Operation Undynamic – Dunkirk forgotten in Kent amidst the corruption and now Dreamland collapse

What a dismal weekend for Ramsgate.

The Bank Holiday a mix of sunshine as you’d expect for a Great British Bank Holiday.

But the towns continue their decline.

First we have the shock news of Dreamland going bust again – at Xmas and now the Bank Holiday.

The knives will be out for the rascal Tim Howes the TDC lawyer-clerk who handled the shady handover(!) of Dreamland owned by TDC through compulsory purchase for the Godden’s housing estate. And then handed it to Sands Hotel. No information as to why or contracts.

And Sands even suing TDC –and winning a secret payout so undoubtedly more that Leader Wells is keeping secret this mess.

Howes even seems to be making Wells’ decisions for him in TDC refusing to search for other Manston buyers. I agree with the decision but it’s down for the elected Leader to make that call or not. Not the clerks. And if the clerks are making those decisions, either upfront or through backseat driving, then the Leader needs to sack them.

And then the disgusting farce of the remembrance and celebration of the Ramsgate Little Ships.

A steel thread that run through Britain with the Dunkirk Spirit and Miracle of Dunkirk as the stiff upper lip made real.

330,000 troops saved from the clutches of the Nazis in 10 says or so. Hundreds of ordinary boats some little more than dinghies heading across to Dunkirk from Ramsgate to ferry the soldiers from the beaches out to the warships and make the return journeys as well.

Usually it’s a major event in Ramsgate, as you’d expect, with the yacht club and Port and beer tents and so on.

And this year?

Nothing.

Nothing arranged at all.

No notices in the weeks running upto the Bank Holiday.

Nothing.

And I stumbled upon a religious service with 20 of the Mayor’s pensioners on the tatty promenade at 3pm on Bank Holiday Monday. Under the shadow of the derelict eastcliff bandstand and corrupt BVI Pleasurama site. Even cars parked on the prom and the RNLI driving around an empty beach on a quad bike.

Dismal.

Frankly the place looks as destroyed as Dunkirk in 1940.

Heads must roll at TDC and RTC.

All the more appalling as this week as the cameras were rolling in France and Belgium for…Dunkirk the movie. Starring Tom Hardy of Mad Max, Cillian Murphy of Peaky Blinders and Kenneth Branagh and one of the One Direction moptops, and directed by Christopher Nolan probably Britain’s greatest living film director: Inception, Batman Dark Knight and Interstellar.

I’ve already raised this with KCC as ideal for my Project EKFOS - the East Kent Film Office and Studio.

We need our own film office to work with Kent Film Office but bang the drum for East Kent rather than just Chatham Dockyard or Maidstone Studios yet again.

While our own film studio will drive regeneration with Dreamland and Paramount theme park as well as creating other jobs beyond the cement mixer. Ideal for that would be the BFI digitisation of old films before they literally rot into dust. The need is there, the money is there, we can and should do it in East Kent.
Clearly though with the Nolan movie, Dunkirk still resonates with younger generations in films and TV and books and websites, and even more so when the film is released this time in 2017.

One example I’m reading is Dunkirk Retreat to Victory and P.224:

“In all some 848 vessels served under Admiral Ramsay for Dunkirk…with meticulous organisation (of the) issue of charts to the skippers...many of whom had never crossed the Channel in their lives. Lieutenant George Grandage RNR working in the Naval Control Office at Ramsgate had three large boxes of charts delivered to his office by London taxi…1,500 charts in all covering the route from Ramsgate to Dunkirk…Grandage worked out the route and his typist produced 500 copies- one for each craft...he and one assistant laid off the courses and positions on about 1,000 of the charts. It took them all day and most of the night.”

He shouldn’t have bothered should he given the current Ramsgate council of duffers?

Just as the Ramsgate SAR naval teams based at the Oak Hotel rescuing 300 downed airmen shouldn’t have bothered. Or 1,700(!) Spitfires shot down over Dunkirk.
The beginning of disaster after disaster for two long years for the UK and Allies from Dunkirk, the Blitz, fall of Singapore – what Churchill considered a defeat even worse than Dunkirk - and sinking of UK aircraft carriers, Pearl Harbour, and greatest US Navy defeat in the Solomons, that only began to turn with Guadalcanal and El Alamein in 1942.

And for Kent didn’t really end until well after Operation Fortitude and DDay, and the V1 and V2 rockets through to March 1945. Frontline Kent indeed.

Just as with WW1 and Ramsgate as the main Canadian Army and Canadian Red Cross base.

We will not remember them.

Mayor Shonk is into this 2nd year as Mayor and sits on all 3 Kent councils: RTC, TDC and KCC and seems incapable of organising Bank Holiday events. Last August we had the amateurish damp bra event from Chief Clerk Styles that was literally a bag of washing and since then nothing.

