Broken Election. Hold your nose vote Farage if you must

Obviously your vote is for you to choose who to vote for.

But people ask me who we should vote for or avoid.

Here’s my views:

1. The first point is don’t vote or register to vote and spoil your ballot. Don’t fall into the assumption that you have to vote for the main parties. By refusing to vote you are in effect doing NOTA: None of the Above. This means the parties will, when faced with falling turnouts, have to come up with better policies. All of a sudden for example despite publishing their manifesto Labour suddenly announce rent controls just 10 days before an election – desperately casting around for popular policies. The Tories like Farage simply do these weird activist closed meetings for photoshoots and slogans.

2. It’s even worse in South Thanet with the nonentities we have from the main parties: laughable that both Mackinlay a Chatham councillor or Scobie the Younger the Margate Mayor say they are local to Ramsgate and Thanet South. And somewhat fraudulent suddenly – as Sandys did – renting properties in the area to appear local. Farage of Downe/Orpington at least has made no bones about having no real interest in Thanet.

Indeed your national vote is largely irrelevant anyway as you can see in two areas:

A. Come May 8th the backroom deals to form a coalition government can be anything - and Thanet’s 2 MP’s would be even more irrelevant.
B. The manifestos as they stand have no great earth-shattering policies: tweaks on tax is about it. Even the Greens are struggling to emphasise Climate Change in the election.

3. Vote for the minor/challenger parties: again this will mean not just the end of two party politics in Thanet and 3 party politics in UK as that’s already happened. But the cosy deals and corruption of Labour/Tory TDC is now definitely over. Only coverup of the guilty.

4. In North Thanet it’s as bad with the election in danger of being null and void with Cunningham of the LibDems being a banned civil servant and as laughably giving his home address as Brussels(!). Some Thanet representative. You couldn’t make it up. Madeline Homer as Returning Officer seems to have lost her grip and is keeping her head down so soon into her £100K CEO job – and the £62K Returning Officer fee that goes with it. Why are we paying council execs so much for election night? Especially when the candidates have to pay £500 or £5k for MEP elections.

5. Some wider principles for District/Town candidates (not one manifesto):

a. Avoid doublehatter candidates: desperately trying to crowd out dissent by standing in multiple seats
b. Avoid candidates who aren’t standing in their own town
c. Avoid turncoats – scraping around just to be elected
d. Avoid candidates who’ve served 10 years or more: they’ve had their chance
e. Avoid candidates without a manifesto for Thanet – you’ll struggle on that one again just 10 days to go
f. Vote Other ie Green/Reality/Ind/Lib to end Corrupt TDC
g. Avoid family team members in the same party - again essentially duplicate votes

h. Rascals to vote out:

i. Latchford – repulsive, and failure at KCC and the Infratil monitors. Our Little Corporal is likely to defeated either by General Winter or in KCC 2017 – by me
ii. Heale – repulsive and failure at KCC
iii. Everitt – the Port and Pleasurama secrecy/fraud
iv. Bayford – silent on Pleasurama/tax havens and Painter
v. Negro Roz
vi. Eileen the civil servant

But here’s the key thing: Vote Farage in South Thanet and Ed Targett in North Thanet.

What I hear you cry? Tim says vote Farage?

Yes. With one proviso: vote out Latchford and Heale.

Why hold your nose and vote Farage? UKIP are a spent force with or without him of perhaps 3 or so MP’s and some polls say as low as 1 ie Carswell. And along with Cameron a leadership election before 2020.

We may even have a collapsed parliament and election before 2020 due to gridlock and inaction – it was already the Empty Parliament for 2 years before 2015.

UK politics is largely regional now: SNP in Scotland, Labour in the South, Tory in the South and Plaid Cymru in Wales and DUP in Ireland. And a sprinkling of Libs, Greens and Inds.

So let’s get Farage elected as unpleasant as he is.

And every television or newspaper interview will be about Manston – and Latchford and the Infratil removed monitors - and the contaminated aquifer.

Indeed you can see my emails to him in March 2012 on that issue from his public meeting in Broadstairs.

He’ll bumble and stumble along into irrelevance – even before the EU vote fizzles out.

Without immigrants and the EU the UKIP manifesto could almost be Tory: no great seachange in politics.

He’s never mentioned Manston since 2012 and only now to hoover up a few votes – perhaps mistaken that the Save Manson crew represent a majority in Thanet.

Certainly those jobs aren’t coming back indeed none at all.

Manston can only be a $1 CPO as a park: demolish the buildings, remove the dumped jet dig up the runway and let the aquifer be cleaned.

The £1BN Gloag in the Sunday Times Rich list can hardly claim poverty in not cleaning it up especially after only a $1 purchase. Just another Thanet farce like the Parkway or Chinagate.

Can you imagine Paxman or Sackur or Neil questioning him on Manston and Infratil?:

• When did you know the aquifer was contaminated?
• Why did your KCC deputy remove the monitors with KCC and TDC?
• Why haven’t you replaced them etc etc

In effect Farage in 2015 and Garbutt in 2020.

In North Thanet vote Targett as Green to remove Gale. Labour have never seriously tried to do so and are just too old now.

Thanet’s future is cleaner, greener and younger. Corrupt labour and Tory TDC has failed and elderly racists around Farage have peaked.

The EU will be reformed - and expansion continue to Turkey, Caspian, Russia and Mediterranean.

If Farage wanted to change that - like Gale with Manston - he's simply too late. And had every opportunity as an MEP. If the EU is so all-powerful why does Farage want to be an MP to change it?

But like the Ku Klux Klan or Negro Roz or Tingtong Janice, let's give him a platform and no doubt laugh as he's hoist by his own petard.

TDC can’t even sort out blatant garden-grabbing as at 100 South Eastern Road: 20 apartments welded onto a 5 bed house and the garden dug out for dozens of car park spaces – that was previously rejected. Madeline is silent so far. I’m beginning to suspect we have a Macgonigal#2.

Thanet’s problems are not the EU or immigrants (rather these are positives for the area - whether tourists, language students, uni students, EU grants etc etc - but corrupt councillors and civil servants and lazy cops and contamination as Manston and Thor and MOD Fire and the collapse of Pfizer and the Parkway and Manston housing nonsense.

Time for Change
www.votegarbutt.co.uk
Twitter: @timg33