It seems every election has a joker in the pack, and this year Winston McKenzie, the candidate who declared ‘Croydon is a dump!’, is once again seeking your votes.
KEN TOWL read his manifesto, so that you wouldn’t have to
In his very wordy, two-page pitch to the people of Croydon, His Excellency, Ambassador, Dr Winston McKenzie, independent candidate for Mayor of Croydon declares that, “This town needs an enema!”
McKenzie badly wants to be that enema, to insert himself figuratively up the fundament of the borough in order to create a trickle-down treat of capitalised “NEW MONEY”.
I found this promise alluring. It looked like just the sort of investment the town needs, way beyond the vague hints at cutting fly-tipping and erasing graffiti that is characteristic of more mundane candidates.
Bull-shitters: McKenzie in the days when he was tolerated by Farage’s UKIP
However, in the interests of democracy, big promises demand great scrutiny.
In order to raise the much-needed investment, His Excellency has “arrived at the dynamic concept of a new Commonwealth agenda”.
His plans have been checked by someone. That someone – we are not furnished with anything so sordid as a name – has categorised his plan as “a project worth doing”.
So let us take the trouble to evaluate the plan. Understandably, McKenzie boasts of his “recent appointment as a United Nations Peace Ambassador”.
This is a recently created role. So recent, in fact, that a search of the UN website does not yet provide any information about it.
Neither do the lists of the no doubt similar United Nations Goodwill Ambassadors and United Nations Messengers of Peace include the name Winston McKenzie. But if Leonardo de Caprio can be a Messenger of Peace, I have no idea why McKenzie cannot.
Seat at the table: hustings organisers have taken McKenzie’s candidacy seriously
McKenzie’s very recent promotion to ambassadorial status has led him to move and shake with “the movers and shakers of this world”. The only mover or shaker that he names is His Eminence Professor Doctor Madhu Krishan, the “United Nations-Chairman of India” who “flew in especially” to meet McKenzie.
It turns out that Madhu is actually the honorary chairman of the UN Global Development office, an honorary position he occupies partly due to the work he has done with an organisation that supports American-style democracy in Albania and partly for his educational work with the Academy of Universal Global Peace. He is also a director of Oxford Higher Academy.
Although Oxford Higher Academy is not connected to the more famous University of Oxford in Oxford, the Academy does award degrees. You can buy them for a mere $1,800 – I think I might go for “Master of Art in Organixzational [sic] and Global Leadership”. It’s a lot quicker and cheaper than three years and £27,000-worth of student debt incurred at a bricks and mortar university. Well done, Winston!
Of the eight candidates seeking to become our urban London borough’s first executive Mayor in the elections on May 5, only McKenzie has the breadth of vision to include an agriculture agenda. Unless you count Farah London’s five-word “introduce indoor farming in Croydon” as a serious policy.
Indeed, McKenzie’s Commonwealth Holistic Agriculture Agenda will “set the pace for the regeneration of our borough”.
Since McKenzie does not specify in his manifesto just what his agenda is, I took the trouble to ask him. He emailed the answer promptly, despite being “inundated”. I have grave doubts that any of the other candidates, if elected, would do the same, particularly if they were similarly inundated.
Fertilizer salesman: Winston McKenzie
And now the secret can be revealed: McKenzie has been appointed “Commonwealth Ambassador for a Company known as Envirolizer, Ltd., who specialise in the distribution of Holistic Fertilizer world-wide… “
This is not bullshit! It is Holistic Fertilizer! And McKenzie is doubly ambassadorial. “We will export Holistic Fertilizer from our factory in Hertfordshire to [Africa and the Caribbean] and import their produce and other products, such as silks, alcohol, exotic plants, etc. The knock-on effect will be the creation of a vibrant Commonwealth Centre in Croydon, employing an initial 10,000 people within the first six months. 5,000 for Croydon and 5,000 across the Commonwealth respectively.”
Please note that not one of the seven other Mayoral candidates has promised to deliver 5,000 jobs to the borough in the first six months of their tenure. McKenzie promises jobs for “skilled workmen and lorry drivers” as well as for sales assistants, managers, cleaners, accountants and secretaries.
I checked the financial status of Envirolizer with Companies House. Its turnover in the financial year to April 2021 was £1,746. It’s total value is minus £23,325. No doubt this will change soon after a year’s healthy sales of fertilizer by Mayor McKenzie.
