Mafia Island - Malta. And Kent?

A vigorous article in The Independent on Saturday newspaper by crime reporter Cahal Milmo details the horrifying murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Daphne murdered by a car bomb of Semtex explosive that blew her car off the road and several metres into a field...

Shockingly the fifth car bomb murder in Malta in the last 18 months, not dissimilar to the anniversary of the murder of Judge Falcone last week, and Malta holding the EU Presidency earlier this year.

And now a 1M Euro bounty for her murderers. And some 2 months later 10 arrests after EU pressure highlights a rot in Malta’s governance.

And Kent.

The death of Cllr Ken Gregory opens up that KCC seat (and TDC as a doublehatter?) but the May 2019 TDC or RTC(?) elections are far, far away and nothing likely to be done now East Kent governance has collapsed into KCC meetings cancelled, and budget shortages now the pay rises are completed, and process restructuring with 20 fewer TDC (and KCC?)councilllors by 2019.

I will cancel Pleasurama immediately and return the funds - except to a tax haven, and donate them to the Red Cross charity in that case - clear and turf the site as a temporary fix for the Summer and begin a public consultation on the best use of the site. Probably in my view as simply a part of the promenade, bandstand, park concerts and gardens.

And investigate a new Ramsgate Lido and ice rink and pier, Vincent Van Gogh gallery and Landings attraction.
Nothing done and nothing will be done.

Still needed is the demolition of the Ramsgate £1M vanity Fire Station foundations and Arlington House decrepit 1960’s tower block, and Thor mercury factory cleanup. Even without public protests Manston, as airport now cancelled completely or new town, or Pleasurama as something or other by the mystery owner wouldn't be planned and built in a year.

Pay your tax for nothing and shut up.

But Malta’s Daphne highlighting from the Panama Papers of 11.5M leaked files from the law firm Mossack Fonesca which detailed offshore firms linked to Maltese politicians, civil servants and judges.

Hardly difficult to do in UK either with corrupt judges and barristers as Grabiner of BHS pensions (secret shareholders in a plc isn't corrupt?) and Glick and Hollingworth of One Essex Court, perhaps Britain's most corrupt barristers, and Steve Palmer of PB Law and Andrew Conway of Laurance Stephenson - the latter posing as an HMRC official a blatant crime.

Beyond the blatantly corrupt nature of the High Court an astonishing conflict of interest with Judges also serving as barristers. Sitting one side of the bench one day and the other side of it the next day. and adjudicating on their own firms cases or colleagues in other firms. An outrageous blurring of responsibilities - especially with closed courts and no jury trials.

But both main parties in Malta the Labour Party and Nationalist Party creating a culture of wrongdoing and impunity is also hardly unknown in Kent with neither Tories or Labour nor UKIP (LibDems and Greens essentially invisible in Kent except as Lords or MEP’s)speaking out on the Manston and Pleasurama corruption but rather complicit in remaining silent and trying to cover over the traces.

Clearly Wells and Shonk as the last UKIPpers are a busted flush and must resign. TDC’s UKIP now not in control of the council merely the largest party, while the only other UKIP-led council in Great Yarmouth collapsed this week with resignations and defections to Tories.

Perhaps the Tory party’s greatest problem apart from the Brexit silliness and collapse of austerity removing the last vestiges of the claim for economic competence, is the return of the UKIP chumps.

Clearly Philip Hammond’s autumn Budget fumbled a few issues head-on:

