and Rust Belt Revitalisation for UK and USA before the 2020 election.

Especially as Airbus in Bristol and Toulouse and Boeing in Sheffield must be considering the overhaul of Cuba's air fleet and helicopters with increased tourism. And coffee exports for the Starbucks of the UK High Street - Santiago or Saint-Marc or San Juan could rival Hua Hin for pineapples on UK and EU supermarket shelves.

While former Eire Ambassador to UK Bobby McDonagh writing in the New European of Irish concerns of Boris as PM for the Ulster and Eire, and UK, economies even beyond the Scots-Irish Bridge and The Six Companies and Brexit backstops. Boris’s warm words on Brexit or confusion on the Garden Bridge, Channel Bridge or Boris Airport or Heathrow Bulldozers (JCB or CAT?) or even Boris Bikes suggest he can put no Kerrygold butter on UK or Eire parsnips.
The UK and Eire economies linked in to deliver on funding the expansion of both Eire and UK embassies and trade offices


### Munro Doctrine to Monroe Doctrine ###


The UK's 19 warships (when the engines work) 10 subs and 45 other ships increasingly leaky and redundant since being launched in the mid-1980's.

And no shots fired in anger since WW2 except briefly in the Falklands - that Imperial leftover not worth the bones of one grenadier and increasingly a ludicrous MOD cost with warmer relations with Argentina and a wider Munro Media Doctrine alongside the USA Monroe Doctrine.

Those Saga cruise ships along the Argentine and Chilean coasts and Antarctica far more relevant to Port Stanley and UK ports than warships now.

Cuba too must be looking at the potential of Jamaica not just for its new nurse training programmes and language schools with UK, but also with its beginnings as a forward-positioned aid base. Native Spanish speakers all the more relevant too for UK schools and universities with the growth of Hispanic USA beyond the Scots-Irish past?

And Cuba must be kickstarting its music and movies industry beyond the Buena Vista Social Club - East Kent's James Bond long citing Cuba in movies such as Octopussy and Halle Berry hi-jinx but in Pinewood not on location in Isle of Pines. Cuba rivalling Jamaica and Bahamas as the spiritual home of James Bond beyond East Kent?
The Jamaican economy boosted again with the new Bond25 movie.

BBC interest in Cuba and Shepperton Studios alongside EKFOS East Kent Film Office and Studio could change all that for the better.

Just as Cuba and Latin America is changing.

Time for Change
@timg33

Email to TDC CEO Madeline Homer etc on Pleasurama and Dreamland etc East Kent corruption

Friday 12th July 2019

Hi Madeline

As CEO of TDC can I briefly flag up to you 3 major concerns raised in my MP campaign and to you/Tim Howes previosuly:

1. TDC planned sale it seems to Sands Hotel etc of Dreamland - the former a tax haven company and latter the largest seafront site in Kent and receipt of public funds etc. I've never hear of such a main site simply been allocated and that against corruption concerns as with the Fishy Ferry of Seaborne and Wetherspoons Booze Barn allocation and Brett aggregates.

2. Pleasurama - site ownership murky and BVI tax haven. Will the site be cleared this Summer even if a £1 CPO is needed?

3. Manston £16M sale to Riveroak: Delaware tax haven and missing monitors/fines - have these been reissued to Gloag/Riveroak etc? And corporate manslaughter raised?

I'll write more fully later but clearly 3 tax haven sales by a small District council is a concern and given the Gang of Four council staff/councillors resignations/jailed etc.

Copy to media/Parliament.

Tim

ASEAN 2030 World Cup back of the net for Thailand and Indonesia but UK fumbles the ball?

Even with the confusion of the Thai elections now resolved for the moment with a PM Tu party and Pheu Thai and Future Forward opposition, the ASEAN Chair Summit last month, raised some interesting actions.

An ASEAN Space Agency is wise for weather satellites and 5G - surely an opportunity for UK/EU Space Agency support, and the new Australia Space Agency celebrating a slightly rusty first birthday at Woomera lauch site. Even the potential of a Cambodia Space Project banging the drum for a retooling of the ASEAN car industry with a Morlam or Kundrum inspirational ditty.

The crashed Australian car industry may even be galvanised again through Space Agency retooling its POTUS Trump missions to Mars and Europa. A woman on Mars by 2030 and space colonies of 3M people also factored in by the Bezos and Tesla and Branson space missions.

An ASEAN Military Medicine programme is realistic in USA DARPA terms as something of a sticking plaster over expanding military budgets and perhaps more useful in Sports Science (UK as a Sporting Superpower as Australian cricket now realise) - and VR and AR for Thai companies such as Toshiba and Mitsubishi, even True and AIS.

An ASEAN Culture Contest a twist on the Eurovision Song Contest karaoke or more crunchy UNESCO Cultural Heritage protection for say Morlam music of Isaan.

But perhaps most worthy of a Mexican Wave through ASEAN and indeed UK is the ASEAN agreement to bid for the 2034 Soccer World Cup. PM May this Summer seeming to concentrate on the cricket and jam rather than previous claims of the 2030 World Cup for the UK Home Nations.

The Brexit mess revealing a deep seam of amateurism in British politics and governance and with the shilly-shally of a World Cup 2030, the spectre of a Britain where its word is no longer its bond. With Khun Thanathorn in London again to detail Future Forward policy on conscription, military budgets and Thailand 4.0, could he stay on and run the place if Uncle Tu can't spare a half day each week?

But on the 2034 World Cup, ASEAN is on a sticky wicket initially after the shambles of the Hanoi Games of 2019 cancelled at the last minute or unravelling of TPP into more talks about talks froth.

### Big Ticket Vietnam infrastructure all at sea? ###

Indonesia wisely stepping in to wipe the egg off Vietnam's face for the Hanoi Games farce and now to lead on the World Cup.
Is Vietnam incapable of delivering big ticket infrastructure and social programmes?

Certainly the Vietnam Transport Minster wise to urge a hurry-up on rail developments: the PP-HCMC rail link surely to the fore. Even the relocation of Da Nang airport and Vinh deep sea port as a Haiphong #2 beyond ceremonial minuets over tea and biscuits.

The UK-Vietnam Strategic Dialogue more an endless dialogue rather than anything strategic or indeed deliverable as per those failed Hanoi Games rocking confidence in Vietnam trade and growth, perhaps as anything more than increased manufacture of Arsenal football shirts as a lead on UK Sports Diplomacy.

It would be nice to think that: viet nam doc lap thong nhat va xa hoi chu nghia muon nam, long live an independent reunified and socialist Vietnam would be a UK and Vietnam crucnhy deliverable beyond the steam off the tea cups.

Both the UK and Vietnamese people no doubt concerned at the delay and costs of mere meeting room hot air, even without Climate Change such as Mekong Delta floods.

Vietnam's HSBC Water initiatives perhaps a way forward beyond the Paracels for UK-VN naval cooperation - as well as supporting UK and Thai troops in South Sudan UN Peacekeeping and policing. A regiment of Vietnamese troops sat in barracks of no more use in Nha Trang than in Northampton.

And the chair of the Thai FA Committee Khun Somyat wise to highlight a similar GOWI get-on-with-it approach to the 2034 World Cup, but not to be hampered by 10 ASEAN members (11 with Timor by 2034? Even Papua and Solomons?) each wanting their piece of the football apple pie.

The Japan-Korea Cup and indeed four Home Nations of UK 2030 (5 with Eire or still 4 with a reunited Ulster and Eire by 2034?) sensible templates (and indeed USA, Canada, Mexico in 2026) for say a maximum of 3 ASEAN hosts: Indonesia, Thailand and Myanmar.

