Time for Change: Campaign for an Independent Green Thanet MP and Ramsgate Mayor

The unrest in Sudan again with demonstrations in Khartoum, Omdurman and Port Sudan with upto 100 demonstrators shot dead and thrown into the Nile highlights the dangers facing not just Sudan’s slide into chaos and dictatorship but the threat facing neighbouring South Sudan as it emerges from such a state. The latter the world’s newest nation, unless you count last month’s name change by North Macedonia, formed from its civil war and breakaway from Sudan in 2011. The unrest now in South Sudan’s Yei River state that conflict in microcosm. But if the Sudan unrest has yielded, as with Mugabe in Zimbabwe, the toppling of the dictator Bashir – and potential ICC extradition for war crimes and crimes against humanity or at the very least an Idi Amin exile to Saudi Arabia – then there are wider considerations for UK and Europe and USA in helping South Sudan on the road to peace and prosperity. East Africa a great USA success story for POTUS Trump with the peace treaty between Eritrea ...

An interesting article as always by Khun Surinya in the Bangkok Post on Thailand schools: https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/1687488/school-merger-policy-so-unfair-to-kids And a follow up editorial article by xxx to spell out this vital issue in further detail: https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/1687888/school-mergers-need-extra-care Some 18,000 THhi village schools in danger of being merged within a 6km radius and a further 3,000 such schools in border regions preserved due to mountains or near the frontier. Separately that last point a factor in East Kent NHS planning with the perpetual attempt to reduce services based on the centralised view from The County Barn quartered safe in Maidstone but fenced in by their empty champagne cases and road noise from over-centralised tarmac and tax. That overly bureaucratic drawing of lines on maps failing to reflect conditions on the ground or in this case the large blue expanse of the Channel that makes up on...

The DDay 75th anniversary is significant not just for - at last - the first official state visit to UK by POTUS Trump, or the first memorial to the British landing beaches in Normandy but the last event of the liberation of Europe by those who took the beaches, and as POTUS Reagan said, climbed the cliffs, as it passes from living memory. Here in East Kent the P22 US Navy patrol boat taking part in the DDay event and Ramsgate Dunkirk Little Ships event, and the P22 boat for patrol on the Rhine after WW2 a reminder of how far European tribalism had collapsed into flames. P22 not dissimilar to the younger Kennedy's PT109 boat sunk off the Solomon Islands. Certainly a larger boat needed on the Channel for the Ramsgate-Ostend and Dunkirk/Boulogne refloatation of the Channel ports. Hitler's worst efforts perhaps only outmatched by UK town planners in the long peace. With protection against aggregates dredging for an expanded Dover port - perhaps proving opportunity for the...

The collapse of the Ramsgate Tunnels stage with minor injuries and the seafront cordoned off with police and ambulances highlights many of the same problems infecting East Kent. https://www.kentlive.news/news/kent-news/live-updates-stage-collapses-ramsgate-2933010 An amateurish and sloppy and underfunded approach to the seafront by RTC council and TDC and KCC - many if not most of the councillors on all 3 organisations. Wasn't a Margate Council stage borrowed at one point before this homemade version of pallets and sellotape? Little change can be expected at TDC with Bob Bayford and Madeline Homer CE in charge: former councillor Ian Driver raising salient points: https://iandriverthanet.blogspot.com/2019/06/they-earned-1million-ramsgate-port-lost.html https://iandriverthanet.blogspot.com/2019/05/thanet-council-opposition-must-destroy.html While Dreamland on Ramsgate seafront is still clouded in murk that rivals only Ramsgate's Pleasurama: https://iandriverthan...

Hi Nick Thanks for your reply: can you clarify your role at Helix and in the DCO? I'm unclear why you are surprised at myself and the public, and police, participating in the DCO by requesting information of yourself. Especially given previous issues at Manston and media coverage. Can you advise on the questions I've raised that are unanswered and provide any documents you think relevant to support your view. Helix directors are also available media and public questions? Could you also clarify that you understand the East Kent drinking water is underneath the runway and there are missing Infratil/Stagecoach fines. Tim On Friday, 31 May 2019, 09:00:16 BST, Nick Rothwell wrote: Dear Mr. Garbutt, I am surprised by your e-mail if you are standing for Parliament as you should understand the public process that is a DCO. I further do not understand your reasoning for copying your e-mail to various persons of the Kent police. As with this public pro...

Interesting article on Thailand and UK parliaments: https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/1686236/british-thai-democratic-systems-cant-be-compared A couple of other points to make are that the UK House of Lords also contains Church of England bishops (including the Archbishop of Canterbury here in East Kent) the only chamber to do so outside of Iran. A Religious Affairs committee could adjust that anomaly. While the 92 hereditary Lords is blatantly undemocratic and the only chamber in the world. Previous hereditary Lords ejected in 1999 but still the strangest elections of the elderly hereditary Lords as they die off having elections by just the other hereditary Lords. The Lords is also nearer 900 members than 780 - the largest outside China. And if the principle is that experts are appointed that's largely untrue with political party appointees booted upstairs form the Commons. And the Lords is distinctly aged: more members over 90 than under 40 - a particular f...

Tim Garbutt, East Kent MP candidate 2019 said: "I am delighted the new Thailand-Cambodian railway has been opened by both Prime Ministers. After 40 years since the destruction of the Khmer Rouge it is one more possible to travel from Bangkok to Phnom Penh. As a further part of my MP manifesto it's time for the link between Phnom Penh and HCMC to be built connecting ASEAN's main cities and capitals. Along with Kwai rail upgrades to Yangon, which would be ideal for Hitachi here in East Kent too with its Eurostar and Channel Tunnel and HS1 hispeed rail expertise. With the first UK Strategic Rail Group gaining the Cairo Metro contract it would be a Great British success, as the inventor of hte railway to deliver on ASEAN and India connectivity. Thailand as Chair of ASEAN this year and Vietnam next year would also be best-placed to deliver on the HCMC link and through to Hanoi and China. And galvanising the delayed Singapore rail. Along with 1M UK tourists to Thai...