• cancelling Brexit and detailing specific EU reforms: Remain and Reform is UK’s best option
• cancelling NATO’s absurd quango-claim for 2% of national budgets as both the Ukraine and Syria conflicts reduce: UK already 2.3% and as high as 5.3% compared to an EU average of 1.3% and woeful MOD procurement of F35 junk aircraft and vanity aircraft carriers
• cancel Universal Credit rollout – and end a 6 week wait for benefits and sanctions for anything more than fraud, and all public sector helplines to be freephone numbers
• fastforward HS3 and HS2 from the North to get Britain working and put flesh on the bones of the Northern Powerhouse
• cancel dental charges given the epidemic of children with rotting teeth in a supposedly free NHS
• cancel crack cocaine betting machines form the fumbled consultation – indeed gambling advertising
• divert MOD funds to Cybersecurity given the North Korean meltdown of NHS computers in May and concerns over Chinese funding of Hinkley nuclear reactors etc
• ramp up housing insulation programmes and solar power, and 5G broadband to get Britain working sustainably
• deliver a Plastic Tax/Landfill Tax for FMCG packaging and coffeeshop cups to safeguard the oceans and expand UK/Overseas Marine Reserves and end Pacific/Atlantic Plastic patch
• end live animal exports in/out of UK – especially Ramsgate and Kent ports - with a tweak to the 1847 Port Act
• fastforward the NHS DNA database – end Crapita involvement in databases for say Microsoft
• develop Doitung heroin and cocaine policies – and troops to Afghanistan -given the rapid increase in UK and USA drug deaths. Surely it’s absurd for frontline Kent with 90% of illegal EU drugs seized in Belgium, that UK and EU drug deaths and gangs and routes from Southern Spain to Southern Italy or Slovak guns are not a regular feature of the weekly cabinet meetings?
• specify the energy prices cap: £2 per day and Rail/Tube fares caps: £50 day return and £2 per day – funded from LIBOR fraud tax. The UK over-reliant on the City at the expense of manufacturing from food to pharma and public social programmes
• specify an interest rate cap eg 9.9% as in Germany not the absurd 1,000 payday loans etc
• cancel UK arms exports beyond EU/NATO as Germany – specifically ending Saudi arms dodgy deals eg Sangcom
• cancel UK/Overseas tax havens eg Jersey/Gibraltar and Caymans etc – and end UK death penalty in Caribbean before 2018 Commonwealth Summit
• specify Flu and TB and AMR vaccines production and stocks per hospital

And so must Bayford and Iris of the Tories and Labour: too long in power and too stale and too incompetent and too corrupt.

Also in the Independent's feisty and dynamic Kent reporter Janet Street-Porter highlighting the overhaul needed of the UK rail system with the problems of the £5.7BN new Hitachi trains. Made in Kent at Ashford? Concerning if so. Very concerning.

23 UK rail operators needing a shakeup, rail safety and guards on trains seemingly fizzling out to a 28% pay rise shakedown instead - and why can't train fares be simplified and capped?

£50 maximum for any UK return journey Lands End to John O'Groats or anywhere else? £2 for a Tube journey - and the excellent £1 value already of most buses.

Yet KCC trying to cancel Kent buses after the councilors voting themselves a 15% increase the larst uin UK councils and the most £100k salaries in UK councils. Clealry though the bus review with Stagecoach etc is ideal for reviewing the missing Manston fines and overflight cancer cost by SHP/Glaog/Stagecoach.

But rather than the ideological navel gazing of nationalisation or not, why would any political party want to allow the public to be overcharged if not fleeced.
And if fairer train fares isn't rocket science £83BN in public funds for the Met Office should be - including weather and phone/TV/radio satellites refroms? Even without Brexit or Yingluck phones (the 79p 2G phone offer by the good folks in Ramsgate EE surely a fab Xmas present and the basis for rollout to school dinner kids and OAP's and emergency usage) and Bono/Independent's Red humanitarian work?

Why wouldn't EE or Samsung etc want to produce a few million extra handsets at minimal run-on cost? Even expanding factories into UK as with Jand J’s Janssen. Even a £5 emergency always-on tariff for their database) it's easier for East Kent to get better Belgian and French signals. Probably cheaper too with EU roaming charges now capped.

Kent Orchids still a fab Xmas present too - and part of Ramsgate Manga Town 2018.

But calls growing for the resignation of PM Joseph Muscat in Malta for a Panama company, Egrant, receiving $1M from the daughter of the Azerjaiban President.
The Azerjaiban Laundromat money laundering scheme notorious also in London even deposing Price Andrew as UK Trade Envoy c. 3 years ago.

But the Magnitsky law raised by Bill Browder's Red Notice book now passed in Canada - UK too soon given the wave of Russian oligarchs using the High Court, even in the Magnitsky fraud and murder itself?

And questions remain over two other Maltese politicians' offshore trusts owned by Keith Schembri Chief of Staff to PM Muscat and Konrad Mizzi former Energy Minister.

While one of Malta's main online gambling companies - that also prop up UK tax havens in Gibraltar, Jersey and the Caribbean - some 1.2BN Euros or 12% of Maltese GDP was suspended over fears it had been infiltrated by the Ndrangheta mafia of Southern Italy's Calabria.

Southern Italy's main cargo ports notorious as cocaine routes from Latin America.