The lazy pensioners can’t even keep cars off the pavement our out of the pedzone – and I’ve a lot of time for the RNLI but why on earth they are riding quad bikes around on the beach escapes me. More charity money than sense. RNLI money that could be spent on resiting the Margate Lifeboat or revamping the Ramsgate RNLI memorial boards or funding the TDC Beach Volleyball, Beach Soccer and Beach Polo events. Silly of them.

Even defibrillators in pubs and phone boxes and schools would be more useful than building on the beach.

While RTC has £400k in budget and even a fake 30% increase, TDC £16M if not more if they didn’t keep stealing or wasting it and KCC £2BN in tax funds. Each and every year...

Failing to put anything in place for Dunkirk and the Little Ships is disgusting.

In America they are celebrating Memorial Day for their troops – even in Belgium the Wereth 11 massacred in the Battle of Bulge (as the weather would almost certainly be too bad in December).

HMS Kent is even celebrating the WW1 battle of Jutland off Denmark. Why wasn’t here in Kent for Dunkirk? I watched one of the HitlerTV shows on Jutland and was horrified that only now some 100 years later has the royal navy worked out where the sunken ships war graves are. 6,000 British sailors without a recognised war grave. After 100 years. Unbelievable. In America the USS Arizona and other ships at Pearl Harbour are almost shrines after 70 years of preservation and protection.
Even on prime-time Saturday night television with Britain’s Got Talent we have a magic show celebrating some of the River Kwai prisoners.

And an interesting HitlerTV show on how well-treated were German prisoners of war of the Japanese in WW1. Perhaps before Japanese militarism took full effect and the brutality of Nanking and Kwai. Japan in WW1 was then an ally of UK and seized the German colonies in China and Marshall islands, and - after Jutland - the Japanese navy supported the UK in the Mediterranean and North Sea.

Reassuring that the CWG Commonwealth War Graves dept is repairing cemeteries from Flanders to Papua New Guinea and hopefully the Japanese graves of Malta and Anzac graves of Long Thanh.

But how shameful no memorial in UK or Europe to the thousands of Asian soldiers of WW1: Chinese and Vietnamese and Thai and Indian – yet there’s a memorial for animals.

The first VC paving stones are unveiled too in advance of Somme W1 remembrance: interesting to know of any in Kent?

And Turner on the £20 note to be issued before 2020 as one of the new plastic banknotes.

And excellent Pink Floyd stamps as a part of the Great British Music campaign - how long before Dartford’s Rolling Stones or Ramsgate’s Van Gogh with the new Rijksmuseum is recognised?

But here in Ramsgate? Here in East Kent and the White Cliffs of Dover? For the miracle of Dunkirk?

Nothing.

Not just undynamic for Operation Dynamo but absolutely appalling.


* 21st century Britain agenda article: http://lovekentloveramsgate.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/a-21st-century-britain-agenda.html

* No Tobacco Day Smoking Sincerity article:http://sincerityagency.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/axaing-tobacco-and-china.html

* EK Remedial points 2016: http://lovekentloveramsgate.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/kent-remedial-work-and-uk.html

* EK strategy 2016:http://lovekentloveramsgate.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/garbutt-time-for-change-2016-east-kent.html

* Time for a Free Economy article: http://lovekentloveramsgate.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/time-for-free-economy-tobacco-china-and.html


Time for Change
@timg33

Tim’s titbits:

1. The Dymchurch immigration scandal seems much ado about nothing: 2 Kent blokes trafficking a dozen or so Albanians is hardly the tsunami of immigration the Daily Mail would have us believe. And as anyone who reads my Kent Public Sector reviews knows how useless the Coastguard is: merely calling out the lifeboat for maritime problems. And they were fast of the blocks in calling for more money and ships for their failure. The sooner they’re merged with the coastal fire brigades the better – a saving of pretty uniforms and offices and effort. And the sooner Fire is merged with Police too. It’s worth noting that the public noticed the Dymchurch dinghy…and then the police turned up. The Coastguard no doubt in bed fast asleep with the RNLI telephone on speed-dial. Useless.

2. Pretty Uniform Watch – an occasional series – I may have actually dreamt it but I’m sure I saw on twitter (@timg33) some police with LGBT Gay epaulettes. You couldn’t make this up. They must have been sat there in the station or panda car sewing on some pretty rainbow epaulettes. The Royal Navy too it seem have another pretty shoulder badge of not the Union Jack but an ensign or St George flag with a Union jack in it. The Highways Agency are beyond parody for their pretty uniform to sit in the office watching CCTV. No wonder troops turn up in Afghanistan or wherever with little more than flip-flops. And invariably the wrong camouflage…Please send me examples of lavish public sector pretty uniforms: timgarbutt@yahoo.com

3. 76 Sussex Police Most Wanted court warrants. What are they doing?

