Trees and hedges and hedge funds for UK and Thailand and India Smart Cities?

Khun Tanyatorn Tongwaranan makes some typically elegant points in her article on Green Smart Cities with Delhi as an example:

https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/1504266/the-battle-for-greener-cities

That struck a chord in my Mayor and MP campaign here in East Kent to: "Stop the Pollution. Stop the Corruption. Stop the Construction".

Green issues a vital but somewhat neglected in Kent as the Garden of England and East Kent with its array of orchards and Blue Flag beaches. And new Garden Cities but more of those later.

A countryside and seascape perhaps familiar to Thai eyes via The Darling Buds of May television series with a pre-Hollywood Catherine Zeta-Jones or films such as A Canterbury Tale or Contraband by Powell and Pressburger, perhaps most famous for the Red Shoes film, a favourite of Martin Scorsese.

Leaving aside my EKFOS - East Kent Film Office and Studio project - the Hollywood connection is vigorous through East Kent with Ian Fleming's James Bond 007, Cannes and Oscar winners Brenda Blethyn and Timothy Spall. Even 1960's film icons such as Rita Tushingham visiting Surin Thai restaurant (try the sea bass!).

And Marlon Brando a keen hiker through the East Kent countryside near the Channel Tunnel now under threat with tarmacing for Operation Stack as a lorry park in the event of the likely chaos and delays from any Brexit should it happen.

### Kamikaze Brexit limps on ###

10 UK Cabinet resignations in as many days, including the Brexit Minister David Davis and Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, the silliness of Brexit is limping to an end.

But if Delhi residents are keen supporters of trees and Smart Cities then surely East Kent and Bangkok residents should be as vocal?

Bangkok has the fewest green spaces of any world city. And Thailand has lost its tree cover to just 32% in 40 years. Cambodia even more from logging through Isaan - the view from Preah Vihar, part of the wider Royal Road, showing how much destruction has been wrought on Cambodian and Thai jungles. While Kent's famous orchards, cited by Charles Dickens and Shakespeare (King Lear set on the moors near Dover) have been reduced over 50% since 1945.

And Sheffield council has been felled for felling urban trees. That steel city surprisingly leafy and green. And trees of course one of the best pollution captures and cleaners.

Environment Minister Michael Gove wisely making attempts to rectify these problems with upbraiding Sheffield council and a Northern Forest of 7M new trees - but taking 25 years to plant it seems. That seems astonishingly slow given 11m UK schoolchildren and 2M students on hand to plant their trees.

And as slow as the rather absurd UK policy to end diesel cars by 2040 - not especially difficult to do as Volkswagen has already announced it will cease making them in 2030. That a rash of rather silly water-is-wet policies thrown up by Brexit - a Parliament vote this week on ensuring the free-flow of medicines to UK from EU mere hot air gasbagging if not the downward death spiral of a Kamikaze Brexit.

And Brexit has sucked the oxygen out of the Westminster Village with no policies or governance at all other than thousands of new Brexit clerks merely retyping EU laws with minor tweaks on the rates.

An argument if nothing else for a codeified and reduced law system as in France.

Former Foreign Minister and Brexiteer Boris Johnson in his first Daily Telegraph column urging greater UK exports to ASEAN and The Gulf and China, as well as the wider Commonwealth such as India. Bizarrely though ignoring the trade gap in Latin America and Caribbean.

### Meiji Kent and EU and Japan ###

That thrown into relief with not one major UK trade deals signed in the two years since Brexit and this week EU and Japan signing one of the largest-ever trade deals. That positive for Meiji Kent companies such as Hitachi and Fujifilm - and if Brexit was in any way likely no doubt there would be calls for East Kent passporting rights with its c.1M citizens affiliated with Belgium or Northern Ireland/Eire.

The rot setting in through with the European Medicines Agency uprooting from London to Amsterdam, and a tsunami of companies from Aston Martin to Jaguar Landrover to AsdaWalmart to Lloyds - all expressing concerns at any border delays or transferring to European Smarter Cities such as Dublin and Frankfurt.

Goldman Sachs and Bloomberg in London and Boeing in Sheffield three of the larger companies weathering the Brexit storm to expand in UK. With my Sincerity Advertising hat on the Home Nations such as Wales and Scotland ripe for expansion too despite delays on the Swansea Tidal Lagoon and lack of Scots seafood reseeding and exports.