Yes, even rusty Myanmar with the 15 years to 2034 enough time to not just put the World Cup on the road to Mandalay, and stimulate the undernourished Myanmar soccer potential, but also build/redevelop the stadia with the Six Companies approach, and Kwai etc transport links. Even London Undergroud Metros that would be familiar to Oxford's Aung San Suu Kyi.

### Mind the gap in global rail and metro ###

And Berlin's Metro Station at Wittenbergplatz with a London transport gift of the station sign should surely be a template for UK Metro (Tube if you prefer) excellence and innovation from Buenos Aires to Buffalo and Tel Aviv to Taipei. UK design carving out the tunnels not just as Crossrail or SuperSewers but carriages and even Harry Beck's graphic design of the iconic Tube map used around the world.

Some corner of a foreign Metro station is already mapped out as forever England, but a London tube sign as Wittenbergplatz would be a nice flourish for further rail links.

The UNESCO Heritage site of Bagan an ideal backdrop for the new Beckham's and Messi's keepy-uppy photo-opportunities for the 2034 World Cup. As would, with my Sincerity Advertising football shirt on, backdrops (real not UK green screen film effects) of Indonesia's Bali beach soccer and Thailand's Royal Road temples near to the world-class Buriram Sports City (an E-Grand Prix motor race soon?) in Surin province.

Khum Somyat must surely be polishing his football boots at the Thai FA to alert the UK FA as the Home of Football, of the 2034 bid, not as the Thai proverb: Ao paeng nuan pai khai chaowang - coals to Newcastle or Kasetsart way, but rather deploying the full weight of UK FA and in FIFA, even Khun Tippy's Leicester FC Siamese Foxes and the Premier League and all 92 UK football clubs, for a successful bid way before 2034. And 2030.

While wiser heads in ASEAN such as Manila's dynamic Resilience Minister Karen Jimeno must be thinking of a battle for city bids to some extent, yet considering the potential in Display Events before and during the 2034 World Cup.

And any post-2034 legacy of stadia and Metro Manila infrastructure improvements that UK very successfully achieved after the 2012 London Olympics would be maximised even without marshalling ADB and AIIB or rather EU and OECD and EBRD support.

Plus ASEAN not yet full steam ahead in developing swimming pools and school swimming lessons, whether Surin Charity, Thai Small Schools, or not is clearly a short-sighted approach for an eventual ASEAN Olympics, that Kent's sports expert Tracey Crouch MP is leading in UK.

Ms Crouch as an FA referee might well blow the whistle to begin consideration not just of World Cup Display Events but also future Olympic sports and display sports. She'd have no stronger supporter than me in my MP and Mayor campaigns.

Except perhaps Richard Graham MP Gloucester's ASEAN Minister and a cheerleader for Indonesia in UK and building bridges and the need for a massive uplift in UK trade, in ASEAN long before the 2030 and 2034 World Cups.

It's too early though for Hyde Park schools and Project Chaika.

UK as a Sporting Superpower, the Cricket World Cup in venues throughout UK, Netball World Cup in Liverpool and USA NFL and Year of Sports in just one summer, suggest more could and should be done in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and even 2022 Senegal Youth Olympics preparation. The latter the first Olympics in Africa and alongside the Morocco HiSPeed rail, first in Africa recently visited by Liam Fox Trade Minister. No doubt for metro/rail connections to Cairo and Riyadh and Neom, even the revitalised Cape2Cairo rail via Wau and Juba.

The PCC police elections next year may even see Chief Constable Pughsley dusting off his police whistle for a reinvigorated Kent Police Blue Light Emergency Soccer Cup, from the bottomless well of the Kent Police Innovation Fund.

Sporting Superpower UK surely absurd in lacking Olympics pools in every county as are the lack of ice rinks given Bangkok can manage it in 30 degree Climate Change heat. As can Miami, almost 60 years ago in the bravura ice rink hotel opening scenes of East Kent's 007 Goldfinger movie.

### ASEAN Smart Cities and couch rambutans ###

While smaller ASEAN nations such as Brunei or Laos or Singapore (and Timor and Solomons?) must also be thinking of not just Display Events (keepy-uppy along Orchard Road?) but, given hopefully record crowds of supporters and tourists crashing their websites and road works, and niche events that can blossom as Kent orchids, such as E-Sports.

Although the Thai Sports Science team may be needed to get ASEAN couch potatos (couch rambutans?) away from computer games and into the fresh air of the various ASEAN Smart Cities.

Indeed a UK and ASEAN Alliance for 2030 and 2034 might well ponder the opportunity with the men in blazers of the FA, as the founding fathers of football, and FIFA for a 2038 India World Cup from New Delhi to Hyderabad. Perhaps even an India-China Winter Olympics in the Karakoram or Kashmir or Nepalese highlands at some point.

PM May surely basking in a relaxing summer of cricket and hiking and jam-making and wheatfield wandering, and possibly pondering a backbench role as a roving envoy for Great British Cricket in India and UK-Commonwealth-USA frenemy Pakistan of nukes and Afghan safe zones and heroin and Kashmir sabre-rattling etc.

Indeed perhaps a refreshed PM May can not just get former cricketer Imran Khan on-side on such issues, and UK's lead in womens sports in general, but develop given the UK lead on diasporas, an India Federation of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bhutan within the Commonwealth, for a linked-up approach to development rather than UK tearing itself apart on a Who Lost India debate as with China.

Perhaps given former PM's John Major and Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and David Cameron Brexit warnings, Mrs May may bury the hatchet with POTUS Trump - before Kent Pocahontas Liz Warren does, or scalps him with it -and benefit from USA experience in outlining a UK-PM Library system and forum, on similar lines to USA Presidential libraries and UN Elders for sage advice.

POTUS Trump so far looks as though his Presidential Library won't be needed until after 2024.

While Jeremy Corbyn's fellow redshirt Keir Starmer railing in his lawyerly way under Hilary Benn's wise Brexit chairmanship, against a UK fudge on Brexit. And both no doubt keen to move Labour beyond socialism in one tube zone noodling and navel-gazing.

Or Cuban revolution amongst Jezza's courgettes of the allotment (except for China taking first base in Cuban Rail overhaul), and as with Tom Watson urging Remain, to wake up and smell the Nicaraguan Fair Trade coffee - or Vietnamese coffee - and bat for UK Sports in cross-party support in the Indo-Pacific sports arena and beyond.

An ASEAN World Cup in 2034, and UK World Cup in 2030 plus an India World Cup in 2038 would indeed be a hat-trick worth cheering from the rooftops and terraces in delivering sports to the peoples.

UK's mandarins might well have an extra half-time Florida orange themselves as a welcome break from the Brexit and Darrochian mess damaging UK's reputation near and far.

Time for Change
@timg33

Fast track Thailand and Cambodia rail - and UK?

A vigorous full page editorial today from the Bangkok Post emphasises the success and potential for the new rail link from Bangkok through to Phnom Penh in Cambodia. The link opened in April by both Prime Minister Chanocha and Hun Sen just a few weeks before the ASEAN Summit chaired by Thailand emphasised connectivity.

https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/1709027/rail-link-a-worthy-effort


That all the more relevant for the next link from PP through to HCMC in Vietnam as Vietnam chairs next year's ASEAN sessions. Indeed the Vietnam Transport Minister urging a hurry up on such links. That at the Strategic Dialogue in London last week between UK and Vietnam - usually the discussions more tea-and-biscuits Dialogue than Strategy and even less on delivery over the last decade.

