Social Engineering Revisited

This post augments the one I wrote on this topic a few weeks ago, and re-iterates part of that post, leading onto a third part soon...

One oddity in my locality is a council ward currently called Rochester East. Part of this was formerly the smaller ward of Troy Town, and it is there that the uncharacteristic proliferation of social housing is to be found. This view from Google Maps shows where much of this is situated.

The main chunks are the two paired long blocks running between Cossack Street and Princes Street (Glovers Mill and Burritt Mews) and the 'chunky' blocks between them (Hussar House and Lancer House), also much of John Street and Hoopers Road. There are a lot of Labour voters living in those places, unsurprisingly when one looks at their nature and pays attention when passing through – which I have done many times.

The origin of all this goes back primarily to the 1980s when the then council leadership (Labour at the time) arranged for all this to be built, in order to skew the demographics of what was an essentially Conservative-supporting area. It does seem very much out of place in that part of the world – but it did work.It gave Labour a permanent and highly strategic foothold in urban Rochester.

When I was first elected to Medway Council nearly seventeen years ago, Troy Town was indeed represented by Labour councillors, even though other parts of Rochester were Conservative. Now, it wasn't always quite as clear-cut as that, for historic reasons from before I moved to Kent and which I have never been able to get to the heart of dependably, only conflicting anecdotal material being offered; so I am now sticking with the period I know personally.

Anyway, even with ward boundary changes a few years after the Unitary Authority came into being, what then became part of Rochester East ward has consistently swung it for Labour, even when other seats they held in the wider Rochester & Strood parliamentary constituency area came and went (in Strood North and Strood South wards, for example) – and they are now the only two Labour-held seats out of the twenty-two in that constituency.

That is highly significant. Without the social engineering of some three decades ago, they wouldn't even have those two council seats. The demographic slant also helped them at parliamentary election level, though never enough to make an actual switch: it was only Tony Blair winning (and John Major losing) in 1997 that ensured that the Medway area had three Labour Members of Parliament from that time.

Actually, it is just two-and-a-half MPs, as one of the constituencies (Chatham & Aylesford) was and is only half in the Medway council area.

Anyway, this does show what goes on in politics and why it is done (because it works!) Any party can do this when it has the power to do so; but it is only Labour who drag whole areas downward for their own power-lust purposes, as is of course a very old story nationally. I think the practice first came to public attention back in the mid 'sixties, though I was too young at the time to fully appreciate what was going on.

The modern-day context is Labour's 'Refugees welcome' initiative, which leads into a whole new story for which the background information in this post will aid understanding. It is, though, a separate story, which I intend to tackle here soon...

Rainham Central By-Election

The Rainham Central by-election was held yesterday (3 November 2016), caused by the sad loss of Mike O'Brien to cancer, and the insistence of at least one opposition party to stand where perhaps (as some have said) it should have been uncontested. In the event, a total of six candidates stood, representing the six enduring parties that we have around Medway. Others have come and gone, but these six can be relied upon for fielding candidates in Medway – though not necessarily in all seats or all cases.

Anyway, the by-election result is now in. The solid Conservative win is no surprise, with no less than 61% of the total vote; but perhaps Labour's third-place position will have been unexpected by some – though I had a strong feeling that it might go that way.

Indeed, I well recall rubbing my hands with glee at seeing the Statement of Persons Nominated – i.e. list of candidates – when it was published. That is always the moment when I know more or less what is going to be the outcome, and when I make my (sometimes public) predictions. It is always a delight when the ever-arrogant Medway Labour end up in third place or lower, as has happened a few times in recent elections, both local and national (e.g. Rochester & Strood last year).

Here are the vote numbers, in descending order as usual...

• Jan Aldous (Con) – 1,448
• Mark Mencattelli (UKIP) – 389
• Simon Allen (Lab) – 320
• Paul Chaplin (Lib Dem) – 137
• George Meegan (Green) – 61
• Mike Russell (Eng Dem) – 14

Percentages (including changes from May 2015) are...

• Con: 61.1% (+9.9)
• UKIP: 16.4% (-5.2)
• Lab: 13.5% (-2.9)
• Lib Dem: 5.8% (+5.8)
• Green: 2.6% (-5.2)
• Eng Dem: 0.6% (+0.6)

As with the recent Strood South by-election, again we see a huge divide between the current 'big three' parties and the rest. The norm nowadays seems to be that the English Democrats have become the dependable last place party, now coming behind even the Greens(!)