4. DDay Anniversary next week and we can expect little from Kent councils and the Military Covenant. Even the appalling lack of help for service men with homeless or mental health problems or in prison. But there’s DDay Kent playing an unsung role with General Patton and Operation Fortitude in making the Nazis believe the invasion would be at Calais not Normandy. So successful was the deception with blowup tanks and so on that not only were 22 German divisions held at Calais. But even after the invasion they remained there for another 4 weeks(!) waiting for Patton to land from Kent into Calais.

5. Silence from Cllr Lin Fairbrass and Shonk on 100Se RD

6. Silence on the fake Wetherspoons consultation etc

7. Kent Oriental Restaurant Association underway – a group for the Great British Chinese, the Great British Thai, the Great British Indian, the Great British Japanese restaurants of Kent

8. 2LB in progress

9. Silence on the Manston monitors and Infratil and Gloag and TDC contamination and missing fines

10. Silence from Cllr Jenny Matterface, labour leader on Howes switching off councillors emails

11. Silence from CEO Homer at TDC and RTC on the TDC/RTC Cllr Leys election: my manifesto below: later this week

12. A squadron of UK Typhoons to be based in Japan this Autumn as a part of the new defence treaty and North Korean nuclear exercises and Chinese Spratlys tensions – surely it’s time HMS Kent had a regular ASEAN sailing roster rather than random AmbreSolaire tours on the rates?

13. Spanish Armada July 1588 and 430th anniversary 2018: fought between Flanders and Margate with British sailors brought ashore to be left to die in the streets. They could no doubt expect the same again today. Perhaps it would be for the best with Kent’s dirty hospitals – almost all of them in special measures. The astonishing BBC report on Canterbury hospital having a DNR Do Not Resuscitate notice on a patient’s file without their permission. In effect a death sentence. Surely a monthly review is needed of all DNR notices along with blood supplies and pandemics? Lavish £300k salaries don’t seem to provide better public services do they?

14. Crimes against humanity #1: life sentences for the Argentine junta president in Operation Condor with most of the Latin American dictators such as Pinochet and Stroessner cooperating with the CIA and FBI in coordinating the death squads across the Latin American nations in the Dirty War. It’s the first court case to reveal the links with Kissinger, Fort Benning, the torturers training ground, and CIA-FBI coordination with the Latin American dictators, military and secret services, to kill off dissidents.

15. Crimes against humanity #2: Chad’s president jailed for genocide. How much longer for Bashir of Sudan under sentence by the ICC? And Assad of Syria using chemical weapons? Even the dictators-for-life in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan and Zimbabwe’s Mugabe replacement. Or the monstrous Obiang of Equatorial Guinea or Cameroon. A toothless African Union failing to enforce rubbery-weak constitutions.

16. No Tobacco Day Tuesday: cigarettes almost completely banned now – I cannot understand how lighters, matches, and rolling papers and machines, and even bongs are so visible when cigarettes themselves are not just no longer on display but in uniform packaging? Shouldn’t they all be off-display in the tobacco cupboards? if elected I would ensure that as well as no outside table for smoking, and no more than one cigarette brand for prisons

17. Sincerity article on Coca-Cola: http://sincerityagency.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/sweet-moves-from-coca-cola.html

18. Surin restaurant review: top Thai restaurant in Kent:


Surin Thai restaurant: the best Thai restaurant in Kent and one of only 45 of any cuisine in Kent according to KM:


Surin is recommended by KM newspaper, Kent's largest newspaper, as one of the top 45 restaurants in Kent.


Surin is one of only 3 Asian restaurants recommended in Kent (and the other two are Japanese), the only Thai restaurant in Kent, and one of only two restaurants in Thanet.


The Surin review is:


SURIN, RAMSGATE CT11 8HA


Thai restaurants may be two a penny, but the Surin offers astonishing bang to the baht. It’s cheap and cheerful but with a freshness and verve you’d expect from a high-end London establishment. Chef and owner Damrong Garbutt has West End training, but it’s her home cooking learnt from her mother and grandmother in north east Thailand, near the Cambodian border, that really hits the spot. Cambodian and Laotian dishes throw in an element of the unexpected and there are locally brewed house beers, blonde or dark, to complement the flavours. Among reviewers who have dug deep for sufficient superlatives to do justice to Surin is food writer Jay Rayner.
http://www.surinrestaurant.co.uk/


The full KM listing is:

http://www.kentonline.co.uk/whats-on/news/our-guide-to-the-best-96108/


Time for Change
@timg33