Perhaps the current rail timetable not factoring in the potential to ease congestion on Thailand's roads - as well as a road safety boost beyond the zooming minivans.

The Bangkok Post again this week with a full page article Bullet Train Bangkok to Beijing - a pastiche of the Michael Caine later Harry Palmer actioner - on the potential for hispeed rail from Bangkok and indeed Singapore upto Hong Kong and Beijing's OBOR:

https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/1708122/from-bangkok-to-beijing

While with Khun Thanathorn and Pannika of the Future Forward party in London this week, the Thai opposition leaders after the recent Thai elections, the debate no doubt centering on Thai military budget doubling under the junta to 7% GDP (UK and EU around 2% and higher even than USA's 6%) and conscription - but also the Hyperloop and Isaan initially raised in the election.

Isaan to the fore, and the slow train of development even before the Charter referendum with Ubon and Laos only connected to BKK in the 1950's according to the Isaan Voices book, in the new report from Asia Foundation by the dynamic Khun Rattana Lao:

https://asiafoundation.org/2019/06/05/thailands-inequality-unpacking-the-myths-and-reality-of-isan/

With the now open Thai-Cambodia rail link on my 2015 and onwards manifesto, Richard Branson and Hyperloop and Isaan surely a feature in Thailand as well as the next UK election likely this Autumn after the Boris-Hunt PM battles building momentum for Redshirt Jeremy Corbyn's Labour and Remain.

Certainly it's too early to discuss in detail the 10,000 islands of Laos or Vinh deep sea port or Project Chaika. Or even Bangkok as ASEAN hub for Sincerity Advertising and PR.

The UK in Thailand gaining another boost with the announcement of 750 new Tesco stores - no doubt to rival 7-11 for rail station outlets as well as malls.

And The Independent, whisper it quietly, today urging on HS2 the UK equivalent of the bullet train after the success of HS1 and Hitachi here in East Kent: Eurostar trains linking London with Paris and Brussels through the Channel Tunnel:

https://inews.co.uk/opinion/sub-standard-trains-hs2-modern-network-simon-kelner-opinion/


That perhaps more important for UK infrastructure with delays on Heathrow and Gatwick development and the setback for UK-USA infrastructure cooperation for the moment in the POTUS Trump, rightful, concerns over Ambassador Darroch insults and leaks.

Neither helpful in plugging gaps in USA's crumbly rail and airport infrastructure - perhaps POTUS Trump's 1776 airports slip in his 4th July speech accurate in the cement needing to be poured to repair USA's ancient infrastructure beyond the Hudson Yards and Mexican Wall to pull together USA again.

Certainly the 2020 USA elections will need to show more concrete results than just a few East Kent Core Company Airfix or Hornby models of airports or railways gathering dust in the White House basement.

But Thailand's leap forward on ASEAN links deserving of more momentum not just on the PP-HCMC link or Laos and Isaan but through Kwai and Kanchanaburi upgrades to Yangon and onto India.

The sensitive updating of the Kwai links with Thailand and UK and Australia (the latter with the rather marvellous Hellfire Pass museum already) cooperation with East Kent and Japan's Hitachi and Toshiba, through to Imphal and Kohima in India perhaps no greater symbol of 21st century reconciliation.

Australia may even benefit in overhauling its hispeed rail network not just on the East coast of Brisbane to Sydney and Adelaide or even onto Perth. But rather tourism boosts and the strategic closure of Western Australia's backdoor onto the Indian Ocean - the continental circular road network only completed by 1985.

Perhaps this week's UNESCO list flagging up the potential with new sites in Myanmar with Bagan and Laos at the Plain of Jars - my desk as I write this with a pencil jar from the Jars.

And Isaan's Khmer temples placed on the UNESCO Tentative List - the Royal Road through Cambodia to Thailand surely a mega-boost to tourism and trade along with the rail links. Even ahead of the 2034 ASEAN World Cup bid:

https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/1709543/two-sites-placed-on-unesco-tentative-list

And if UK efforts have been rather feeble in Laos and especially Myanmar (and the briefly touted UK 2030 World Cup bid) given the potential for Commonwealth links with India and Malaysia an Australia, the the new UNESCO site in UK with the Jodrell Bank space telescope form 1957 highlighting the potential for the new ASEAN Space programme with UK and Australia. That Cambodia Space Project echoing the music of the spheres, before the next tsunami or Climate Change floods, with weather satellites, seabed scans and robot subs etc.

All relevant to summit the next phase of the Thai car parts industry.

Thailand and ASEAN certainly should be reaching to outer space once the outer reaches of Thailand and ASEAN's borders are bridged by rail.

The UK's expertise in inventing and building railways and metros and stations and bus interchanges and mega-tunnels and super sewers through UK and Asia and USA is poised to help.

@timg33

Police review update: Ramsgate and Kent

Crediit where it’s due I wanted to point out, almost 2 weeks after the first police review meeting, things are much improved in the town centre with tramps, pedzone cars etc.

Some issues remain:

1. In 2 weeks I haven’t seen any police foot patrols day or night. Prowl cars excellent.
2. Some tramps remain at the BetFred benches: drunk and yelling and litter before 6pm and drug gangs/groups:

3. Lots of bicycles in the pedzone: zooming through, wheelies, groups of kids and often going the wrong way through – is CCTV working? Road Safety generally 20mph (and road crash maps) and future bike reg/insurance/helmets?
An OAP/child will be seriously injured or killed soon.

4. Cars on pavements: mainly the kebab shop Slovak reg car and beach kiosk owners – the pedzone and seafront should also be extended soon: 8am to midnight? And marina/harbour car reduction. Same day towing/fines and clamp/crush should be viable: plenty of free car parks

5. Street drinking from newsagent single cans still an issue – a condition of licence/no sales before noon? An ASBO Most wanted ban list? Tobacco controls a separate licence issue?

6. A useful update would be on drugs gangs and dealers/County Lines as it goes underground again – Lords report on seaside towns heroin use and largescale former Blockbuster store town centre cannabis site/Manston 3am flights/yachts shows a major issue

7. Wetherspoons review: seafront funnelling into town centre/seafront – the largest pub in UK

8. Prowl car non-999 tasks review: ASBO noise policy with TDC closed at night, parking tickets, litter/grafitti grotspots, broken street lights, potholes reporting

9. Generally, concern over port still being used for live animal exports: collusion between port staff and police despite a council vote to end use: Port Act 1847 and Animal Welfare allows lorries to be turned away

10. FOI on staffing/salaries/ EK rota etc useful against £250M budget – excessive guns/ammo/training a concern

11. Thanet Metals dumped van/immobile sign by Copart Ltd near Pfizer (and several Bedz Ramsgate eyesore roadside signs), and broken wind turbine for scrap/dismantling nearby at Richboro/MT Energie

12. Manston airport DCO and Pleasurama and Dreamland final stages of council corruption

13. Pandemic #1 UK strategic threat: TB to ricin etc etc. A review of vaccines/policy etc would be useful

14. Truancy: by school and offrolling

15. Social dumping: by Maidstone and London – review of care homes, police presence etc

16. Bank Holidays and festivals: police overview

Hope these points are useful.
Kindest regards
Tim
• disused wind turbine near MT Energie and Pfizer
• £280M KCC pension funds
• £20M Canterbury shopping mall purchase
• Canterbury West mega car park
• Nemo mega pylons
• 30% RTC council reserves
• £1.5M Harbour St fund
• KCC commuter train link to Lille and Eurostar connection at Ashford

Dividends end at Dover and Osaka for UK and G20?

