Tweet of the Day – 3 March 2012

I did enjoy this from the by-now almost notorious local Labour councillor Tristan Osborne, who crops up here quite often (he's certainly prolific!), who tweeted in response to a re-tweet of his own tweet about signing-up "a few dozen postal votes" in Hoo while using the Estuary Airport issue as a party political tool...

"No shame in getting people into the democratic process whilst we are campaigning against airport. No shame at all."

One can easily imagine the words "Honest, guv!" appended to that. It always embarrasses local Labour to have their real motives sussed out and made public, I have seen over the years, and they often give even more away when they try to deal with it.

Not that they are likely to make much of a dent (if any) in the Conservatives' majority in Hoo or anywhere else on the peninsula, which has been huge ever since the current ward structure came into being. Here are the election results for those three occasions for Peninsula ward, and here are those for Strood Rural ward. See what I mean?

Labour here are still flogging their nonsense "referendum" wheeze re the hub airport proposals, saying that "the public should be given a voice". Interestingly, they never put forward this argument or a referendum proposal when the hub airport idea first impacted the Medway area, even though at that time (during 2002 and early 2003) the opposition members had a (combined) overall majority on Medway Council and could have pushed a referendum motion through by 42 votes to 38.

No: as with almost everything, Medway Labour are playing a purely party political game, now active and full of 'bright ideas' purely, simply and exclusively because it's not their own party putting forward the hub airport idea this time. For the same reason they did none of this a decade ago.

As so often happens, a simple check of local history from just a few years ago reveals these truths, and no doubt will result in even more embarrassment for local Labour...