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

Hard to know which was the biggest failure of 2009: #The on-off, never-seen Ferry #Manston and on-off BAWC cargo night flights #Manston: removing the air monitors prior to the on-off, never seen night flights consultation of August, September, October, March maybe May #Manston: the missing noise monitors #Tax haven Pleasurama on-off, never seen whatever the plans were – only until 4th Jan to register tax haven duties and income with Customs #ChinaGate on-off, never seen warehouses or something after 12 months #The on-off, never seen reconstruction of the Granville Folly #Ramsgate Town Council established but grinding to a halt in ceremony, protocol and inaction #The missing EKO and ChinaGate expenses and timesheets, TDC £2M office refit from disabled grants #Dreamland: another year derelict The only certainly is the 0% pay rise fraud that were £30,000 increases and delays on providing the TDC payroll costs. Do councillors not review these at Cabinet or Council meetings? – obviously not...

Offices closed. Public distracted. A good opportunity to “bury the bad news” or at least something unpalatable. Here’s two: #The Tourist office consultation # Air quality in St Lawrence http://www.thanet.gov.uk/news/latest_press_releases/air_quality_views_needed.aspx Here’s an overview of some things for Santa for Thanet next year: 1. A tourism office closure programme described as “improvements”. Not dissimilar to “improving-air-monitoring-by-removing-air-monitors”. More “Little Margate-ism” again. The sooner each town directs its own c.£16M expenditure from the £60M District taxtake the better – or will it simply be wasted on admin and process? Fixing the plywood on the window of the tourism office would be an improvement – not really showing the town at its best for visitors 2. Thor mercury cleanup: what have the council been doing? 750 of them and 130,000 residents and there’s no cleanup schedule? 3. The Van Gogh Museum at the derelict Cavallino building in Harbour St to celebrate ...

An extract from the latest report on Thor mercury near Nash Road estate and BandQ: Incident occurred on 19th December 2007. Synthetic route (from Germany) was being scaled-up (by the persons interviewed) and ***********from the Wincham site). Uncontrolled events lead to reactor overpressure, separating the reactor lid and breaking a glass vessel containing toluene (about 50 Kg). Explosion and fire destroyed the plant. Nobody was hurt. Date(s) of Investigation dd/mm/yyyy 20/2/2008 Persons Interviewed Include their job title or role (e.g. Safety Adviser, MD, or TU Rep) **********Wincham Cheshire). ***********Margate) Decision for David Gregory (Inspector). Description of the Incident Explosion of pilot scale chemical reactor. No injuries or fatalities. Agents Involved Stage 1. Pentaerythritol Phosphorus trichloride Toluene (solvent) HCL gas (evolved) Intermediate Bicyclic phosphate (CAS: 873-93-8) Stage 2 Intermediate Bicyclic phosphate (CAS: 873-93-8) Dimethylmethyl phosphonate (DMMP)...

Why exactly are the Gang of Four still clinging to their roles and pay cheques for failure? Where are the noise and air monitors that were “improved” at each consultation for expansion by being removed? Why exactly will the councillors not discuss the cleanup at Thor, the Gasworks and Richboro and the cleanup schedules? Are the civil servants running rings round them or is it keep quiet in the cosy club of incompetence that passes for Thanet governance? The MP's and councillors and civil servants can't claim they didn't know of the problems. Where are the Cabinet and Board minutes on fixing the problems? Are they sat in Margate twiddling their thumbs while the towns are contaminated and collapse? Of course. The worst council in Britain - rated by the Government itself The highest mortality rate in Kent with an 11 year and even 17 year death rate gap. The mysterious 1,750 casualty rate. The most polluted water supply under the airport. Time for Roger Latchford and Sandy to r...

Still no news on: # TDC payroll and cars and expenses # ChinaGate receipts and timesheets # EKO £500k receipts and invoices # Infratil and TDC noise and air monitoring records and flight log # Thor and Richboro site visits and cleanup schedules # The Pleasurama tax haven contracts and payments # 0% salary increases payslips: before and after Impossible. Can’t be done. Must be delayed. And then it’s still impossible. “Commercial confidentiality” doesn’t apply: all costs etc are disclosed. If you don’t want them disclosed then don’t do business with the public sector. “Data protection” doesn’t apply: that’s for data on the public held by civil servants not civil servants costs. If you don’t want civil servant costs disclosed then work for the private sector and fund the public sector. “Crown copyright” doesn’t apply: that’s copyright funded from public funds for the public. It’s very simple. All public costs and information is available for disclosure. FOI and EIR means every piece of lo...