A rigorous Sunday Times article "Go East income seeker" details the potential for UK growth alongside the stock markets of Australia, China, South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore. Indeed Chancellor Phillip Hammond inking a deal with the Shanghai and London Bourses for such growth ahead of this week's G20 meet in Osaka.

And the Thai-Cambodia new railway not just creating the strategic linkage of Bangkok and Phnom Penh and no doubt HCMC but already delivering value for UK/European and Asian investors in the £500M redeveloment of Phnom Penh railway station with new retail concourses etc. The St Pancras of South East Asia?

With the Sunday Times detailing the Asian funds of Henderson and Schroders for continued growth, brands such as South Korea's (and North soon?) Samsung, Taiwan's Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Aussie Vintner Treasury Wine estates likely to deliver on that growth.

While Aussie wine brand 19 Crimes and UK's Brewdog beer new crowdfunding float likely to give Treasury Wine a run for its money.
The Sunday Times Business profile of Philip Aiken Chair of Balfour Beatty alongside The Mighty Quinn, ahead of the LSE100 promotion this week of Aveva industrial software with its merger with France's Schneider Electrics. And Aiken as a board member of the UK-Australian Chamber of Commerce alongside Boris Johnson's mentor Lynton Crosby suggests richer depths of growth beyond warm beer is untapped between UK and Australia and Asia.

Although with the G20 Summit in Osaka lost in translation and the noise of the Brexit mess and Tory PM leadership run off between Boris and Big Rice Jezza H suggests UK failing to maximise such growth.

Brexit dampening Japanese expansion in UK: Nissan Sunderland Qashqai and Honda Swindon marking a Japanese retrenchment from the Thatcher years of attracting Asian FDI.

With my Sincerity Advertiisng hat on, perhaps Big Rice needs to refloat his Hotcourses Japanese lessons quickly after Osaka so the Brexit blip is not lost in translation along with hundreds of skilled jobs in the previously moribund UK car industry.
Perhaps Mrs H is indeed a secret weapon to deploy beyond the fripperies of Huawei and beyond the Who Lost China Debate: Germany not hampered or hamstrung by the EU in turbocharging its exports to China.

Both the Iran conflict being stirred up and Huawei perfidious China debates perhaps more in line with USA trade dominance in Big Oil and Big Tech - and not necessarily in UK interests.

Much as The 3T's of Tibet and Tiananmen Square and Taiwan need not restrict both China-UK political and trade relations. As with the Extra Special Relationship highlighted by POTUS Trump for The Treble Club of tripling UK-USA trade there is no reason why UK - and USA - shouldn't have similar plans in place with China and the rest of Asia.

And wise heads such as President Xi no doubt pondering a future when mainland China is more like Taiwan or Hong Kong. Perhaps the David Cameron China Fund a way to maintain strong Chinese trade growth without unrest. Not every Tibetan or Uighur can be jailed or Hong Kong protests halted.

UK was hardly a harbinger of democracy in Hong Kong under colonial rule nor in stoking the forest fires of the Opium Wars that continue to blaze to this day out of control in the Shan and Chinese border heroin regions of Myanmar.

Both the largest meth seizure in Australian history and the largest $1BN cocaine seizure in USA history in Philadelphia in the last month are no surprise with UK and USA disengagement from Asia.

And UK's rather soggy growth not just in China but Taiwan and the Koreas rather dismal given the Pacific strengths of the Commonwealth. And the blood and treasure invested, if not the Kokoda Trail, then from Kohima to Kwai to Korea by UK in previous years.

While Toshiba and Hitachi rightly disinvesting from the UK nuclear indsuty with the faltering Sizewell project - and Toshiba previously from the USA nuclear industry - suggests those companies in need of better paths within UK and USA.


### Big Rice from China and Osaka ###


Osaka the ideal place to begin that Strategic Dialogue - especially against the latest POTUS Trump personal letter intervention with Kim's North Korea, a contrast to Hormuz sabrerattling and spy planes. POTUS Trump's billet-doux no doubt urging nuclear disarmament with a loosening of trade sanctions and FDI and trade growth.

In my politics work I urge Meiji Kent in terms of regearing Kent's stagnant and old-fashioned and elderly economy: Locate in Kent the regeneration organisation of The County Barn local government - in contrast to Japanese Local Government - seems a dusty if not closed shop.

An estate agent on the rates highlighting the empty warehouses of the Garden of England's economy does nothing for Kent growth or FDI inward investment.

Perhaps USA Ambassador Woody's Museum of Agriculture is in olde worlde Kentshire rather than Europe. And next door to the UK Museum of Technology with Sinclair C5's and BBC Acorn computers dusty exhibits in the failure of Big Tech compared to Tim Apples or Bill Microsoft.

While the Hay Festival citing Japanese innovations in a Future Ministry for citizens in 2060 surely the type of project that Big Rice could deliver on as PM rather than Brexit or budget bloat and UK militarism for more than 2% the NATO target. That a rather silly pledge given UK is spending 2.3% already, no NATO criteria except more tax, and EU allies spending around 1.5% with few worries of a Russian invasion beyond Donetsk and Venezuelan posturing as Syria becomes Putin' quagmire.

Big Rice might well ponder on Govey's pledges on the repeal of the now 20% regressive VAT tax to sit alongside his Eireish 12% corporation tax economic pledge. Both useful but far less so to economic markets than a clear rejection of Brexit as already begun by Tom Watson deputy Labour leader.

Govey's excellent initiative on computer programming in schools might well be matched only by DNA Studies in schools and universities. Just 100k Chinese studients in UK and only 8k Thai suggests those Big Rice foreign language Hotcourses are growing cold in in UK's 130 universities and the international student market - certainly in comparison to Jane Duke Oz Minister efforts in ASEAN.

While student tuition fees abolition and investment in school 3D printers and Kindles and AR/VR far more socially useful than tanks either rusting in warehouses on the rates (200 of UK's 400 tanks now rightly wareoused/junked for spare parts) or actively being used.

The 769 old Warrior armoured cars/troop carriers surely right for the bin with £400M spent over since 2011 to upgrade half of them, and nothing delivered by Lockheed Martin. The Cold War days of tank battles across the German and Russian prairies long gone for such kit.

And such tax fund use and waste in stark contrast to the aerospace giants also detailed in the Sunday Times of Airbus, Boeing, Rolls Royce and GE (no doubt Lockheed too) new pledge on zero carbn emissions and electric planes and kit as Airbus Vahana flying taxi and Rolls Royce and Airbus 100 seat plane EFanX.

The Serious Fraud office beginning fraud prosecutions at Patisserie Valerie in the Finance Dept suggests as with the Glick QC and One Essex Court frauds or the Lord Grabiner and Philip Green BHS scandal an idleness in the CPS in maintaining UK's reputation for fair trade and excellence in business.

A damage done by the High Courtski antics even beyond Judge Mann of dodgy UK lawyers and Russian oligarchs. Kent's bumbling County Barn frittering away another £280M tax pensions in the Woodford Fund scandal, after their £500M tax waste in Icelandic banks.

Perhaps 1MDB investments are next for Kent's pensioners? Perhaps no more ludicrous than tobacco investments alongside the Kent Public Health remit to stop smoking, or failing to remove asbestos in schools beyond legal payoffs to dead teachers.


### New Space Race launches ###


And separately Airbus of Bristol and Toulouse, and Boeing of Sheffield and California schooling NATO on the benefits of supply chain integration in tooling each other's spare parts to reduce cost and waste, and improve supply lead times and factory capacity.

No doubt effective too for The New Space Race kicked off by POTUS Trump to Mars and the moons of Saturn and Jupiter and Boeing etc rockets.