Even more noticeable is the sheer size of the winner's majority – over a thousand votes more than the runner-up, and in fact a good three and a half times the votes of UKIP and more than four times the Labour candidate's vote.

There's a real message for some of the parties in there somewhere...

Strood South By-election

Edited to correct a misleading part taken from a Medway Labour tweet and scans

It is no secret that I have considerable affection for the Strood South ward of Medway Council, so it will come as no surprise that I took an interest in last Thursday's by-election. That event was caused by the resignation of UKIP councillor Catriona Reckless-Brown who will soon be moving to Wales where her husband (former Rochester & Strood MP Mark Reckless) has been selected to stand for the Welsh Assembly, also for UKIP.

The three Council seats in Strood South were at that time held by UKIP, Conservative (John Avey) and an Independent (Mark Joy, who had been elected as UKIP but then left the party) so very mixed – in fact the only ward of Medway Council's 22 to be a three-way split. There were six candidates in the by-election, including the two (one Conservative, Josie Iles, and one Labour, Isaac Igwe) who had lost their seats to the then two UKIP candidates.

The results of the by-election were thus, in descending order of number of votes cast:

• Josie Iles (Con) – 724
• Isaac Igwe (Lab) – 521
• Karl Weller (UKIP – 480
• Steve Dyke (Green) – 74
• Isabelle Cherry (LD) – 62
• Mike Russell (Eng Dem) – 23

As you can see, there were only three real players in this race. The Labour campaign tried to make out it was between just them and the Conservatives, bizarrely basing this primarily on the fact that they have more councillors than UKIP do. As it turned out, there was little difference between those two parties' votes, and it could quite easily have gone the other way, placing Labour in third place.

Also note the wide gulf between them and the winner – more than 200 votes. It is to be noted that I predicted this outcome, and told a couple of people my forecast, though forgot to make it public until the morning of last Thursday, i.e. polling day! My exact prediction was "a comfortable Conservative win, with Labour and UKIP close together in second and third place, either way round." (It's on my Facebook page.)

The turnout was low, sadly, at 16·74% – just one in six eligible voters participated. By-elections tend to have significantly lower turnouts than full elections, and last year's council elections here were boosted by coinciding with the General Election. Indeed, back in May 2000, at the full council elections that year Luton (a Labour safe ward) had a turnout of just 17·37% – hardly any higher than this mere by-election.

EDIT: The Council leader, Alan Jarrett (Conservative), has today been reported in the local newspaper (not online, unfortunately) as saying that UKIP lost the seat because their councillors had been "ineffectual" since being elected some 17 months ago; and UKIP group leader Roy Freshwater is also quoted as saying they lost the seat (a) because of the weather and (b) because they don't have the 'party machine' that the two traditional big parties have. Medway Labour has selectively scanned parts of the relevant page from the 'paper. This they misrepresented, but this edit corrects what I wrote here before, having taken the Medway Labour claim as correct. I really must learn that they can NEVER be trusted!

I certainly agree that the UKIP councillors have been, frankly, a waste of space, and have done as little work as their counterparts in (say) the European Parliament, who are known to be 'the laziest party group' throughout the entire Parliament – though very good at taking as much (public) money as they can, including the occasional 'fiddle' that comes to light (Janice Atkinson's restaurant bill that was in the news around a year ago) – and who knows how much there might be as yet unrevealed?

Anyway, keeping to their usual practice, and as their own fellow has now publicly stated, the 'Kippers on our Council really do seem to have done nothing of any consequence to represent those who elected them in what was, after all, just a national 'anti-establishment' mood swing at the time – May 2015. That of course has faded since then, as I predicted it would, and UKIP Cllr Roy Freshwater's own claim of a lack of a big 'machine' would indeed have hampered their chances of holding the seat at this time. The weather affects all parties equally, and no doubt contributed toward the low turn-out.

Even so, the best they could have done would have been to come second, and I think just 150 votes or so behind the winner: it could have been a slightly closer contest, and they'd have been the runners-up rather than Labour. However, the bigger issue for voters was the lack of activity by UKIP in the ward and elsewhere in Medway for that matter. These things are noticed and the word gets around. It was no doubt what lost the three we had before May 2015 their seats (Messrs Irvine, Mason and Rodberg, all of whom re-stood but lost.)

To me it seems obvious that another of my (longer-standing this time) predictions – that there will be no UKIP councillors at Medway after the next all-out elections – will also come to pass.

And whose fault will that be? Theirs alone!

Just the Business!