This is an article on the £27M cabling contract for the Vattenfall windfarm http://www.cnplus.co.uk/news/subocean-wins-23m-windfarm-contract/1867639.article That’s a big contract: £27M just for part of the cabling. I noticed yesterday by the Jet petrol station on the Pegwell/Richboro foreshore that Carillion were digging concrete-lined trenches. How does the cabling get from those trenches out to the windfarm of the North Foreland without digging up the seabed of Pegwell Bay a RAMSAR and UNESCO site? A Planning error as foolish as building a petrol station on the floodline and draining the airport’s aviation fuel into the Bay. Or building the airport on the underground water reservoir. And is the cabling contract is £27M and the windfarm is the world’s biggest windfarm – which presumably costs a lot more than £27M - why has Brian White accepted only £175,000 for a developer contribution? That will hardly cover the 0% pay rise fraud. And which councillors approved this? It looks to me l...

TDC rated again as one of the UK's worst councils. Meeting "minimum standards". We seem to have a service of crooks, cretins and liars. And death by council. Double the cancer rate. Poisoned water. Noise and air monitors removed. Fake 0% pay rises for failure. Fake £500k EKO quangos Still no ChinaGate expenses. Tax haven developers. What has been going on? Silence from councillors. Silence from Civil servnats. Silence from MP's When will we have credible explanations and how these problems will be resolved. Resignations. P45's. No payoffs. No pensions. No public sector jobs. All seem viable to me. The Gang of Four of Samuel, White, Latchford and Ezekiel couldn't run a bath let alone 3 small towns. Failed. Failed. Failed. Time for Change

Coventry airport closed. Kemble airfield expands as a breaers yard for derelict aircraft. With Heathrow or Gatwick or Stansted slated for expansion – if any – then regional airports make little sense. Ever tighter environmental restrictions, noise control, air pollution. Unless you’re Manston of course. Built on the water supply? No problem. No effective radar? No problem. Removal of noise monitors? No problem. Removal of air monitors? No problem. Council to fudge consultations? No problem. County council happy for an airport far away from them? No problem. Council to pay for the airport’s consultation? No problem. Council to pay for an extra council quango of councillors? No problem. Dumping jumbo jets on the water supply? No problem. A Masterplan of 2M passengers. Up from zero. And more than double the whole population of Kent? No problem. And a cancer rate in Thanet double the UK average. Either 11 years or 17 years early death rate compared to the rest of Kent. Even the official fi...

Another front page article on cancer in East Kent. http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/Launch.aspx?referral=other&refresh=7Yk1y0D26Ga0&PBID=d7d2b9a4-64e8-44e3-9e11-33b67854552c&skip = Clearly smoking would affect cancer figures a little. But most people don’t smoke. So why would there be over double the national average of lung cancer. And a specialist cancer ward. A mortality rate dying at age 69 rather than 81 like the rest of Kent? Certainly an airport – especially if you remove and don’t replace the air monitoring. What were the civil servants and politicians thinking? No-one would know? No-one would mind? They could “lose” the paperwork? They’d keep their jobs and pensions anyway? Hustle through fake consultations? Even fake 0% payrises? Polluted water wouldn’t help. Nor contaminated land like Thor and Richboro and the Gasworks – all that dust blowing around. Here’s the estuary airport protest site funded by KCC with suggestions that Manston should be used inst...

Front page of the Thanet Gazette. As you'd expect in Toxic Thanet: * air and noise monitors removed from 24/7 cargo airport by TDC and Infratil * ChinaGate cargo warehouses plan on the Manston water supply * 6 dumped jumbo jets on Manston water supply left by KCC and TDC * RAF base without monitoring or similar deceit * Thor mercury near Nash Road housing estate, B&Q and Hornby: closed-but-not-closed for 25 years * permits to pollute and discharge into Pegwel Bay * Pegwell and Stour most polluted river in UK after Medway * Richboro cancer towers derelict * The mystery of toxic Tivoli Brook * Ramsgate and Margate gasworks derelict for 10 years * The fake EUJet and Night Flights rubber-stamp consultations * The EA report on "not polluting your water supply" to TDC in July * Old Sericol site pumps switched off No mention from councillors. No mention from civil servants. No toxin and cleanup schedules. No Cabinet minutes. No Chief Executive and Board minutes. No Forward P...

A further update on the Kentmere Avenue at Manston airport. The largest monitor covering the airport: here’s the picture off the Kent air quality website: http://www.kentair.org.uk/monitoringnetwork.php?view=sitephotos&site=ZH3&bulletindate=03/12/2009#details Like a rather large telephone box or a shipping container: this is the monitor that’s now switched off. The diffusion tubes are literally test tubes with a dab of cotton wool and tied to lanp-posts – usually used in their dozens and hundreds to monitor traffic pollution. Here’s the Medway newspaper front page on serious traffic pollution in Medway which is monitored by diffusion tubes – for cars not jumbo jets. http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/Launch.aspx?referral=other&refresh=fG1705Po2c0Q&PBID=95f0fcf6-68e7-4ec6-a688-2d9be9749147&skip = As you can imagine airport monitoring – especially an airport slated for expansion and built on the water supply and near an urban population of over 100,000 needs ...