Perhaps Osaka and the G20 will begin the delivery of that space mission by the top 20 economies alongside simpler projects such as ocean plastic cleanup and SuperSewers.

Toshiba rice cookers for example might well outpace UK nuclear reactors and sit alongside a UK-Japan Space Junk cleanup.

Hitachi no doubt revving its engine for UK's HS2 and other rail projects such as Kwai Rail. Big Rice urging on HS2 in his PM bid and reflecting on the prioritisation of HS3 and Northern Powerhouse projects.

While Panasonic, with or without Dutch medical giant Philips and Mitsubishi, no doubt pondering on the potential for any vacant Honda Swindon factory and say a DNA Bathroom Mirror as part of the Social Care project that both Big Rice and Rory Stewart PM hustings cited as unfinished UK NHS revolutions.

Go East a viable investment strategy and perhaps more Japanese companies would be wise to reflect on Going West again after Osaka too.

@timg33

Uncle Tu and ASEAN workaday politics for UK and Thailand

So it’s all over bar the future shouting and debates as Uncle Tu is crowned PM last week by King Rama from the lengthy election campaign.

And more twists and turns of the election than a nest of cobras as Cabinet roles are handed out in the 20 party coalition and Senate majority of Uncle Tu.

Khun Thanathorn and the Future Forward party settling for second place in opposition with Pheu Thai - and a majority of House of Representative votes.

And not one but two Prime Minister Shinawatra’s settling for the booby prize of exile in Dubai and Hong Kong and warm praise and support from Princess Ubolratana.

The non sequitur of Democracy by Dictatorship rearing its ugly head in UK too not just with the S44 King Henry VIII laws of the Executive changing parliament laws at random but also the threat of a proroguing of Parliament (ie closing it down) to pass any Brexit laws.

Is the Tower of London big enough to hold 600 MP’s?

That last prorogue one of the most peculiar bids for support by Dominic Raab in the Tory PM election as Theresa May now resigns as Tory leader for a caretaker PM role.

The PM elections rather dismal beyond Brexit and more Brexit so far, with tuppence off tax and hospital car park charges featuring as in a parish council election.

Govey with an aim of abolishing the regressive VAT sales tax perhaps the most sensible point on taxation to emerge from the clouds of cannabis and opium smoke and torpor surrounding the candidates. Maybe lashings of cocaine and shaba would spark them all up.
Perhaps Eton isn’t what it was if this is the generation of future leaders it has minted so far.

###UK pseudo elections? ###

While the second if not third unelected PM in recent years with May and Brown previously suggests Thai democracy is on a firmer footing than UK.

And the pseudo-elections of the hereditary Lords as they die off – a tiny electorate of just 92 Lords is worthy of the rotten boroughs of old UK.

Lord Fowler fouling the Lords’ nest as Speaker in failing to deliver 21st century basic reforms.

Co-opting all the senior military and police chiefs into the Thai Senate is perhaps a canny move by Uncle Tu in reducing the potential for a future coup.

Unless a Young Turk with a tank fancies his chances as PM and Democracy by Dictatorship.

But with the elections over and the semblance of normal democracy in place and a further coup improbable then Uncle Tu faces the cut and thrust of politics as normal.

The only light at the end of the tunnel for PM Tu a new song making a whole album of ditties (and regular airplay on Thai radio and the Government House tannoy and Khun Apirak’s barracks?).

Questions already raised over reforms of the new Constitution.

A vote of no confidence aired for next year potentially.

The economy weakening to 3% growth.

The ASEAN Chair of this year frittered away in the kerfuffle of the elections.

And a longer election count even than East Kent with the ballot boxes stored overnight in the council offices with promises not to run the preferred votes through the photocopier. Or the Battlebus of supporters bussed in.

### County Barn £280M scandal ###

UK democracy certainly not what it was with the bizarre Swindon Borough Council election cack-handled by CEO Susie Kemp detailed in Private Eye of 10 Tory candidates being given(!) an extra(!) 2,385 votes each, and despite public outcry taking up their seats(!).

Kent maintaining its reputation for corruption and incompetence against such competition with the £280M loss of KCC pensions in the Woodford scandal ow being reviewed by the Lords. That mismanagement after the £500M pensions scandal of the Icelandic banks at the County Barn.

Worth remembering that the sale of the British Embassy in central Bangkok , Thailand’s largest ever land sale yielded the smaller amount of £400M, far larger sums routinely wasted in the County Barn as it struggles to fill potholes. Probably cheaper to fill them with five pound notes.

And the peculiar Manston airport application by Riveroak funded by not just a Belize mystery company but Delaware, Panama and BVI too and the Swiss Helix bank, that claims it has issued financial information to the public enquiry that yet remains unknown and unseen.

But on that point of the ASEAN Chair not the UK Battlebuses, surely lies the green shoots of recovery for Uncle Tu and Thailand?
Vietnam wisely already preparing for its Chair of ASEAN next year and its UN Security Council membership.

The theme of A Seamless ASEAN and sub themes of Defence and Community surely playing to Tu and Thailand’s strengths.

Kun Thanathorn and Future Forward also no doubt calling for a defence review with its anti-conscription policy too.

And lese-majeste reforms must be on the cards given the witch hunts detailed in the Bangkok Post of Khun Pannika by the royalist parties on petty issues of clothing and Facebook posts. Even King Bhumibol before his death railing against the frivolous use of the lese-majeste laws.

The Thai monarchy treated with far more deference than the UK monarchy – Prince Charles vehemently criticised for years over his green policies before being proved right.

While the massive success of both Thai and Cambodian Prime Minsters opening the BKK-PP rail link for the first time since 1970 is surely galvanising the extension of the link from PP-HCMC under the Vietnam ASEAN Chair.

Cambodia aside, the strategic linkage of Saigon and Bangkok for the first time by rail is a massive trade coup for both nations – and connecting all of the ASEAN mainland’s deep sea ports.

That softening of the Thai economy steeled with extra trade potential – certainly with UK given a 35% downfall in trade since the closure of the Thai SSI steelworks in Newcastle.

### Smart Cities on track? ###

In my Sincerity Advertising role I receive several emails from the Thai Board of Investment in UK for a Sincerity office in BKK and ASEAN – but those emails written only in Thai which must dampen the possibility of UK investment in Thailand and EEC.

And that ASEAN rail infrastructure whether to HCMC or to Kwai and Yangon must be sparking a surge in smelting. Also even for True and AIS 5g mobile internet transmitters in Thailand.

UK this Summer rolling out 5G to the first six main UK cities and that expertise could easily be tapped into by the Tu government to get Thailand 4.0 and its digital superhighway back on track.

And all those concrete rail sleepers from Kwai to Yangon must spur on ItalThai and Siam Cement growth et al. Even restructuring with the Six Companies.

The UK banking and mobile industries in need of further competition beyond just Metro Bank or one Bangkok Bank branch: 50k Thai expats and booming Thai tourism into UK surely calling for better calls and better banking facilities.

While Thailand and UK each with 35M tourists could well collaborate on programmes such as OTOP and Kitchen of the World from the successful launch of the Bangkok Michelin guide.

Thai Red Cross surely working with UK Red Cross on OTOP and GI geographical indications as Ulster Weavers featured in aprons and tea towels and hessian reusable bags. While The Independent in its antiplastic/oceans/recyclable work highlighting not just paper cotton buds, but bamboo toothbrushes and bamboo toilet paper.