I have been thinking about the shift away from central government funding for councils – which is a good change as it will remove the historic tendency of certain-flavour governments in particular to manipulate the funding formula (along with 'tweaks' and suchlike) to favour those councils their party runs – and how it will affect us here in Medway, Kent.

The change to retention by councils of Business Rates in their entirety, instead of a large chunk of those funds going to central government for re-distribution, as has been the case for decades, makes local government much more truly 'local' and less susceptible to (largely-hidden from public view) control from Westminster and Whitehall.

It will, however, necessitate sufficient business rates income to make up the difference, and perhaps could even exceed the original overall council income including Council Tax revenues. Not all communities or council areas as a whole have the same level of local businesses as, say, a typical London borough or other notably commercial area.

Here in Medway, we do have a lot of business, from retail (two shopping centres, dozens of shopping parades, several standalone shops & stores, plus a few retail parks) via offices to a good chunk of commercial and industrial businesses.

Apart from all the industrial and similar enterprises on the Hoo Peninsula, especially at Grain and by Hoo St Werburgh, we also have Gillingham Business Park, Medway City Estate, Rochester Airport Industrial Estate, Second & Third Avenues in Luton, and the Knight Road area of Strood.

We also have a considerable tourism sector, primarily but not exclusively in Rochester.

 

Overall we should be set fair to pull our own weight, and once we are settled in to the new arrangements we might well find we are much happier in this regard than we have been for many years, ever since the Blair government really started manipulating the grant funding they controlled back then, which was the largest chunk of income that council's received.

 

Readers might not be aware that, for example, the very similar to us (in council terms and needs) Brighton & Hove received over £50 million more than Medway in central government grant every year. They, of course, were a Labour-run council.

 

Such gerrymandering will not be possible from 2020, so expect Labour to find ways to complain about this change being 'unfair', 'discriminatory', or one of their other favourite labels for things they don't like. In this case, it will be because the councils they run will have to perform much better than many of them have tended to endemically, and they will no longer be bailed out.

 

Interestingly we saw an example of that here in Medway when Labour ran our council's finances some 16 or 17 years ago. The council was bailed out by the then Labour government because their local bods messed up hugely – even delaying paying bills until after the end of the financial year – and needed several million Pounds.

 

Their replacements have consistently produced balanced budgets ever since (though it wasn't easy with that gerrymandered funding I mentioned above) so it could have been done by a competent council administration – and that is what will, over time, come out once these new funding arrangements are fully in place.

 

A lot of Labour-run councils are going to come under the spotlight, and their profligacy and incompetence will become very public. They will have to either shape up or in all probability be voted out of control of those councils. Thus much of the rot within local councils will be excised, along with its subsidy by the rest of us – and that will be good for everybody in the long term, also in restoring confidence in local government.

Public Questions at Council

Undoubtedly the most contentious issue at tonight's ordinary meeting of the full Medway Council – which will be starting half an hour later than usual, because of a special item of business just before – will probably be the elimination of supplementary questions from the public. The published questions will remain, but not the (more often than not) politically-loaded secondary 'supplementary' question.

Here is the agenda for tonight's meeting.

I am not surprised at this action, owing to the ongoing abuses of this facility over the years. There is no legal right to it, and it is something that I have witnessed creating ever more difficulties for getting to and through the proper business of the Council – all that is on the agenda that affects many more, perhaps all in some instances, of the quarter of a million residents of Medway, not just those with a one-issue agenda that they wish to push. Usually there will be a body of Lefty 'rent-a-crowd' in the public gallery, supporting them and heckling and/or booing the responders.

The abuses of the public questions agenda item have always been most evident in the run-up to either the council's own elections or a General Election. This year we had both of those on the same day!

One clue is in how the public questions then become dominated by candidates from opposition parties, mainly Labour but also a fair few from other parties. The first question, which has to be okay-ed by the Chief Executive of the council with legal advice from the Monitoring Officer, is obviously constrained by legal and constitutional restrictions, and is seen by the member who is to respond so an answer can be prepared. The (supposedly brief) supplementary, however, is completely unknown to the responder until it is asked.

Far too many of these have been non-questions, over-long, and party politically dominated, especially in those election run-up periods. There are many other aspects that look very much like an abuse of the facility, and the rest of us in the public gallery have to wait for all this guff to be got out of the way before the meeting reaches the real business of the evening. Why should we have to? Don't we count?

Perhaps public questions should be made the last agenda item...