Even 110k military and 100k police could take up trees - perhaps tree planting one way of getting them out of the barracks and police station. While Kent Royal Engineers are leading the way not just in the Sudan of the world's fewest roads, or completing the Cape2Cairo railway - the last few miles still to be closed from the 1898 Sudan Military Railway (that built in mere months without JCB diggers or Six Companies bulldozers, just shovels)to improve UN peacekeeping and DFID and USAid.

But the Royal Engineers and Kent’s Ghurka Engineers are also key in reversing the creeping desertification of the Sahel along the southern edge of the Sahara. Tree planting and irrigation canals (as in Afghanistan) vital in securing the soil and sand drift. While the giant sand berms of Western Sahara are a key line in the sand for resisting the Sahara drift and resulting Climate Change conflict of reduced soil and water wars.

Kasetsart University, linked with Newcastle University in UK, recently promoting the UN Topsoil initiatives - UK topsoil reduced by 40% since 1840 and concerns over few harvests left with Surin Farm.

As with Thailand's Doitung and King Bhumibol self-sufficiency programmes, there is a wider need for crop selection and tree and hedgerow planting to literally secure the land. UK lacking the effort on model farms or planned crop selections, as with Thailand divesting land from rubber harvests for more useful crops.
And a wider issue with many UK farmers over the age of 65.

### Surin Charity and Hyde Park Corner English language schools ###

Surely such education aspects are relevant for every UK and Thailand school, whether my Surin Village School Charity or Hyde Park Corner English Language Schools or not. Even the neglected basics such as handwashing and food preparation given UK’s main strategic threat of pandemics. Certainly the Surin Comic as with the UK Embassy Cambodia Skytrain STEM comic and Blue Broccoli STEM and Engineering book are relevant too. One day a year planting trees would hardly render Thai and UK schoolkids into fools: Children's Day or Teacher's Day as a Tree Day?

With UK in freefall at the moment, PM Prayut or Khun Thanathorn may not be available to run the country part-time (UK not Thailand as despite the Brexit mess Parliament breaks up a week early to prevent the May government falling), nor the watermelon politics of Yingluck and Thaksin that translate well to Kent.

For UK is almost unique in Europe with a weaker than it should be Green party, just one MP in the vigorous Caroline Lucas, part of the Green Coast tidal surge along the Channel from Brighton to Ramsgate to London, and in Kent the Garden of England just one KCC county councillor in the quietly capable Martin Whybrow.

The new UK Green leadership in Berry and Bartley urging at least one Green on every UK council. Perhaps the Greens as the third largest party, either solus or in alliance, is viable too.

If the Garden of England can’t field a strong Green opposition especially against the pinstripe building projects of houses and roads vanity projects and white elephants under the Carter Toxic Two regime.

All that surprising in the age of Climate Change, and compared to Green activities in Germany and Holland and Belgium and Scandinavia, and perhaps the reason for such old-fashioned views in Kent with UKIP now wiped out with mercifully nothing done. Or foolish policies such as investing the $3BN KCC budget in state pensions with failing crops such as tobacco and fossil fuels.

Eire this week the first nation in divesting all its state funds from fossil fuels - no doubt yielding lower pensions for Kent's policemen and teachers and clerks in not divesting fossil fuels sooner.

While the London Array windfarm off East Kent, one of the five largest renewables sites in UK and one of the largest in the world, has still seen no electricity price reduction windfalls in Kent.

Vattenfall surely relevant for Krabi solar farms Khun Tanya? Even Sister Cities International links with Kent and Virginia.
Although the Kingsnorth power station one of the largest in UK and my policy on Richboro power station, have both been demolished and all UK coal mines closed - perhaps relevant for EGAT policies on those coal power stations in Krabi, even POTUS Trump rustbelt coal policies in West Virginia.

### Cockneys and coal ###

Coal on beaches a 1970's environment policy fail that infected not just Newcastle and Northumberland (the denouementxxxx of First Cockney Michael Caine's Get Carter showing Jarrow coal waste dumped at sea). But East Kent's now-closed hovercraft site (Caine cropping up again smuggled onto the hovercraft in The Black Windmill movie) built on old coal ash from the Richboro power station.

The digging up of the Manston airport runway and demolition of Thor mercury and Ramsgate fire station on sports grounds is long overdue, the Pleasurama corruption site now being cleared for bread and circuses or at least a Planet Hollywood funfair. The Paramount theme park long delayed and as with Dreamland in need of an overhaul.

California leading the way with all new build houses requiring solar panels surely to be implemented in Kent and UK before too long, if not trees specified too to ensure minimal greenwash as say Ebbsfleet Garden City. While the quality of architecture design an issue to ensure standards more of Venice than a verruca at worst or Eurosplodge at best on Kent.