While both Uncle Tu and Khun Thanathorn could at least agree on channelling their inner Richard Branson with Hyperloop rail possibilities Yangon-BKK-HCMC or to Ubon and Udon, or Chiang Mai-BKK-Singapore.

The ASEAN Chair becoming unglued with the delays on KL and Singapore rail despite the Connectivity theme.

And on Cambodia, surely it’s the work of moments for Thai and Khmer cross border cooperation in extending the Battambang rail to Siem Reap and Angkor for Thai tourists, and the Royal Road to Isaan.

The animal welfare ban on elephants at Siem Reap surely an issue for depressing Thai tourism receipts and jobs, as at the Surin Elephant Festival or Phuket dolphin shows with changing Western tastes and tourism company animal protection policies.

And Battambang and those other ASEAN Smart Cities sinking into the swamp of failure or at least inaction at the moment.

Forest dwellers highlighted by veteran journalist Khun Sanitsuda, and Blue Flag welfare card are surely an ASEAN revolution for land registration and the banking of the unbanked from Satun to Solomon Islands by companies such as HSBC and Prudential if SCB or GSB are unwilling.

Resilience is not so resilient in Thailand if another tsunami or earthquake or volcano would send seismic shockwaves through the Tu premiership far more than crop haze.

And if Sports Diplomacy is still little more than bread and circuses here in East Kent with the financial bread of investment lacking as the Dreamland circus only just refloats. While the 13-0 drubbing of Thailand by USA in the Women’s World Cup suggests greater possibilities of links with UK as a Sporting Superpower.

Thailand wouldn’t walk alone in not just promoting Leicester’s Siam Foxes or the Carabao cup or Chang’s latest shirt sponsorship or the Premiership in general but community work to rival Khun Tippy’s Million Footballs CSR at King Power Leicester. And sports science and training for athletes translating into innovative healthcare in an ageing society.

Argentina’s VR company Vrify launching into London exactly the sort of tech-health activity that may well be on prescription beyond just e-sports or Thai medical tourism in future.

And if it’s too early to detail the Hyde Park Corner English language schools, the new Tu government must surely want to put a rocket under Thai English language skills and school links.

Thai FDI surely worth exploring with EEC for the Thames Valley Gateway from The City and London Docklands down the Kent coast to Dover Europe’s largest port.

An interesting Asia Foundation report on Isaan highlights not just farm debt but the potential for increased farm machinery sales and Doitung-style crop diversification if Thailand is too reliant just on a glut of rice against China and India exports.

UK exports aside (especially designer rice varieties) to restaurants such as Surin here in Ramsgate a top ten UK Thai restaurant and part of the Kent Cuisine Culture (try the sea bass!). And The Sportsman Michelin rated bistro).

Uncle Tu must be pondering the possibilities for Thai rice exports to the famine-hit regions of Sahel and East Africa in the wake of Thai peacekeeping with Kent Royal Engineers in South Sudan.

Thai rice exports and hungry Africans and UK DFID and USAid funds and UNSDG hunger goals seem an ideal combination. Rice rotting in warehouses as people go hungry seems an easy problem to solve in the 21st century.

And those East Kent Core Company Saga cruise ships and tourists surely should be wending their way to Asia’s wats and waterways more frequently. Thai tourism already expressing concern at cruise ships docking at cargo terminals rather than dedicated tourism berths.

While Thai SME companies from Tshirts to makeup to coffee beans, as well as DHL shippers surely taking a leaf from dynamic blogger Lhyzie Bongon in the Philippines in Asia-Europe trade.

Foodstuffs from Baanson coffee in Chaiyaphum to United Fruit pineapples in Hua Hin must be surely keen to rack up more UK exports and sales.
With Finland as EU chair and Helsinki one of the main cargo hubs to Thailand, DHL along with Thai Air must be keen to expand exports as well as detail the potential air slots in the London Heathrow expansion.

The UK PM debates yielding concerns on the BBC over Boris Island airport being revived and the third runway at Heathrow debate. The Scotland-Ireland bridge far more productive for the UK economy than a Boris Island but a grain of truth in considering an airport in the sea as Hong Kong. And a review of the strange second Gatwick runway overbuild that emerged as well as a third Heathrow overbuild runway and half-empty Gatwick, Birmingham and Stansted airports.

Vietnam’s ASEAN Chair probably concerned about underperforming Vietnam Air at Gatwick.

Much as Finnish companies from Nokia to Suunto can see the growth potential in both UK and Asia with Helsinki cargo airport as stability returns to UK and Thailand.

Time for Change
@timg33

Oz and UK and Treble Club exports/FDI

A choice for Australia: merely a Chinese Farm dwarfed by Indonesia’s population, or a UK and Commonwealth 21st century trade hub.
And a strengthened Pivot South with UK Irish Guards at Darwin– or the risk of more Pacific radiation from India-Pakistan nuclear conflict or Spratlys/Guam and North Korea nukes?

And Pacific Resilience Group on monsoon/typhoon floods, volcanos, earthquakes, forest fires and tsunami.

Beyond Project Chaika, there are various other possibilities for UK-Australia growth:

1. BBC Murray-Darling river eco disaster shades of Aral Sea/Cape Town water disasters, and Barrier Reef coral and tourism degradation and decline.

2. Oceania recycling: 20M Oz and 2M Pacific populations not including 7M PNG and 200M Indonesia – 21st century Oz recycling and sewage upgrades with Pacific islands cleanup: AIIB and ADB. Geraldton port expansion and WA rail spurs?

3. Woomera Rocket Ranges again with new Oz Space Agency and UK Space agency: Surrey Satellites and Glasgow City space companies – end of Oz car industry regeared for space junk niche with UK and Japan?

4. IndoPacific Oceans robo sub exploration: missing Malay plane/radar fail and tsumanis

5. Oz shipyards: UK defence and Border force gunboats and RNLI Coastguard with Plymouth/Portsmouth/Liverpool John West fisheries etc

6. VR/AR: Oz digital industries 24/7 Moneypenny

7. Oz military: Alamein and landmines clearance - TobrukDiggers – Prince Harry Landmine Free Africa Angola and Princess Diana campaign begun and UK-North Africa growth: Egypt/Libya etc – and Desertec solar

8. Perth: hispeed rail to Adelaide and north through Geraldton to Broome to open up WA wilderness tourism with The Six Companies eg JCB and Balfour

9. Sydney central hispeed rail: Brisbane-Cairns and Canberra-Melbourne/Adelaide. Chatting to an Australian army colonel, vast distances, and strategic borders, failing to be closed due to dollar quibbles

10. 19 Crimes wine expansion – and Oz wine/lamb growth with NZ Infratil Manston crimes ban (Infratil Group care homes businesses etc review in Oz?)

11. Oz Sports Diplomacy and UK Sports Superpower: soccer, tennis, Thorpedo¬¬ swimming pools and cycling – and Sports Science

12. TimorLeste ASEAN membership and Oceania focus on Commonwealth growth of small states/Climate Change and end last French/UK Pacific colonies eg paedo republic of Pitcairn, and Clipperton

13. Hawaii and its Union Jack flag, the second USA state after Virginia and its shipyards, for Commonwealth associate membership

14. Oz Flying Doctor and Air Ambulance expertise with UK and South Sudan

15. Pacific Plastic Patch cleanup – and UK Ghost Nets charity on discarded fishing nets and Asia plastics rivers

16. WW2 shipwrecks: pre-1945 nukes medical metal eg UK war graves tampering and Chuuk Japan ships and UK Pacific Nukes guinea pig military medal and Guam etc Agent Orange/napalm dumps review and Marine Reserves as UK

17. Oz Mars test base as USA Utah?

18. Reseeding oceans and trees desertification: SuperSewers and desalination/graphene canals

19. Fossil Fuels industry replacements: coal mining for solar/windfarms as UK success story

20. Moneypenny 24/7 again: timeshift eg Oz movie industry studios and special effects, BPO etc etc
21. Cambodia Corcoran bridges and AusAid: Duke report on Oz universities and international students

22. UK/OZ police Most Wanted/exchanges – largest ever Oz crystal meth haul last month

23. IndoPacific submarines/naval disarmament debate – Spratlys/Paracels/SG/Kra

24. VN: Oz non-CWG war graves

25. Kwai Rail upgrades and Oz Allies: UK-Oz-ASEAN focus

26. Oz products in UK stalled: few brands beyond Amber Nectar or Speedo/Zoggs or the Marmite of Vegemite – Johnson and Johnson suncream and Davos15 Adidas stalled?