A little history might be useful here. Some years ago, when I was on the elected Council, I brought to a meeting of the Conservative Group my own misgivings about the supplementary question business, anticipating exactly what has since come to pass. Nearly all those who participated in the ensuing discussion, from all parts of the 33-strong group, defended the supplementaries – some quite robustly. Thus I know with absolute certainly that this isn't a 'Conservative plot to stop proper public scrutiny' (as has been claimed) or anything of the sort.

As always in this life, abuse something too much, too often, and you risk losing it altogether. The current proposals are just a warning shot across the bows, leaving Medway as still one of the better councils in this regard (many other councils have much greater restrictions, such as only one question per meeting and only two per year) though not one of the very 'best', if one thinks along such lines.

When I was campaigning for one thing or another, I applied intelligence rather than 'mob rule' (as one can sometimes witness at Council meetings here) so was able to achieve a number of good outcomes, most of which very few folk realise I even had that big a hand in(!) How much have the 'usual suspects' and their fellow-travellers achieved via their methods? A tiny fraction, between the lot of them!

There is a lesson there for those with enough brain cells to realise it – and to suss out that, it many instances, the real campaigners are being politically manipulated. That too is something I have witnessed a number of times, including Labour candidates and former members among the rent-a-crowd I mentioned above, and I have noticed them starting off the bad behaviour on more than one occasion.

The best results come from respecting structures such as Council meetings – which were agreed by all parties involved, by the way – and not giving those in control any reason to take away anything from the current structure/format. Tonight's expected changes are a case of cause-and-effect, and the cause has been the mounting body of evidence – all captured on audio – that the present rules have become untenable because of the public's (some of them!) long-term and ongoing abuses.

Put the boot on the other foot: what would you do?

Patchy on the Patch

It's good to see that Labour councillors are still occasionally getting things done on their patch. It's now seemingly such a rare occurrence that they almost make a song and dance out of it, publicising it in unexpected places, as here. Not that there is any harm in this, by the way, but those of us who are doers have so much going on (as I have done for most of the past fifteen years, for example) that we'd hardly make a point of highlighting one of those – unless it were the only one, I suppose(!)

As some reading this will know, I was doing this sort of thing all the time, more-or-less single handed for years, when I was on the Council here; and have continued to do so since moving to this largely-neglected (for many years) Labour-held ward over five years ago.

That has been not only here, but in other wards as well, which also usually turn out to have Labour councillors, and even a UKIP activist in one such area who had been active on such matters there while a Conservative, so I provided a tip-off, but then defected and didn't pursue it. I did, later, after asking whether it had even been reported in before. It had not.

I did have a post with half a dozen 'before and after' photos on my 'blog a few years ago, but deleted it last year when my image space use was nearing the limit and I cleared out a lot of older posts. I still have all the images, details and council reference numbers in my own records, of course, and might re-post them here again if there is any interest shown, as the space allocation has since been increased.

On a couple of occasions, instead of dealing with something myself, I have experimentally tried another approach, which was to publicise my findings either here or elsewhere in public view. The theory was that the councillors concerned would in effect be embarrassed into bothering for a change. Whether or not that was the reason for this method's apparent success, it is interesting to note that both those issues were fixed within months of my having splashed them about publicly.

Overall, it has been of great benefit to the residents of our borough in a number of places, and it has also helped inform me of who are the doers and who are merely posturers on our elected Council. Although it isn't precisely a party-based divide, it's fairly close, notwithstanding the (rare) exceptions.

Even in the case here, though, the same councillors have been elected for the ward that  includes Ropemakers Court for over four years, and their party for well over the 'decade' that Cllr Osborne refers to as 'when it should be have been done' in the linked post. Why is it only now that any one of the three is attending to this?

Medway Council Elections 2015

Although the bottom-line outcome of the Medway Council elections, held on the same day as the General Election, is almost exactly as I anticipated, I was wrong in a few (minor?) areas in how we got there! I should mention, in passing, that as always when the elections coincide, turnout goes up in the locals, and we had record numbers of votes this time round.

The main local newspaper covered this quite well, with snippets of information that many might not have realised. Note that this was added to chronologically, as results were declared, so is in a kind of reverse order with the most recent entry at the top, but in normal sequence within each 'chunk'.

The main oddity for which I couldn't have legislated was the election of what I believe were three so-called 'paper candidates': those who stood purely to fill a gap in a theoretically hopeless election for their party. I am fairly sure that Mike Franklin was not intending to get back onto the Council (after a long absence, by the way) nor Mrs Reckless who has a young family demanding her attention.

