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

The KCC leader manifesto below and a couple of thoughts on the TDC election: * a vote for Independents would be a step forward - several are disenchanted witht he performance of the Parties they used to follow * the main Parties are largely irrelevant at a local level - and the previous blocs of Parties has now been broken: no town is automatically Labour or Tory * a boycott of the election or spoilt ballot (simply draw a line through the ballot or tear it in half and put it in the ballot box) is essentially a vote for "none of the above" - with a turnout already less than 35% (and the rise of co-opted or unelected candidates) the issue is effectively one of a lack of public support and public sector focus. 99% of the public are not members of any Party and c.80% of the public do not work in the public sector. * Double hatters and triple hatters - a ludicrous rotten boroughs approach to pad out the same Party person for several seats: vote only for the lowest council they sta...

Bit of a strange response from TDC on my application for Mayor: rejected as: 1. Not enough signatories – but speaking to other candidates only 2 signees are required fro Ramsgate Town Council as they and I provided. 10 are required for District but I didn’t apply for that and no form (although there are c.5 forms and a 50 page book) were provided. 2. The – optional – statement may be wrong: Independent and then: stop the pollution, stop the corruption, stop the construction – it’s a bit longer than 6 words but the “the’s” could be taken out. Sounds like petty nonsense. While a manifesto for a directly elected mayor is somehow illegal unless voted by other councillors – this making it not directly elected. Utter nonsense. I’ve asked for confirmation if the Returning Officer is being paid £20k for the night which sounds a bit much. And I’ll raise the issues with the Electoral Commission and Police: jiggerypokery around an election is a serious criminal offence and can render it null and ...

The Ramsgate town Council annual public meeting last week and the same old tripe. The same £300k budget as the Charter Trustees. Nothing done. And now only 3 events for £30k for the year - and admin costs of c.£90k. Simply stale old men - and District double-hatters at that - funding admin until the budget's gone - and the towns collapse, and then raising more tax for waste. An application form Sainsburys at Westwood for a supermarket rebuild double the size with extra units and aniother road - plus widening the existing road. To cope with the incompetent plans in the first place. And pretending they know what they're doing beyond empty ceremony and petty bickering. And shuffling their feet over major public health hazards and the collpase of the towns: merely riding the decline down with nothign to do and nothing to say. Silence and umming and ahhing on Thor mercury. Bizarrely the Mayor seemed to say that he knew what the toxin levels were but refused to confirm the details. ...