27. Oz UK tourism growth eg WA expansion, Saga cruise ships: Sydney and Oceania/Solomons and neglected Kokoda Trail and Guadalcanal, Easter Island and Robinson Crusoe Island tours with Chile etc

28. Aborigine and Oceania and Canada Pacific First Nations arts UK

29. Alaska-Asia Bering bridge: Vancouver to Shanghai with dry feet and without tides/storms

Isaan report and UK

Excellent report on Isaan region in Thailand by Asia Foundation and UK DFID aid funding:

https://asiafoundation.org/publication/thailands-inequality-myths-reality-of-isan/

The basis of further/expanded UK activity in Thailand and ASEAN.

Time for Change

@timg33

#2 South Sudan a beacon for Africa with UK and USA and Thailand?

The Parliament review of the monstrous failure of providing the cystic fibrosis drug Orkambi from USA and now the Channel 4 Dispatches documentary on Italian Mafia fake drugs infiltrating the NHS is no doubt a further scalp for Kent Pocahontas Elizabeth Warren on the warpath in her POTUS bid on drugs prices.

And Norman Lamb MP of Parliament Committee raising the issues. The Collapse of Southern Italy under the Mafia matched only by the NHS Medicinees Agency denying and denying the problem then calling an urgent inquiry as patients sicken and die from fake drugs.

POTUS Trump probably also pondering the Rust Belt opportunities – and Treble Club possibilities with UK trade on focused investment – as the Presidential race crunches into first gear with Democrat debates this month.

With my Sincerity Advertising hat on I’ve long argued for the regeneration strengths of Buffalo beyond Madison Avenue.

As with Somalia and Yemen and Libya though, the opportunity for South Sudan is to deliver peace and prosperity after years of civil war and before the deeper effects of Climate Change and desertification across the Sahel.

Perhaps greater UK efforts needed for LatAm with the mega power failure across Argentina an Uruguay: G20 nations falling at the first hurdle of a Digital Economy without electricity. And the Great British success story of the mega windfarms form Lincoln to Kent ready to help the sunny and windy nations of the South Atlantic and Patagonia?

Interesting Lord Browne former CEO BP refloating the possibilities of Desertec Sahara solar panels - I previously worked on the Beyond Petroleum strategy. Those MENA nations not regearing fro solar beyond oil likely to fall further down the poverty and conflict leagues. Perhaps as South Sudan rises with a New Economy.

Former USA UN Ambassador Nikki Haley taking time to spur on the US Embassy in Juba before preparing for the launch of her book “With all due respect” in the Autumn - the Fall if you prefer.


### FDR and AOC New Deal for Africa and USA ###


Boris Johnson in his PM bid no doubt reflecting on the inadvertent wisdom of both the Scotland-Ireland bridge, and remarks on clearing the Libyan bodies from the Med seafront. That latter comment perhaps paling into insignificance with the economic decline afflicting Tunisia after the Sousse tourism beach killings – and Egypt and the Luxor deaths in previous years -and potential for Somali tourism prosperity along its seaboard highlighted by NZ’s Helen Cark.

But silence on the NZ Manston Infratil criminal extradition of Steve Fitzgerald and Matt Clark now at Wellington Airport.

While potential boondoggle projects such as the Jonglei Canal, perhaps the Aral Sea of Africa without rigorous evaluation, have ground to a halt since civil war in 1983 and the strange rusting hulks of the mega tunnelling machinery visible from space, presumably Mars, and surely awaiting prompt demolition and effective scrap metal recycling as Kent’s Royal Engineers are more fully deployed from barracks and stirring memories of the Channel tunnel megatunnel kit.

Already the vanguard of the Royal Engineers in place with Operation Trenton as UNMISS and recent support from the Thai military and Cambodia. The UK’s secret weapon of the RE 521 well digging battalion still AWOL, probably in the rough pubs of Chatham. Perhaps gearing up to complement the new Prince Harry initiative on Landmine Free Africa in the delicately placed footsteps of Princess Diana in Angola.

Kofi Annan’s warning of DRC Congo UN forces as too large to be invisible and too small to be effective key in driving greater UK peacekeeping involvement. Already the BATUK base in Kenya capable of being expanded for greater USA support in Somalia. As can also be expanded the under-used UN Police training base in Ethiopia.

POTUS Trump might have paused in the absurd nonsense of searching for Obama’s Kenyan passport or Hillary’s homebrew email server, but again food for thought in more focused troop rotations through Kenya and Oman and Afghanistan.

The end of piracy in Somalia and winding down of the war in Yemen and potentially Libya the low hanging fruit of just Syria as the last main MENA security threat.

In my MP and Mayor campaigns I’ve urged no further awards of the QPM Queens Police Medal in Kent or the other 43 forces except for bravery, not admin, and for being deployed to peacekeeping zones as South Sudan.

UK Deputy Chief Constables deployed from the 43 forces for 6-12 months gaining valuable experience and links as Kent Police used to as with the 1954 death of a Kent Police UN Peacekeeper in Cyprus. UN Police service in South Sudan should be a badge of honour and the gateway to the Chief Constable role.

While Surin Village School charity work shows 60M children not in school primarily in sub-Saharan nations such as South Sudan. Schooling, aside from the benefits of education, providing the basis for vaccines and Pandemic Prevention, the UK’s main strategic threat, whether TB or Ebola or HIV or Spanish Flu.

UK American Hollywood star George Clooney and husband of Amal Clooney the UK lawyer soon to star in the Catch 22 television series and famous for using his Nespresso coffee advertising fees for Sudan human rights drones. The USA embassy in Juba probably needing to caffeinate up with UK DFID chief Rory Stewart and Matt Rycroft and Helen Lewis to access USA military drones and USAid budgets.

And Irishwoman abroad, EU ambassador Sinead Walsh no doubt exploring further bridges along the White Nile, as well as Halo trust and MAG minefield clearance work with the Red Cross. And probably distracting dynamic Eire USA ambassador Dan Mulhall from his poesy to mobilise the Red campaign and U2 in Africa again.

If bridges are being built in South Sudan then fences and walls are going up again in Europe.

Justin Welby Archbishop of Canterbury here in East Kent already active on mobilising the Sudanese Anglican church, while his right hand man the Bishop of Dover retired, if that’s possible from the church, not just promoting Buddhist tolerance in Kent but no doubt pondering on deploying the UK church along the Rome pilgrim paths.

Both Cyprus and Libya perhaps the greatest failure to date of UN and EU with over 10,000 Mediterranean drownings each year, and the Sudan crises and the Syria/Assad crisis plunging the EU into the populist/nationalist crisis still playing out with the Faragist Brexit Party in UK, Mattini in Italy, Le Pen in France and Orban in Hungary.

