The fracking/ gas exploration meeting takes place Wednesday, 16th October, 7.30pm-9.30pm, Connaught Hall, Dover Town Hall, Maison Dieu House, Biggin St, Dover CT16 1DL. For more details see http://www.eastkentagainstfracking.org.uk/
I would recommend you go. This is a very serious issue with big implications for Thanet.
Here's a song which I think is appropriate for Thanet's greedy grasping Councillors. People have said to me that its possible for elected councillors to enjoy a lot of secret undeclared hospitality for £99.99. Enjoy.
I don't care about the money. What I really care about is democracy. As a child of the 60s I grew up being told that the key thing which separated us from filthy dictatorships was that we had a democracy. Democracy didn't only involve electing our politicians. It involved having a free press and a degree of transparency and openness about the decision which were taken by elected politicians on our behalf. It was always assumed that anybody turning up to Westminster could go to the public gallery, see what was going on and report on it. Similarly, anywhere I have l lived, local people have been entitled to go and see what their local council was up to. Only when I moved to Thanet, did I come across this bizarre secret little world where a "cabinet" met in secret to decide things and may or may not decide to tell the rest of the council about it. As for Westminster, they realised that they were living in the modern world, allowed in the TV cameras and that was that. Only in Thanet did some pathetic control freaks decide that we couldn't be allowed to see what the people we elected were actually doing in our names. I don't condemn you Ian. I applaud you for shining a light on this shower of sh+te. In a real democracy your conduct, which has been denounced by your colleagues in local government, will be rewarded by a vastly increased vote at the next election. At that point I would expect every person who has condemned you to resign because they are clearly not acting according to the wishes of the people they purport to serve. Of course, we all know that they don't serve the people at all.. They serve themselves and their parties. You are rocking the boat and so, they will stop at nothing to discredit you. Keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteQuite right anon 23.15 but remember as well as the politicians the executive in TDC do more covering up and secrecy to extend their personal financial benefit at the cost of tax payers. It is hard to believe we are in the year 2013 in Thanet, though it is actually a national scandal that the regulation of local authorities and powers to hold them to account are near non-existent. Holding elections every few years is totally inadequate as for most districts it is like flicking a switch from one bad bunch back to the other, and even then the same incompetent and corrupt executives stay creaming it off, making secret deals beyond their competence, self promoting, and failing to comply with Freedom of Information Act, yet they are accountable to nobody.
ReplyDeleteI would differ on one point that "They serve their parties". My politics is libertarian. But in Thanet could I, in all conscience, ever have voted tory ? No.
ReplyDeleteThere were attempts twenty years ago to break from the North and South Thanet tory assns and form an independent tory group.
What was the final straw for the would be breakaway tories ? There were arguments over Ramsgate Harbour. There were embarrassments over members who had connections with far right groups. But I think the final straw was the discovery of the massive Sericol contamination of the aquifer. It is imporant to bear in mind that no one knows for sure how long the leak of cyclohexanane to ground had gone on. Do not be surprised that tories like the explanation that it had leaked since underground pipe installation in 1963. Because that explanation would tend to take the spotlight off their Planning Cttee cllr who was Sericol site safety engineer.
He got that job in 1988. At a time Kent Police were refusing to record and action crime complaint (from former coal miners) under the Explosive Substances Act 1883. At a time Police were refusing to investigate the reported suspicion of forged engineering qualifications. At a time male unemployment in Margate ran at 27% many of them qualified engineers who failed to get the Sericol job.
Cllr Margaret Mortlock wanted to break from the official tories. A press release accusing her of sordid backdoor politics was quickly met by her writ for libel against tory Cllr Sericol engineer George Maison. The legal apparatus ground slowly and the hearing in High Court was 1998. Maison was found guilty of libel. But in the weekes before the hearing Sericol quietly gave him severance in order, as their MD put it at the time, "To stand back from the matter". In fact it would be ten years later due to an FOI that the "Matter" became public for the first time. The question of qualification of Sericol "Engineer" and the facts of the massive contamination of Thanet ground water which caused the area to switch off its own drinking water abstraction.
From the police point of view, especially the PCC, they don't like these questions to Thanet tories also being cast at them. What influence was at work to get 42 complaints all nil actioned ? All 42 pertaining to a breach of security warning on Deal Royal Marines Barracks. Imagine the panic of the case officers who took the nil action decisions when they deployed later as CID at the tragic bomb scene of Deal Barracks 22.9.89. In spite of the heightened alert after Met police raids Dec 88 and the IRA attack on tern Hill Barracks Feb 89 Police had not brought about the necessary security review at Deal.
You can see, on the blogs, a lot of Thanet tory bile. The laddies always protesting too much. The lies that a perfectly decent cllr was accused of perjury the week his wife died. But what don't you read ? Anything other than their protest. No answers. Not even denials. Just resentment at the effrontery of a person for even raising questions of what a tory cllr said in High Court evidence. Resentment at him being asked, as a member of Planning Cttee, when he first knew the truth about Sericol aquifer contamination. Resentment at him being asked if he told the High Court in 98 that the Kent Police Authority had called for Sericol engineer qualifications inquiry in 97. He sat on the police authority. Did he tell the High Court.
