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

Garbutt draft KCC Leader 2017 and MP 2020 manifesto out for consultation and a few points in more detail below: 1. Lebanon: women’s rights tweak – illegal for a woman to vote unless she's completed elementary education. Doesn’t apply to men. A minor gender equality tweak though as both sexes c.94% complete elementary education. Nevertheless gender discrimination given all Saudi women can now vote. Only UAE and Brunei have equal opportunities of not allowing anyone to vote(!). 2. EU vote at 16: #whennotif the EU introduces a universal vote at 16. How can territories such as Jersey or various German regions or nations such as Scotland and Austria allow vote at 16 but not elsewhere? Wasn’t a key point of the EU to introduce consistent standards? 3. UK elections exams: politicians are the only public sector workers without exams. Elected then 5 years of fixed term power. Kent has politicians that can barely read or write. A simple multichoice exam on various political points sho...

FAO Michael-georg Link, Director OSCE, Office for Democratic Institutions Dear Michael-georg In your OSCE election observer/reporter role I wanted to raise various issues with the UK/Kent 2015 elections: 1. Not free: £500 or £5k charge for candidates 2. Illegal candidate: LibDem in in Thanet North election George Cunningham a civil servant for the EU/Taiwan 3. Dual roles: MP and magistrate – not strictly illegal but not a separation of powers 4. Doublehatters: numerous candidates standing for roles ie 4 seats but the same person so reducing democracy and increasing costs 5. Parachute candidates: numerous candidates from out of area ie diminishing local representation 6. Numerous family members and ex-civil servants standing 7. Police silence on point 2 despite being the required investigative authority 8. Electoral Commission: ditto 9. Vote at 16: bias to some UK regions eg Scotland (as well as in EU eg Austria) with greater representation 10. Postal ballots: numerous a...

Clearly Manston is already a dead duck. Indeed one point that seems to have escaped UKIP et al’s notice is the sale of Jentex at the corner of the airfield – which was the fuel store. So UKIP – and Tories - are trying to reopen an airport without planes or fuel or radar or buildings – only a runway that could be a lorry park. Maybe a Parkway train station soon. Don't titter. And after, almost 6 months, nothing for UKIP to show for being elected but an internal revolt and end of their majority to just one - and now none. And the DCLG poverty figures slide backwards to one of the worst in UK. Today Medway cited as the worst in UK for Year 4 schools. Not exactly a flagship process for Britain’s only – and last? - UKIP council. While at KCC any plans for Manston and trust in Latchford and Shonk and the NF chap were completely rejected. So UKIP at County has absolutely no policies. And to lose one District councillor is careless. But five? And are election promises ...

It's National Poetry Day and The Chief has released a Kent Police haiku to celebrate: Roses are red, Violets are blue Kent councils are corrupt and High Court too But not Kent Police. Speaking from the Kent Police poetry room, Chief Alan Pughsley said: "Obviously we is very busy what with drug dens raids and the Kent Police Xmas panto, but we felt it was in the tradition of Great British Policing celebrating the Great British Creative Industries that we should help celebrate National Poetry Day. Especially in Kent, he said, the county of literary greats like Dickens and Shelley and Keats, we felt that a Meiji haiku would be interesting. It doesn't rhyme properly but that's haikus for you. And anyway the Environment Agency contamination had too many syllables in it to fit. Meanwhile if anyone knows the whereabouts of good governance then please call 101 as it is missing." Time for Change www.votegarbutt.co.uk @timg33

Clearly Wells' UKIP have nothing to offer some 5 months into his reign over Manston and now the breakaway groups. Credit to Gale and LocalCraigMP in managing to foist the blame for a Manston CPO U-turn onto Wells and ignoring their very clear election promises to reopen Manston. It was interesting at the UKIP conference in Doncaster that Farage highlighted all the UKIP achievements of the last 3 years but made no mention of TDC as the only UKIP-controlled council. And interesting that RTC meetings have reverted to 11am weekdays as hobby-pensioner events for very thin agendas. We're paying £110k in salaries to simply have empty meetings? Nothing done. And the danger with that is the civil servants also slip into stagnation or worse. You may be aware of 100SE Rd the Daniel Gent mega-construction of 15 flats stuck onto a 5 bed house repeatedly refused then approved. But now only silence from TDC. It's either a cockup or brown envelopes yet the Wells regime would...

With Volkswagen fiddling the air pollution data on their engines, what exactly is the difference with that and Infratil and KCC/TDC removing the noise and air monitors from Manston airport when it was due to expand? The main difference seems to be Infratil's Board and Kent Police and TDC/KCC covering up the pollution damage. At least VW have apologized, are investigating and have set aside billions of dollars for fines. With 500k deaths from air pollution in EU and at least 30k in UK, KCC and TDC have deliberately worked with Infratil (and Gloag) to avoid fines and endanger the public at Manston for years. And of course to fiddle the UK's overall emissions data. No wonder for example UK's newborn mortality rate is double that of Sweden: c.2k extra infant deaths. And Kent's mortality rate is one of the worst in UK. Apart from the Chief's pension, why have Kent Police not made arrests of say Infratil's Fitzgerald and Clark and Buchanan, and Berry, Butt...

Private Eye's Rotten Borough page today (page 18) reports on Wells and UKIP as: "all gone a bit Pete Tong" after just 4 months. And Wells gearing up with heeldragging for a Uturn on Manston. The capable Ed Targett in Margate says the same thing - and highlights the potential for the film industry in East Kent. Good news too that Edwina Crowley of Pleasuram and Dreamland at TDC has resigned - the clearout is almost complete. And Farage's bizarre comments also in Private Eye that the EU is responsible for destroying East Kent's harbours despite the millions received in EU subsidies(!). Unfortunately UKIP seem cut from the same cloth as the previous pensioners in Labour/Tory that mismanaged the area. Another vote of no confidence and even Recall seem relevant. 5 more years? There's been 4 months of nothing. And there's not much more left to destroy. Time for Change www.votegarbutt.co.uk @timg33 Tim's Titbits: (Interestingly Private Eye...