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

If Obama’s first foreign visit when elected in 2008 was Germany then the choice of South East Asia also poses few surprises for his second term. A brief 6 hour visit marked the first Presidential visit to Burma in an attempt to seal the reforms of the last year by Burma’s military government including the release of Aung San Suu Kyi now an MP. And a trip to Thailand reiterated the importance of South East Asia for trade and investment: the latter growing at 11% almost double the pace of China. While the first ever Presidential visit to Cambodia is against the backdrop of encouraging greater democracy and human rights as part of the ASEAN Summit. Perhaps all the more apt given the police crackdown on the Poetic Justice arts exhibition, on the Khmer Rouge and Kissinger’s bombing of Cambodia, by activist Theng Seary. Human rights in Asia And the signing of an ASEAN human rights declaration is designed to encompass the range of Asian governance from the dictatorships of Burma to mo...

Qatari Airlines removes its investment from Cargolux – the last remaining airline at Manston. No investment for poisoning your citizens. Let KCC and TDC do that for you with your tax-money. Buchanan’s own figures now for Manston: zero passengers and zero cargo. The KLM announcement is a farce – I would urge the public not to lose their money buy buying tickets as the airport will close. You’ve lost money before with EUJet remember? It’s time for corporate manslaughter charges for Infratil. TDC and KCC have failed us and polluted us. Miscellanous points:  Abysmal town planning with the Grange Rd development – it looks like two nuclear reactors failing onto an office block. I’m surprised at Jenner as they’re a good construction company.  The Broadstairs development opposite the Town Hall – again massive overbuild and out-of-keeping with the surrounding area. TDC Planning have failed us.  Pfizer: the site is beginning to develop with pharma companies (and Sittingbou...

Are the new Kent Police elections are over before they’ve begun. Few people would argue for less democracy. And the new Police Commissioner elections on 15th November to oversee Kent Police should be part of the wider trend for accountability and transparency in the public sector. Yet the signs are disappointing. The £5,000 fee seems to have priced out all the Independent candidates. The short list of five includes Labour and Tory candidates (the latter already on the Kent Police Authority), the incumbent Chair of KPA, a UKIP candidate and Kent Police EU (!) adviser, and an Independent who was Mayor of Medway. Not exactly inspiring – and barely a manifesto between them other than vague platitudes about reducing crime. Presumably as opposed to increasing it. So feeble is the offering that there are concerns the turnout will plummet below 20% making the democratic mandate simply non-existent. Of more concern is that ahead of the election a self-elected KCC 16- member group ...

Does this year’s UN Day marks a time of change for both the UN and Kent. Today's UN Day (Wednesday 24th October) marks not just 67 years of the UN Charter founding in 1945 – but rather surprisingly a sudden outbreak of peace around the world. From the 50 year conflicts and dictatorships of the Arab Spring of Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, to the Colombian FARC ceasefire to the Aung-San Burmese democracy the world just got quieter and safer. Plus we have a world more democratic with the last few red-blooded dictatorships of Cuba, Guinea, Cameroon, and Arabian Ayatollahs sliding into the past. And if conflicts such as Yemen or Syria are fairly recent civil wars then Mexico’s recent convulsions into narco-state collapse are in contrast to the Congo War - home to the largest UN peacekeeping force and millions dead - and proving so problematic that Britain will declare war-rape as a theme of its presidency of the G8 in 2013. While, the China-Japan disputes over the Diaoyu/Senkaku ...

Malnutrition: cancer, obesity, chlamydia and diabetes off the scale. Food insecurity: overbuild, garden-grabbing and farmland spoiled Poor sanitation: broken sewers, water pumps and sewage dumping Economic dislocation: 2,000 jobs lost at Pfizer, Dreamland a top ten tourism attraction closed for 8 years, no economic policies at all. Corrupt governance: Manston, Pleasurama, 0% civil servant fraud. This blistered kidney we call Kent. Time for Change in Third World Thanet. An outline below on Third World Thanet policies: moving Thanet from Third World collapse in health, water supplies and economic dislocation, to First World growth. Remember, KCC is a $2BN council. Each and every year – and supposedly the largest and best UK council. And TDC is one of 12 Kent councils with $60M per year. Each and every year. And Southern Water, the Environment Agency, Police, Ambulance, Fire, NHS budget billions. For Third World results. With UN International Peace Day today, it’s...

Time for Change. Third World health statistics in Thanet: dying at 60, cancer statistics and social dumping off the scale. Third World water supply: faeces in the water supply and on the beaches, an aquifer under the runway. Third World literacy rates: some of the worst schools in UK, 99% literacy - literate to an 8 year-olds standard. Third World political incompetence: the same double-hatters and parachute candidates, declining turnout and quangocracy again and again, and cover-up of Infratil and Thor. Third World civil service corruption: 0% salary fraud and accounts, EKO waste, vanity projects and removing Infratil monitors. KCC supposedly the best County governance in Britain: bloat and FOI failure and empty housing and Road to Nowhere construction. Time for Third World Thanet to change: policy launch this week. Time to become a Great British district supporting Third World growth and exports. Time for Change.

Last week’s reports that the Arctic icesheet is the lowest-ever is as important as it is horrifying. The last lowest figure was in 2007 (with a decade’s worth of highest ever temperatures), and with the satellite imagery of the last 35 years the reduction in ice at the North Pole can be accurately tracked and recorded. The Summer ice has melted so that within 3-5 years experts predict the North Pole will be open ocean. No ice at all. Presumably just a few soggy polar bears. Already the Northern Sea Route from Tokyo to Europe, across Russia, and the NorthWest Passage across Canada are open to shipping: 34 ships using the former route up from just 4 two years ago. Stormy weather We’re entering a world unknown to humanity where not just this week’s storms such as Hurricane Isaac in Florida and Haiti, or floods in Burma, Laos and Korea become ever more prevalent and deeper – as less ice means warmer seas increasing heat and rising sea levels even further. And, aside from storms, ...