And that Arab Spring/ISIS monies and Libyan oil funds passed through Maltese banks - POTUS Trump in more trouble with insults at the deaths of 4 US Special Forces troops killed in nearby Niger as highlighted by reporter Nick Turse. The Kony banditti hunt also by US Africa Command troops in Uganda and across the Sahel also quietly halted in expensive tech-failure.

The new $700BN Pentagon defence budget seems over the top in everything except results – especially with 14 UN Peacekeeper deaths in DRC Congo the most in an incident for a decade.

ISIS has lurched to a halt with the retaking of both Raqqa in Syria and Kirkuk in Iraq. And the drone death of Kent ISIS flag-bearer Sally Jones. But Marawi in Philippines - a town of over 1M people -also retaken from ISIS with c.200 military/police/civilian deaths marks a surge in ISIS activity in ASEAN especially in Malaysia and Philippines and upto 800 ISIS soldiers returning to UK from Raqqa.

Daphne Caruana Galizia described Malta as a Mafia state.

And Kent?

Clearly questions need to be asked, not over the jailing of former TDC council chief Sandy Ezekiel for forced sales of properties in Margate. That was c.4 years ago not this year and not involving the biggest sites in Kent.

The sale of Pleasurama - a strange sale by TDC council as recent as this Summer with KCC changes to the land that nobody seems to have details of for c.£2M or was it £20M with hotels and apartments?

56 councillors seem to be cowed into silence.

Pleasurama the largest seafront project in Kent, and derelict for some 20 years after a mystery fire by the now deceased owner of Dreamland, Jimmy Godden, also had several mystery fires and changes of ownerships.

Bob Bayford as deputy Tory leader under Sandy Ezekiel and sharing an office with Terence Painter, the estate agent with the rights to Pleasurama, must have details of the site and be keen to share them with the public.

And Iris Johnson the Tory leader involved in progressing the recent £2m(?) mysterious sale to Cardy etc must know the details and be keen to speak up.

As must Madeline Homer TDC CEO - £125k salaries as much as the Prime Minister for a small council, means they can't remain silent. Certainly not against the backdrop of Cllr Ian Driver being prosecuted for airing the secret deal as part of his elected duties and now a £20k charge on his house a chilling effect on local democracy. And on a bizarre Domestic Extremist list – separate to the Most Wanted list, surely drugs gangs overdue - as a councillor, generated by Kent Police beyond sight of and sign-off by councillors and commissioners?

Perhaps Helmand transfers for improvements in municipal government there would be for the best?

KCC may not know details with the Toxic Three involved in the Manston-Infratil crimes (remember KCC-USA at Manston?) now reduced to a Toxic Two of Paul Carter KCC leader and Geoff “Redaction” Wild KCC lawyer with KCC deputy leader Alex “Burgher” King resigning promptly after 30 years of lunching on the rates.
And the Gang of Four of TDC politicians and civil servants, Ezekiel, Samuel, White and Latchford all resigned but living locally available to speak up.

With Kent OAP Winter deaths skyrocketing (what are the figures last year and this?) they may not last the Winter even without a detailed review of the Vattenfall windfarm and solar farm and free electricity.

Bayford and Johnson may also have details of the Dreamland sale - the largest amusement park in South East England, top ten in UK - now owned by Sands Hotel and Arrowgrass a Cayman Islands offshore company (Pleasurama a BVI offshore company - strange for East Kent to have so many Caribbean offshore companies for public projects).

The Maltese Mafia island cases highlighting a zoo (Dreamland's lion cage repairs progressing) built by a businessman on land without planning permission and links to the Labour party with a 50,000 Euros fine later cancelled.

Shades of the local Labour party receiving its largest ever donation from a local friendly multimillionaire for Chinagate warehouses at Manston?
The Dreamland sale peculiar in involving Lottery funds and major losses by suppliers and no known tender process as with the Johnson sale of the Pav to Wetherspoons, and no councillor authorisation of licences etc, only one civil servant authorising all of them - for the biggest pub in Britain.
Perfectly normal for Kent it seems.

The Sunday Times detailing not just the awful food at the Wetherspoons but raising the issue of how Wetherspoons managed to buy the site from TDC and the quality of the heritage conversion looking like council pebbledash rather than a Grade 2 listed site in the Grade 1 listed harbour, the only Royal harbour in UK
As with Pegwell Bay a UNESCO site, astonishingly shoddy protection of unique assets.