FOI and the better EIR version of the EU still not ingrained in UK public culture relying on secrecy to mask incompetence or the rampant corruption of Manston airport or One Essex Court or Magnitsky scandals.

The Grenfell tower block fire scandal revealing failings in fire prevention but also specification standards of room sizes and open spaces. And surely demolishing all UK's 1960's tower blocks is overdue as with the blight of Margate seafront's Arlington House.

Even the horrifying scandal of 329 Kent schools (16 in East Kent) still with asbestos despite it being a known and banned carcinogenic building material.

KCC and the Toxic Three now Two regime of Paul Carter and lawyer Geoff Wild, Alex King suddenly resigning after 29 years a councillor, still refusing FOI on details of 7 court cases, funded by tax, of dead teachers and pupils from inhaling asbestos fibres.

While Councillor Ian Driver here in East Kent on another extremist list for helping expose the Pleasurama corruption. Even sued by his own council CEO Madeline Homer, with a $30k charge on his house for revealing secret council documents of the Pleasurama corrupt sale by senior councillors and civil servants, the largest land sale in Kent. And still with unknown owners.

But the Northern Forest stretching from the Sherwood Forest of Robin Hood to Kent's Downs and coast surely a spur for UK and Thailand and India Smart Cities, as per the Nokia and SAP and ABB work from the TrumpDavos15Friends and resurgent UK and USA tourism work with Incredible India, and no doubt Thailand's dynamic Ambassador Sam in Delhi, kickstarted by UN Ambassador Nikki Haley earlier this month.

As an aside, The TrumpBlenheimFriends is interesting with UK's richest man Jim Cathcart urging on the newbuild Landrover Defender, that much-loved classic vehicle the UK equivalent of Jeep or Humvee, and often used as a farm workhorse for tasks such as tree planting.

UN Water policies as vital for the sunken forests of India and Thailand, or Kent housing on flood plains, or even the water wars of upstream dams in China and Laos or Pakistan or Iran.

Kent with less rainfall than Syria even before the heatwave of the last few weeks facing the absurd spectacle of reduced reservoirs and hosepipe bans despite having the longest coastline in UK and desalination sites already opened near London. UK water companies under intense Parliament scrutiny over million dollar salaries for monopoly services and excessive leaks and pollution, even corporate manslaughter charges for negligence as Flint, Michigan.

But why not an RFID microchip sensor on your tree when it's planted? The discovery this week of a rare Tudor ship sunk near Whitstable on the edge of East Kent dated to 1581 by its wooden planks. RFID that much easier and protective of tree cover. Interestingly the shipwreck discovered by volunteers documenting Kent's WW2 pillboxes and bunkers.

### The Great Hedge and Hedge Fund of India ###

But perhaps India the best framework for green policies not just with 5M trees planted in one day (couldn't UK and Thailand each do that too, it's not rocket science) but also with The Great Hedge that was planted by UK as a tax barrier in nineteenth century colonial India.

If it could be done then without hispeed rail or cars or internet and radio or television then such forestry programmes could be done faster now. Even a Great Hedge Fund with The City and Wall Street and Asian Development Bank, even UN Habitat Fukuoka Smart City and slums funds to fund such green projects.

Even the UK DFID $20BN budget is too often either wasted on fripperies or simply not spent at all with accounting fudges. Perhaps similar issues around the UK Foreign Office $2BN Stability Fund or even UK's Thai Embassy $400M land sale disappearing into a black hole for tea and biscuits rather than being redeployed in Thailand. Trees and gardens swapped for more Central malls infill.

Perhaps money does grow on trees after all though. Certainly the crunch of Climate Change that more evident in the Kent Big Apple (Kent inventing environmentalism with Charles Darwin on his return from Chile) and need for Johnny Appleseed programmes.

The Commonwealth Summit also kickstarting tree planting with the Commonwealth Canopy to document and expand sites and plant new forests from Kenya to Kuala Lumpur.

Perhaps Kent orchids as with Thai orchids a relevant crop for seeding amongst new forests and hedgerows for increased biodivsersity especially with the collapse of bees.

The cost of reduced crops and increased famine easily quantifiable and costed as is the Resilience damage of that lost topsoil and the forest fires and landslides and increased storms.

The best time to plant a tree really is 20 years ago or now - whether in East Kent or Thailand or India's countryside or Smart Cities.

Time for Change
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Note: Judge Mann castigated for Sir CLiff RIchard/BBC decision also involved in One Essex Court fraud case.