One small positive in the colonial-era gay human rights breaches is the overturning of such legislation in Botswana as well as Bhutan and Brunei gay discrimination. Such death penalty and hate legislation sanctions surely also low hanging fruit.

And The Six Companies of Deere, JCB, Mott, Murphy, Bechtel, Balfour and Hitachi - there never was just six providing the basis of that Africa New Economy.

For the picket line of the Sahel from Dakar in Senegal to N’Djamena and Lake Chad (another Aral Sea shrunk by 45% in Chad) to Djibouti on the Red Sea and Suez Canal route surely now marks the southern frontier of Europe.

As with Spanish Sahara and Morocco dispute effectively raised by UK’s Karen Pierce in UN New York in December it’s not inconceivable that similar sand berms will be raised by Kent’s Royal Engineers across the Sahel – less as sandy Checkpoint Charlies but as desertification barriers to the onward sweep of the sand tides of the Sahara.

As well as the African efforts of The Six Companies: Balfour Beatty and The Mighty Quinn, Murphy, Bechtel, Mott McDonald, JCB and Hitachi. the various incarnations of The Six Companies and supply chains delivering not just The Boulder Dam but even thousands of bridges in Cuba.

ASEAN Minister Richard Graham, probably urging on his colleague Mark Field, given Mabey bridges in his constituency capable of going into overdrive and overtime.

Construction in itself moving the Sahel into a New Deal, worthy of FDR or AOC, of not just aid but functioning and growing economies. As would the Wau-Juba rail link – that eventually connecting with the Morocco hispeed rail. Africa’s first hispeed rail studied last week, with Morocco’s burgeoning food exports to UK: xx sardines, by Liam Fox the dynamic UK Trade Minister swapping his air miles for rail miles and a long-delayed UK Strategic Rail Group.

Thailand’s USA Senator Duckworth no doubt keen to ensure her Cairo, Illinois constituents feature in The Davos15 and The Six Companies groundwork for Cairo, Egypt – UK already steaming ahead with the Cairo Metro.

While her USAF strategic initiative in Scott USAF base might well plug into those Clooney and Sudan drones, even Med refugees, for more than five eyes extra analysis of East Africa.

Much as the West Africa ports of Dakar and Nouakchott would need greater oversight to provide Atlantic ports facing north to Cherbourg and Dover, and west to Virginia and south to Rio and Buenos Aires as African trade increases.

The Arabian Smart Cities already underway along with the tilt to the Mediterranean by Prince MBS, that gaining more attention and effort and FDI as the Yemen war concludes, and hispeed rail across Arabia from Port Sudan to Kuwait and Tehran.

That lynchpin of a stable and peaceful and prosperous South Sudan also providing not just a strategic focus for UK with is SANE approach: the mega markets of South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt, or Africa Smart Mega-Cities such as Cape Town, Lagos and Cairo. My previous work on UK New Towns and Cardiff Bay and London Docklands national developments flagging up the new UK potential in such Smart Cities with the Chunnel and Crossrail engineering and Super Sewer and the Shard, all Europe’s largest construction projects for decades.

But, hence the Thailand focus, South Sudan also provides a strategic link to the Indo-Pacific.



### If it’s Tuesday it must be a gin day, all week ###


Not just the Suez Canal approaches already with USA Marines at Camp Lemonnier and the nearby Chinese and Japanese military bases, but linking across Arabia to the Persian Gulf and Oman. Those Pentagon golf courses on the rates soaking up the new Trump budget?

A USA Africa Command upgrade from Stuttgart and out from under the US Army Europe umbrella, if not to Juba or Khartoum then Nairobi or Djibouti might refocus better Pentagon value from that $750BN budget in safeguarding peace and prosperity.

For, as the Persian Gulf becomes strategically less important with peak oil and growth of Desertec-style solar farms, Muscat in Oman provides a stable and progressive eastward outpost to the IndoPacific: Pakistan and the OBOR/BRI deep water port of Gwadar, and India and Thailand and Singapore.

That last megaport perhaps augmented by the Kra Canal through the Thai isthmus to the rest of ASEAN and China.

Lake Chad and Jonglei Canal, along with the Aral Sea forewarning on water wars, surely the basis of major UK thought leadership by FCO and DFID et al at the Budapest Water Conference in October.

While the Indo Pacific and Pivot South, and former UK Chagos base, is already a key element of USA naval and Resilience policy even before factoring in the conflict potential of Indian and Chinese submarines.

If the FCO’s Miss Moneypenny in Australia claims it’s always International Gin Day somewhere in the world then USA Ambassador Harry Harris is willing to play bartender to serve up a gin martini shaken not stirred for an Indo Pacific naval policy from Korea to Canberra to Cape Town.

If only UK was serving up greater trade with Korea as well as Japan given the Brexit mess had yielded the loss of Honda and Nissan. Empty MOU’s with Korea on current or future trade maybes are thin gruel for two of the world’s most advanced G20 economies.
Those incompetent UK Myanmar officials haven’t been sent to Korea to mess things up there too?

More positively Soccer Aid despite a UK defeat perhaps marks the kick off not just of renewed UK efforts and Sports diplomacy in South Sudan but a richer strategic impetus.

The UK as a Sporting Superpower and with football as one of its key currencies, the real/only World Series – Senegal’s xx xGolden Boot in the Premier League – calling out for a marshalling of Charlton Athletic or Manchester United or Crystal Palace under the strategic stewardship of Arsenal and its community work.

UK Ambassador to Jamaica foregoing the Reggae Girlz Women’s World Cup efforts, to field a team of Jamaican nurses to the Leeds teaching hospitals as part of the Social Care and Gilgamesh Strategy. Exactly the right blend of training and learning and Kent Chevening scholarships not healthcare plunder that UK and the Commonwealth needs.

And no doubt a cookie cutter template of South Sudan future employment and hospitals.

While DFID with USAid – each with the world’s largest aid budgets of c.$20BN each as well as G20 support - is surely able to deploy the Red Cross and its DEC partners more fully in South Sudan alongside Virginia’s Operation Smile and Clearly spectacles.
Operation Smile already with medical and hospital ship links and blueprints in Africa and Asia.

And the Bidi-Bidi refugee camp in Uganda cannily taking South Sudan human capital for its own Smart City of the future – much as Jordan and Turkey will no doubt do with their Syrian brain drain in reverse windfall.

And if the UK’s IndoPacific strategy was recently described as nonexistent then the green shoots of South Sudan growth also sit alongside Commonwealth efforts: it seems astonishing that one of the world’s largest organisations and only Anglophone institution has no specific plans of expansion.

Surely gone are the days of imperial vicar’s tea parties of warm words, warmer beer and cold tea with the potential to forge a more robust 21st century Commonwealth institution.

Rwanda already one of the non-colonies leading the way. While the political and economic and population heft of India and Bangladesh and Pakistan mark a seachange for the future as Prince Charles’ reign begins.

Undoubtedly Duchy Original biscuits, as in his Cuba and Caribbean Commonwealth visit, will be merely the appetiser for detailed Climate Change action and crunchy trade reform in the Commonwealth.

South Sudan must surely be in the frame for Commonwealth membership and Sudan even before the Senegal Youth Games in 2022 and infrastructure upgrades - that Moroccan rail link?

While Justin Welby the Archbishop of Canterbury has already forsaken the vicar’s tea party syndrome (but not the Duchy Original biscuits) for a more muscular approach in welding the Anglican churches, and others, into a political force for stability in South Sudan and Africa.

South Sudan over the next decade could just be a beacon for the rest of Africa.

Time for Change
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