And the New European newspaper highlighting Chief Mullet Tim Wetherspoon’s bizarre Brexit stance of against immigration unless it affects his East European barstaff and in favour of Brexit for trade deals to knock 3p off his chicken in a basket pub meals. Clearly he’s a Scrooge and a humbug.

I can't see the good folks of Sands Hotel/Arrowgrass continuing with Dreamland over concerns of the range and quality of food outlets there and the Lottery/creditors issue.

All these highlighted in my MP and Mayor campaign: "Stop the Corruption, Stop the Construction. Stop the Pollution" for some 10 years now.
Is Malta a mafia island? Yes it seems to be with murderous collusion over the death of Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Is Kent a mafia state? I don't think so. Not completely - and not now.

Chief Pughsley has a firm and fair control of Kent Police, perhaps UK's most liberal police force. Last month’s arrest of Dover Port Border Police for cocaine and heroin and gun trafficking are unfortunately the sort of thing that can happen anywhere rather than a systemic problem as with Pleasurama etc.
Kent Police receiving 3 outstanding consecutive certifications for the HMIC Police Inspectorate is very positive – albeit for the rather fluffy legitimacy instead of kicking drug den doors in – and with holidays capped at 30 days, lays the groundwork for 2018’s more vigorous approach on junkies and dealers, rapists and road deaths.

You don't have to be a Xmas prophet to see that Frontline Kent needs more vigorous action for its lavish budgets.

The homeless campsite on the High St now ended after c.14 weeks(!) a particularly weak police effort, and beach shelters but highlighting, from last year, Kent's need for excellent homeless and rape crisis centres in the 3 districts.

Key questions for any at Kent Police must be: when did you last patrol on foot or car? And how many arrests did you make last month? The days of ranks and ranks of police sat in the police station are over.

All the Infratil UK and EU and NZ except Wellington airports now closed. Even Ostend airport gunrunning into Africa reducing.

Perhaps Jacinda Ardern the new NZ Labour PM from Wellington – and former Blair aide in London - will be active on Infratil extraditions.
But is Thanet a Mafia island? I don't think so now, there's no widespread collusion. It's just the politicians and civil servants that are corrupt.
Not one public statement on Pleasurama or Dreamland or Manston-Infratil and not one civil servant sacked or jailed for the missing fines and faked air pollution data.

Worth remembering not just 5M global tobacco deaths, but also 5M air pollution global air pollution deaths and c.40k deaths in UK - and the Manston monitors lynchpins in the South East and London air quality monitors. London Mayor Sadiq Khan highlighting air quality as London's biggest problem - no wonder as the Manston monitors are faked, it’s worse than he thinks.

But let's hear from Carter or Wild or Johnson or Bayford or Homer.

Let's hear from them - say a public inquiry to raise questions over these issues. Even some questions from Kent's journalists.
Let's hear from them.

The public concerns over Pleasurama and Thor mercury and Dreamland for years show the council cabals have no public approval.
Elderly outgoing MP Roger Gale silent on Pleasurama and the Manston-Infratil details, as is Ramsgate's Chatham MP Craig Mackinlay also a vocal supporter of Manston - the largest election fraud trial of supporters bussed in from around the UK given minimal support, delayed until next Summer.
All perfectly normal from our Kent politicians it seems.

Malta, unfortunately too late for Daphne Caruana Galizia, is now publicly calling for investigations and a 1M Euro reward.
Now I will increase my $1 reward for the Manston-Infratil arrests - by one penny.

The reward is now $1.01 for the arrests of the Infratil directors and TDC officials removing and faking the Manston-Infratil monitors: Bogoievski, Fitzgerald, Baker and Clarke at Infratil and Berry, Button and Sproates at TDC. Gloag and Charles Fitzgerald of Manston in hiding.

And how strange that this Summer with the new Riveroak consultation, TDC and RTC councils now vote against Manston airport expansion. That with UKIP/Tory majorities and the main manifesto point by Leader Wells and Mayor Shonk. You will remember the UKIP (national and local policy pledge) cancelled within 6 weeks of being elected.

They need to resign. They'll never be elected again. And when will they speak up on the Manston aquifer and digging up the runway to clean and replenish it?
Even new UKIP leader Henry Bolton cancelling his Chairmanship of the Manston group and clamming up on Manston despite being keen to air his views on strangling badgers(!). Where do UKIP find them? Space Cadet Aidan Powlesland is my favourite with his secret underwater base in the Falklands.