Much of this kind of phenomenon stems from split voting in multi-member wards, and the alphabetical placing on the ballot paper. This is because those who split their votes across parties generally go down the ballot paper from the top, looking for the party symbols they are after. Thus Albert Aardvark is almost certain to get more votes than Zienia Zowie, even if they are standing for the same party.

It's easy enough to check this by looking at these and other council elections' results. Sometimes an incumbent councillor will have a substantial personal vote and voters look for the person specifically before casting their other vote(s). This happened with me, despite my best efforts to 'share the credit' in newsletters and elsewhere, as my own (and my colleagues') vote shares reveal from over the years, so I am well aware of both these factors.

Anyway, overall, the restoration of a 36-strong Conservative group on the Council, Labour at fifteen members, no Lib Dems but four UKIPpers, means a change at the 'minor parties' end but essentially a return to more-or-less the starting situation after the previous all-out council elections four years ago, but with UKIP supplanting the Liberal Democrats and minor changes in numbers.

Personally, I consider this to be a less than healthy situation, but largely caused by local Lib Dems frankly not bothering to put in the effort during these past four years. They might try to (conveniently) blame their coalition participation and the effect of that which they attribute to their national standing – which is partly valid, though not entirely – but the reality is that they haven't been mounting any kind of on-the-ground activity base.

When an election comes round, then they seem to emerge from the woodwork and then, yes, they're knocking on doors and the rest of it – but for years at a time they are next to invisible. Even their local website(s) over the years were completely inactive in between elections, the original completely so and the more recent one merely copying the central party's posts and with zero local content.

They seemed to think that support would be gifted to them without their having to put in any work at all, even the minimal effort of writing something on a website. Now they have their reward – and hopefully someone will at last learn the lesson! They have only themselves to blame, and it has been going on for over a decade: it has almost nothing to do with 'the coalition'.

In the Council itself, I anticipate the four 'Kippers causing as much trouble as their characteristic arrogance can devise, but in the process merely turning the electorate against them, over time, as the truth seeps out. I don't expect them to survive the next council elections.

Interestingly, the controversial Lodge Hill development issue that seemed to be the primary driver of UKIP's success within Medway Council has been shown to be a damp squib from the party's point of view. Not only has their former group leader – who made such a big (and, frankly, ill-informed) fuss over it failed to be re-elected, the two UKIP members in the ward where Lodge Hill is located have also failed to be re-elected, and Strood Rural is fully Conservative again.

There is a big lesson in that, though I suspect that it will be lost on those three ex-councillors...

Meanwhile, in neighbouring Peninsula ward, two of the four UKIP members have been elected. I suspected something of the sort would happen, because of the ill-informed poison being spread by the member I mentioned just now, also because the two Conservatives who were not elected there were not exactly well-known around the ward. Indeed one of them stood in Rochester East ward last time, of all places. Nevertheless, they can now start to rebuild their party's standing in Peninsula, so that next time they will be able to displace the 'Kippers – which will almost certainly be a walkover if they do what I have suggested.

My old ward of Rochester South & Horsted enjoyed a better outcome than was at first on the cards, and it has taken considerable (secret!) effort on my part [EDIT: and, I have since discovered, at least one other's efforts as well] to help protect the third seat in particular. Others in the ward branch were well aware of the danger, though even they don't know how it was averted in the end, and (for very good reasons) I'm not telling...

Beyond all of this, the Council will continue to function, running reasonably well under the (seriously flawed) Cabinet-and-Scrutiny system until and unless that is scrapped, perhaps by national legislation. Thus the potential of Medway will continue to creep out into existence, there will be the inevitable (and predictable!) 'anti' campaigns, mainly by Lefties, and plans will be refined and fine-tuned or even delayed in some cases. Ultimately we're in for more of the same style of local governance, and this will be (broadly) a good thing, though less than perfect.

This is life, and it's good, following a good election outcome, both nationally and locally!

Locked Away in a Cabinet

Those with narrow or slanted views of politics are just as susceptible to reaching incorrect conclusions as anyone else making the same kind of error.

Take this look at Medway Council's democracy, which is probably well-intentioned but reaches the wrong conclusion and indeed falls into the trap that was set  almost fifteen years ago for those who have issues with the way the majority of councils are run nowadays. This is to blame the make-up of the elected Council for any perceived lack of local democracy, thereby missing the actual cause and maintaining the status quo.

The real culprit for any lack of local democracy is the Cabinet-and-scrutiny political system that was introduced and indeed enforced onto the majority of Councils by the then Labour government back in 2001. I know: I was there...