So what was/is the Thanet tory position ? It was fair game to accuse a conscientous objector tory of "Sordid politics". But it was unfair to question a tory cllr about evidence and qualifications ?
You can read on the blogs the bile accusing Nimbys and Dole scroungers for the demise of Thanet. But if you want to lay blame then it is more properly directed at Thanet self serving tories.
filming should be our right councillors are on our pay on our premises just as any other workers are now covered by cameras at their work.
ReplyDeleteIf you read Thanet Online there has been a tendency, of late, to automatically discount events of years ago. By an irrational assumption because of the passage of time the events have no relevance or implication today.
ReplyDeleteI once was chatting to a builder who told me about renovating a house in Ramsgate. In it they found that wood panelling concealed a filing cabinet. In it they found a ledger. Full of men's names and addresses. It was from the period just after World War One. It was a Thanet area employment blacklist. It even acknowledged meritorious war service against names who were secretly being prevented from getting employment.
The builder gave the ledger to the museum then in Ramsgate library. The ledger never saw the light of day. Irrelevant ? How interesting it should have been to trace the descendants of those brave WW1 veterans whose reward was the dole and a secret back stab on a blacklist. Whose offspring would thus have known the malnutrition of the 20s and 30s and who in turn would have given a poor health disadvantage to their children. And so on down the generations.
And re the above comment. The same applies. 15000 skilled men laid off from Chatham Dockyard. More skilled men laid off from coal mines. More skilled engineers laid off from the 48% of manufacturing industry in London and South East that was destroyed under Maggie Thatcher (Actually for loss of manufacture London and South East was the area hit hardest by her policies). Perhaps your father or your grandfather was languishing on the dole. perhaps they applied for a maintenance engineer post at a local ink manufacturer. Perhaps they were bemused at who got the job. Then perhaps they enjoyed being long term unemployed and the target of the pen of trolls like John Hamilton.
But in their position how could they then persuade their children and grand children that education and training are they key. How could they lie to the offspring that UK functions as a meritocracy. The water in the ground unfit to abstract to drink. Was it due to a tory playing at being an engineer ? Who could say.
Thanet Online, good job though it does, would have us believe that 1970s and 80s document forger Thanet tory Cyril Hoser has no implication or relevance today. Think about that next time you turn your tap on and know the water you draw has to be abstracted and piped into Thanet for you. Why ?
And when you read the John Hamilton style of bile, what are his qualifications ? Did he graduate from the university of cyril's printing press ? Has he served a genuine apprenticeship?
The senior police officer in Thanet who took or influenced every decision to nil action crime complaints against local tories, he once addressed a Clarendon House school speech day. "I of course failed all my exams at school so had to become a police cadet". Then looked confused at a sea of grinning sixth form faces whilst parents had their faces buried in their hands. All that "Education is the key to your future do your homework get good grades go to a good university" cajoling. Imagine if some of those dads were unemployed former mining engineers, miners or Chatham Dockyard engineers. Feast your eyes on the guy who got his answers wrong and thus his future right. The man who failed exams but never failed to deliver for those who could help advance his career ? That is the reality. And the decay all around is the product of that reality.
Are you totally devoid of sense of humour, Rick, or has it escaped your notice that the police officer may just have been joking. What is with all the university and apprenticeship stuff for are people forever condemned in your book for having done neither. What degrees, apart from honorary ones, do Richard Branson or Allan Sugar have? You have a very jaundiced view of people and on the Clarendon House speech, were you there?
DeleteI believe that when I have attended meetings in the passenger departure lounge at Manston the surveillance camera in the centre is filming us.
ReplyDeleteStargazer.
Security surveillance is not necessarily filming, 12:50. Obviously an airport lounge would have such surveillance and the meetings just happen to be held there.
Deleteif this comments site is the best that can be achieved in Thanet -then God help us- Driver and Worrow have done more to undermine local opinion than to support it - both elected under false political banners -and not representative of the local (northwood labour) and Birchington -a bunch of idiots -won.t be published but I feel better now
ReplyDeleteGlad to provide a means of helping you to feel better
DeleteMeetings of the airport Consultative Committee should be hosted by TDC at the council offices. They should not be held at the airport as this allows the airport operator to dominate the meetings with irrelevant twaddle rather than discussing important issues such as compliance with the Section 106 Agreement (or rather the lack of compliance).
ReplyDeleteTDC are but just one of a number of interest groups who make up the KIACC committee so why their offices. Surely as it is about the airport then that is the best place to meet. As for the irrelevant twaddle, about which I suspect you would know an awful lot, 18.46, the meetings follow an agenda and various interests, include that of TDC, are voiced.
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