Silence over the $1 sale from Infratil to Stagecoach Gloag to the SHP venture from their Cleveland site for thousands of houses on the aquifer now as unlikely to be built as an airport. Only $1 lost rather than the £20M tax spent on documents by the Toxic Two for the KCC Manston Parkway.
Malta is a mafia island and Kent not that much different.

Jonathan Benton former head of international corruption unit at UK's National Crime Agency saying; "...there isn't the confidence in the judicial process and the rule of law".

Malta not Kent he meant or is it the other way round?

20 years of Pleasurama fires and tax havens etc.

20 years.

And far more scrutiny required of Paramount theme park and Thames Gateway and Discovery Park and Open Golf projects to ensure they're kept on track and properly delivered through the City rather than the usual bumbling around and slide into drab tarmac and housing estate projects.
And concern over the performance of Saga and Hornby as major East Kent employers – what if we had the same incompetence that yielded 5,000 job losses at Pfizer?
A housing estate not just at Manston but also Dreamland and Discovery Park at various points. Let's hope not at the toxic Thor mercury site - surely Roger Gale near the end of his life could review the site toxins?

As Mayor-in-waiting and MP-in-waiting I will ensure no Kent project has any offshore company or tax haven involvement. Not even Malta - surely UK police and Europol and FBI/DEA will be flown in to support the investigation of a Commonwealth and EU island?

Kent's Learmonth Learjet long overdue for rapid response for police investigations or stranded or jailed Kent citizens as Joshua French now released from death row in the Congo.

Learmonth's Learjet if done properly a minimal cost in sensible procurement/on-call/FOI use across 43 forces and gradually reducing champagne and caviar in the Kent Police canteen vending machines and dividends from budget investments in the Las Vegas Golden Nugget. Balancing those costs with reducing storage space from the tons of Barnesy noodles and a larger cocaine and heroin warehouse.

Any new council or police tax precepts unlikely without massive reform – what happened to the 20 extra Kent guncops at £5 per house per year? £5 if you can spot any copper these days.

And Afghan heroin and Myanamar-Shan heroin production actually increasing after a decade of NATO troops involvement and flooding UK and USA streets with the highest ever drug deaths. The new USA mini-surge in Afghanistan and Pakistan safe havens – POTS Trump this week rightly citing Pakistan, in the Commonwealth, as a rogue nation - not yet fully supported by not just Kent's Ghurkas but UK troops in general. Such as the Irish Guards beginning Panther Gold in Thailand’s Kwai region.

With the trial of Obiang’s, son in Paris, President of Equatorial Guinea one of the most despotic regimes in the world, surely US Africa Command efforts must also be focused given Peak Oil and the end of oil on that regime.

Obiang propped only by half a dozen American oil firms. No doubt the coup against Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe amid rumours of opposition candidates being poisoned will result in more of the chaos that infects Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea and Yemen. 2018 a year of election s in UK and beyond.

And good that the dynamic Dave Mairs is elected to the Pegwell Bay Association to protect the UNESCO site from NEMO pylons and dredging etc. The SSSI and RAMSAR nature reserve needing the last remnants of the derelict hovercraft site removing and linking with Canterbury Cathedral and Dover White Cliff UNESCO sites and Pilgrim Trails.

Xmas surely the right time for not just Canterbury Cathedrals;’ UNESCO heritage sites but Xmas choirs as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage? One for Dover’s Archbishop Trev after the Xmas rush?

And it's good South Coast Green MEP Keith Taylor and colleagues have spoken out on the Malta murders. As Germany struggles to construct its Jamaica Coalition after the recent election between Merkel and Schulz of Liberation Route Europe, it's to be hoped the German government and Greens in that coalition will also be speaking out too.

The murder of Malta's journalist Daphne Caruana Glaizia is a horrifying scandal.

And horrifying too that with Laos' Sombath still missing after police arrest. Argentina's activist Santiago Maldonado - another disparu - has been founded murdered and dumped in a river after his arrest and disappearance in August.

And the Deepcut barracks 4 murder-suicide inquiries by Surrey Police reopening(again).

Next week the Kent MP sex scandals rushed out for the Parliament Xmas recess, and defence review with RN ship sup on bricks in port again, and year review of Kent's public services - congrats to the GPO in advance.

Time for Change
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