I have said it before, and have known it all along: although it was easy enough to 'sell' to a compliant Labour government (a Conservative one would probably have seen through the ruse and not implemented it), the real – and only – purpose of the Cabinet system was to give Whitehall 'mandarins' more-or-less complete control over the local agenda.

The first thing the change did was to take voting rights on most policy matters away from all Council members who were not in the Cabinet – even the mayor lost those rights. In Medway Council, with (in those days) eighty members and a ten-strong Cabinet – the maximum number allowed, by the way – this meant that seven-eighths of councillors lost those voting rights overnight, on 1 October 2001. I was one of those seventy.

Even items of business that had to be ratified by the Full Council had by then already been discussed, debated and effectively decided by the Cabinet – and it is very difficult to come along after the event and try to oppose them. Indeed, the 'call-in to Council' facility for any Cabinet decision was very rarely applied by the opposition. We kept a record, which I have on file here...

Now, in the only model of the (limited) options offered, this meant the Council Leader chose his own Cabinet. This made sense, because in those days the ruling group had only 38 members, and the opposition – who had nearly always ganged-up to oppose them – had 42. Therefore, had they been given the opportunity to choose the rest of the Cabinet, they'd have stuffed it with their own members and nothing would ever have been approved – everything the Leader proposed would have been opposed. The council would simply have stopped and nothing new would have gone ahead.

If there were any doubt of that having happened given the chance, I witnessed that motivation in operation in every situation where the opposition members could gain their own political advantage from doing so. For example, they voted all the Scrutiny and other committee chairmanships (and the vice-chairmen) for their members, with none at all from the ruling group.

As if that wasn't bad enough in terms of local democracy (although I had no serious issues with it personally, adapting to suit), those opposition chairmen abused their positions in several ways – too long to go into here, though I have covered them in the past, including on my old Councillor website – manipulating as much as they could to suit their own party's ends.

It is to be noted that, when the Scrutiny Committee chairing changed hands to the ruling group, ALL those bad practices ended. The Labour spokesmen boycotted their invitations to pre-meeting briefings and the like, in a sulk, whereas others (Lib Dems and Independents) were at least more concerned with doing their elected jobs than everything having to be geared to their party's own interests.

This of course all helps to show that it is not the specific party that is the problem: it makes little if any difference – with the possible exception of Labour, but that is just in their nature. It is the way the system is designed that allows and (I often think) encourages such practices.

The result is the intended (by the mandarins) centrally-dictated Cabinet agendas, which if you look have only token localism and are essentially the same nationwide. Even the format and content of what goes into all those Plans and Strategies is dictated by Whitehall, while contract letting hardly requires the full Cabinet to decide.

What is the point in paying Portfolio Holders five-figure salaries if they can't even make such decisions themselves, and have to hide behind 'we work as a team' style excuses? There is nothing in a typical Cabinet agenda that is truly from and for the people of the area, only time-wasting dross!

Eric Pickles has offered councils the opportunity to scrap the Cabinet-and-Scrutiny structure, allowing councils to keep any of the benefits (such as summoning and questioning rights of various officials from the likes of the emergency services and health bodies) in the process.

Before this was passed in Parliament, I – and I alone – asked the question at a meeting of the full Medway Council whether they would be taking up this offer. The response I received was not only non-committal, it was sufficiently hostile in tone to tell me that they were not interested in pursuing this – and indeed they haven't done so.

Those in charge are far too comfortable to change now: another trap that was planned from the outset, but that only a few of us realised right from the start. They won't change unless this optional reversal becomes a legal requirement – but, unlike Labour, Conservatives aren't naturally inclined toward imposition unless it is genuinely necessary, so that is unlikely ever to happen.

Thus we end up with an ongoing fairly rigid structure that inevitably (seemingly unavoidably) produces the effects the linked piece points out in its simplistic analysis, with potential agitators wasting their efforts pointing at the wrong culprits. Meanwhile, Sir Humphrey dines with Sir Arnold to report that everything is still going according to plan, and their own positions remain unassailable.

Note that the moral of this story is that only those of us with the insight and maturity to at least tackle the underlying problems that now exist within local democracy have managed to get something concrete on the public record that could prove valuable in what might lie ahead. The Sir Humphrey types continue to dismiss the others as gullible sheep...

Medway Council Meeting – 23 April 2015

This was the last meeting of the full Medway Council before next month's local and national elections – and it was a strange one indeed.

The first hour was taken up with tributes to non re-standing councillors, two senior members in particular who are proposed to become Honorary Aldermen. That part was fine, though a stumbling Leader of the Council took about three times as long to say his piece as it should have taken.