Education, too, is targeted by McKenzie. In his manifesto, His Excellency posits “a new State-of-the-Art premises… housing a ‘music, Film & Dance Academy’ which will include IT & Sport”. In his email to me, he specifies turning the “Old Gas Showrooms, opposite the Fairfield Halls into a Youth Academy for home-schooled youths”. It will be ready in two years’ time.
Another reason to vote for McKenzie? The other candidates don’t want you to.
While they all, of course, beg you for your “first preference” vote, none of them suggest giving Winston your second preference. Even the otherwise generous Gavin Francis Luffa Palmer ignores him. Palmer, the former Tory candidate whose manifesto stipulates that you should “vote for an independent mayor with your first pref and second pref choice votes” illustrates this with “Pell, Under, Lon” – meaning Andrew Pelling (Independent), Peter Underwood (Green Party) and Farah London (Taking the Initiative Party). Winston McKenzie is nobody’s No2.
If this has been a little too scatological for your taste, please forgive me. I didn’t start it. The credit lies firmly at the door of Croydon’s very own Public Enema No1.
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We could probably do with a few more candidates who admit “Croydon is a dump” – it’s the ones that think it isn’t, that I’m personally more worried about.
Which wins today’s award for the comment that completely misses the point…
Croydon is not a dump either.
A more accurate description is a shit magnet more like the Californian gold rush. Only in this case it is Croydon Council doing the attracting and allow the shit to multiply.
Anyway fertiliser with a sugar coating does not a Smartie make! And that was a very thin coating from Winston!
Winston has one thing going for him this time – He is miles ahead of Croydon Council and has not plumbed their depths.
What ever an administration run by Dr M would turn out to be, I must thank Ken Towl for boosting my health with this article…… laughter is the best medicine !
But, more seriously, anyone reading the article and laughing AT Dr. McKenzie might not be seeing the bigger picture
I am laughing WITH him, as he is himself clearly no fool. Rather, a far sighted businessman.
He has got just one thing wrong– he needs to move the Eco-fertiliser plant from Hertfordshire to Croydon.
In choosing Croydon as the site for his eco-enterprise, all the investment he would need to make would be the cost of installing a big stainless steel pipe with a padlocked cut-off valve at the Fell Road street side of the ground floor wall of the Croydon Council HQ building.
This will tap into, and allow unlimited volumes of raw fertiliser from the management and PR suites of the interior to flow down without any need of electric pumping, directly into waiting fleets of bulk tankers.
After treatment and drying of this potentially valuable commodity, maybe down the road at the Beddington Sewage works, the same tankers could soon be delivering this updated form of “Croypost” to farmers and growers nationwide, and maybe even abroad ! Maybe also to garden-loving local residents whose gardens have been starved of nutrients since the removal of free Croypost from the three borough-wide recycling centres for the past several years.
The resulting profits can be channelled via Dr M’s bank accounts back to fill the depleted municipal coffers, paying all the senior management salaries and even a goodwill legacy payment to the Jo Negrini memorial holiday pay fund –and paying the Mayoral allowance as well !
This self- funding arrangement may well be of great appeal to the canny Croydon Voter on May 5th.
Soon, after just a few years of Dr M’s mayoralty, Croydon could even be bailing out a post-covid, cash-strapped UK government ! It would then be highly appropriate for the Council to celebrate the return to propserity by getting its urban designers and highway engineers to repave the whole of Katharine Street with solid-gold paving slabs !
Not to forget the council commissioning a new set of Elected Mayoral gold chains, with a pendant of the arms of Croydon interlaced with the initials WMcK and a pair of boxing gloves (rampant) .
Oops!– and a set of matching gold cufflinks for the benefactor himself.
Other candidates should not underestimate the very real threat posed by the good Doctor.
Lewis is right – but link up the Viridor plant also. It can be marketed as Winstons Eco enrichment. Weapons grade Propaganda direct from the orifice of the the Tabernacle of Truth Avoidance at the top of Fishers Folly. Experts in -after the fact Consultation, Voluntary Regulations and Codes (well if you are a Developer that can grease our coffers) and non communication by digital avoidance and a whole ton of other shit that does not do what it states on the tin! Guaranteed to unite and incite the populace.
That has got to be a Win Win!
I spoke to this man a few months ago and questioned why he used the title he does, and he sent me a picture of his “UN peace ambassador ID Card” which turns out to NOT be a real one after all. It’s a very badly made and designed card with lots of different logos and says that it’s “under the United Nations” and lots of other details. The writer can feel free to email me if they want a picture of the ID card