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. ...

With redundancy notices for Manston it's clear it's future is not ideal. Especially given both Charles Buchanan and Matt Clarke have both described it as bust. The only question now is: what clean up will be done and who will foot the bill? Clearly it's not Infratil who are pulling out of Europe and Charles Buchanan is simply relying on Paul Carter and KCC's £10M Parkway train station/airport thingy tax bail-out. Unless TDC and KCC send them the bill. And vague attempts to buld another road and develop Manston as part of the Pfizer enterprise zone. None of these of any use whatsoever - except for the construction industry and KCC glory projects On top of the previously EUJet and KCC-USA flights etc. A lot of public time and funds spent on at best a white elephant and at worst a public health hazard. With deliberate breaches of the flight routes and removal of the noise and air monitors. And none of it approved by the council or public. So much for democracy with our cou...

An article by Sincerity Agency in today’s Kent on Sunday (Page 34) on Pfizer and the Third World for Kent: http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/koslaunch.aspx?referral=other&refresh=3Hn014XpN1i7&PBID=d7d2b9a4-64e8-44e3-9e11-33b67854552c&skip= I'm on a business drive a the moment so any clients interested in marketing interesting products in an interesting way to interesting people please email me at tim@sincerityagency.com Especially if you're Standard Chartered, HSBC, Saga, Pfizer, CCU, Kent Uni, Canterbury Cathedral and Eurotunnel. The longer draft is: Pfizer’s dead. Viva Viiv? Tim Garbutt details what the recent announcements at Pfizer can mean for Kent and the Third World. It’s perhaps ironic that 2011 ushers in the United Nations International Year of Chemistry. And then Pfizer announces the closure of the largest US pharmaceutical plant in Europe here in East Kent. When they should be burning brightly, the bunsen burners of Kent are turned low. http://w...

Manston: an unmarked 747 from Ostend direction. Yesterday at 2pm. A Sunday. Illegal overflights of the towns as routine. Presumably no Customs or Police inspections. Presumably no radar and onto the drinking water supply. Aren’t they meant to have serial numbers and file flight logs and cargo manifests? What was it? What was on it? Why overflying the towns? Who's in the radar tower? It looks as if TDC have simply given up even trying to regulate Manston: no KIACC, no air or noise monitoring, no flight route details, no fines. Nothing. Simply waiting for the airport to close or crash. Keeping their heads down while Carter and Buchanan and Gale cosy upto to each other on the Parkway something-or-other from public funds.  £10M Parkway – just for the planning stage.  £80M New Road to Manston  £1M EKO million-pound-memo to develop Manston Business park  0% salary fraud – after the failures of Manston etc  ChinaGate Manston mystery development and plans and £25k dual bungs  Missing...

The collapse of the night flights consultation on Manston airport in November means more farce – following on from the 2008 BAWC non-consultation and EUJet in 2005 when the planes were already flying. Perhaps it’s best to take stock of the future of Manston – given at least two of the Infratil Chiefs describe the loss-making venture as unviable. Clearly Infratil and TDC deliberately removing noise and air monitors makes them little more than the IG Farben of the skies. Neither a multinational airport company nor a council could be unaware of the dangers of not just removing them but repeatedly failing to replace them. Nor can Messrs Carter and Gale, working with Infratil rather than jailing them, with the rather absurd glory scheme for another train station in Thanet to somehow serve a derelict airport. How will KCC and the Environment Agency manage the cleanup of Manston after Infratil collapses? There's been no investment beyond the Kent taxpayer propping up 10 years of failure. ...