The real issue stemmed from letting all and sundry from around the Chamber speak to this item. Why? Each political group's leader could have done, but there was no benefit whatsoever in having a dozen other members witter on, including four of the outgoing members. I cannot recall this having been done on equivalent occasions in the past...

Anyway, the big item of actual business was the batch of seventeen public questions, each with a supplementary question. As is usual just before an election, nearly all of these were actually party political questions, asked by candidates in the upcoming local elections here. I recognised the names as soon as the agenda was published, and the style and nature of the seemingly innocuous enough questions gave the game away as well. Of course, it is the (unpublished) supplementaries that are the real questions.

I wasn't the only one to realise the true nature of what had been submitted; and independently of me, another had also worked out that thirteen of the questions had come from local Labour, two from UKIP and one from the Lib Dems. A former local Labour member also disclosed on Twitter during the evening that he had in the past been asked to put his name to pre-scripted questions. It's what they do...

Similarly, questions from members and the two Motions were much the same kind of fare, especially the latter. The first Motion was from Labour, and was obviously nothing more than the latest in their ongoing series of Union-originated motions that relate to national policy, not local matters. With these, always worded to include our area as if to suggest that it is a purely 'local' issue, a little investigation generally reveals that exactly the same thing has been done in other councils by their Labour members,with only the place name changed to suit.

This one was to do with the poor firefighters – and the idea was obviously to use emotional blackmail for these heroes. It was laid on fairly thickly, so no-one who was paying any real attention to the proceedings could have missed it.

The second Motion, from UKIP, was also politically-loaded, and not a good idea at all. It was obviously 'manufactured', one big clue being that old favourite of 'sending a message' to central government as the mover declared. Yes, again it was not a local issue as such, and certainly shouldn't be isolated to one borough anyway. If it had been genuine, it would have been taken to Parliament, not a Council. I have warned of this wheeze in the past, as some readers here will no doubt recall...

In between, we'd had the usual Leader's Report, Overview & Scrutiny activity and a couple of reports. Nothing of great significance happened with any of those. The only noteworthy point, I think, was that several members from all sides complimented the Task Group method that deals with specific policy areas in greater detail than tends to be possible in full committees.

They are, in effect, renamed Working Parties with a few bells and whistles added to their permitted activities. Medway Council has always been very good at doing excellent work within its Task Groups, actually, so I can certainly go along with what the members were saying – even though I was appointed to only two such bodies myself, during my years on the Council so have limited experience of personal involvement. I have seen the outcome from several of them, though, over the years.

I thought the Mayor chaired this meeting particularly well, despite the over-indulgent tributes part (which had obviously been decided beforehand how it was going to be handled) and better than a number of other Mayors I have witnessed running these Council meetings.

It all finished at a little before 2230 hrs, which was earlier than I had expected. The media had been there from the start, though one of the two reporters left about a quarter of an hour before the end. Therefore expect some of what happened this evening to be featured in the local newspapers during the next few days.

Medway Council Elections 2015 – Initial Thoughts

Now that the lists of candidates for the Medway Council elections have been published for the 22 wards here, comprising 55 seats in total, I have been able to firm-up my predictions. However I am not making those public this time, as that information combined with my now-established reputation could give the 'wrong' parties some (small but definite) benefit – and I am certainly not in the business of doing that!

Therefore this is just a collection of some general thoughts that have come to me while going through these 22 'Statements of Persons Nominated', as they are called, which I downloaded from here a few hours ago, shortly after they became available. These are, for some odd reason, in docx form rather than the usual PDF file format. This produces odd effects, such as missing or too-narrow table columns, when read on anything other than the Microsoft Word program, and is thus not 'open' as all local council (and national government) documents are required to be.

Notwithstanding the technical issues, I have been able to work out who is standing for which party (or as an independent), their addresses and where they will appear on the ballot paper.

Regarding addresses, it is interesting to note a greater proportion than usual of candidates not living in the ward where they are standing for election. There is no legal problem with this, and indeed it is possible for a candidate from outside the ward to be at least as good as any other. For example, there are several wards in which I'd probably be an excellent choice if I were to stand there (Princes Park and Strood South spring immediately to mind) – though I am no longer in that business, so no candidate need fear my presence in competition to themselves!

It is true that many of those are so-called 'paper candidates' (or paperless in Lib Dem parlance) who are standing in places they know they haven't a hope of taking from the sitting party. For example, Labour in Hempstead & Wigmore ward, or Conservatives in Chatham Central – or (if they were to be honest with themselves) Green or TUSC in any ward.

