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

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 news...

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 crowdfu...

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 supp...

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 Gl...

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

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 d...

The unrest in Sudan again with demonstrations in Khartoum, Omdurman and Port Sudan with upto 100 demonstrators shot dead and thrown into the Nile highlights the dangers facing not just Sudan’s slide into chaos and dictatorship but the threat facing neighbouring South Sudan as it emerges from such a state. The latter the world’s newest nation, unless you count last month’s name change by North Macedonia, formed from its civil war and breakaway from Sudan in 2011. The unrest now in South Sudan’s Yei River state that conflict in microcosm. But if the Sudan unrest has yielded, as with Mugabe in Zimbabwe, the toppling of the dictator Bashir – and potential ICC extradition for war crimes and crimes against humanity or at the very least an Idi Amin exile to Saudi Arabia – then there are wider considerations for UK and Europe and USA in helping South Sudan on the road to peace and prosperity. East Africa a great USA success story for POTUS Trump with the peace treaty between Eritrea ...

An interesting article as always by Khun Surinya in the Bangkok Post on Thailand schools: https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/1687488/school-merger-policy-so-unfair-to-kids And a follow up editorial article by xxx to spell out this vital issue in further detail: https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/1687888/school-mergers-need-extra-care Some 18,000 THhi village schools in danger of being merged within a 6km radius and a further 3,000 such schools in border regions preserved due to mountains or near the frontier. Separately that last point a factor in East Kent NHS planning with the perpetual attempt to reduce services based on the centralised view from The County Barn quartered safe in Maidstone but fenced in by their empty champagne cases and road noise from over-centralised tarmac and tax. That overly bureaucratic drawing of lines on maps failing to reflect conditions on the ground or in this case the large blue expanse of the Channel that makes up on...

The DDay 75th anniversary is significant not just for - at last - the first official state visit to UK by POTUS Trump, or the first memorial to the British landing beaches in Normandy but the last event of the liberation of Europe by those who took the beaches, and as POTUS Reagan said, climbed the cliffs, as it passes from living memory. Here in East Kent the P22 US Navy patrol boat taking part in the DDay event and Ramsgate Dunkirk Little Ships event, and the P22 boat for patrol on the Rhine after WW2 a reminder of how far European tribalism had collapsed into flames. P22 not dissimilar to the younger Kennedy's PT109 boat sunk off the Solomon Islands. Certainly a larger boat needed on the Channel for the Ramsgate-Ostend and Dunkirk/Boulogne refloatation of the Channel ports. Hitler's worst efforts perhaps only outmatched by UK town planners in the long peace. With protection against aggregates dredging for an expanded Dover port - perhaps proving opportunity for the...