Those last two are interesting cases, by the way, as both have put up more candidates here than they have ever done before: TUSC (Trade Unionist & Socialist Coalition) with one in each ward, so 22 candidates; and the Greens with 13. It is perhaps surprising that such a self-proclaimed growing party as the Greens, who only this week stated in the media that they have more members than UKIP, can't find as many candidates (UKIP have 32).

Printing a ward leaflet for one candidate costs just as much as doing the same for two or three as appropriate, and takes just as much effort to deliver. I suspect it is in reality merely a logistical device to get their General Election material out across the three (well, two and a half) constituencies, as TUSC and the Greens each have the full set of three parliamentary candidates. In this case, TUSC will have the better coverage as their council candidates will of course be keen to deliver and canvass in all those 22 wards...

On the subject of UKIP, to their credit they have managed to put up a full slate of 22 candidates for the nine wards that fall within the Rochester & Strood constituency. Their other two Medway-involved areas have been less successful, though, fielding just ten candidates between them, spread thinly across the other thirteen wards and with 23 places unfilled. Especially bearing in mind that their long-standing area leader has lived for years close to the Watling/Hempstead & Wigmore boundary, one might have expected better coverage in the Gillingham & Rainham wards...

The biggest disappointment, though, is having just eighteen Liberal Democrat candidates. They claim they are going for 'quality rather than quantity', but many of their supporters will not be happy to be unable to cast their vote the way they'd wish, simply because the local party seemingly hasn't bothered to put up any candidates in their ward. This is perhaps most acute in Gillingham North, a three-member ward they held from its inception on the present boundaries but lost seats through party resignations and two former members joining Labour a year or so ago.

Finally, there is just one English Democrat candidate, and there are four Independents also standing, of whom one is a former English Democrat. There are no BNP, Britain First, Respect or any other parties' candidates.

Although it hardly needs stating, just for completeness I can add that – as always – Labour and the Conservatives have a full slate of 55 candidates each.


Overall, there are a huge number of variables in this complex scenario, and still a few unknowns even to me. Most, though, is clear-cut, and I now know the most likely outcome (it hasn't changed for a long time!) with a high probability figure. That, though, will be kept secret this time! Meanwhile, between now and Polling Day, I shall be busy, doing my little bits here and there but mostly behind the scenes, invisibly, just to make sure...

Not The Same This Time

I have had to give the odd kick or three to specific local political party associations (encompassing just two parties so far) who have been giving the outward appearance of not treating the forthcoming elections with the significance they hold, and thus the treatment they warrant. This applies to both national and (here in Medway, Kent) local council elections.

We have never, in our history, had elections like these – particularly (and directly) at the national level. Coalition governments have been rare, especially in peacetime and away from wars on our soil. Combine that with the considerable changes that multiple television channels (including news sources) in recent years, and even more the impact of on-line access and the resultant instant dissemination of information including photographs and video, and it is easy to see that we have never been in anything all that closely resembling what exists here in Britain today.

Other changes include widespread postal voting – so Polling Day itself is less crucial than it once was – and a broader choice of mainstream political parties, with the Greens and UKIP faring a lot better now than either did at the last General Election just five years ago.

Thus it has become vitally important for all serious parties not to let any of the other steal a march and leave them behind in any way that the voting public could perceive as being less competent or with 'something to hide', rather than the haughty opinion of those within the party bubble. No doubt their opposition could seize upon these seeming deficiencies and make more out of them than might rationally be thought appropriate – but that is part of the nature of politics, and on this occasion it carries more 'political mass' than it might seem on paper. All parties need to be sharp on this!

One seemingly trivial (at least to some) point is the public announcement of selected candidates, particularly in the Medway Council elections which involve 55 elected positions in 22 wards. Only the Labour party has publicly declared all 55 of its candidates, and those have been out on the streets, getting themselves known and their party's views entrenched, for a little while now, and with the authority of being able to state that they are 'the Labour candidate[s]'.

I am aware of the limitations of spending amounts allowed per candidate, but there are ways to handle that while still putting themselves about as the ones who could act for the people if elected, or similar wording.

This is (according to some of my 'eyes and ears' around the borough) tipping the balance in places, and it is of concern to me – and rightly so – that this disservice to the selected candidates of other parties means that they are being disadvantaged on the doorstep in particular. Anyone who has been a serious candidate and has trodden the campaign trail will know what impact such things can make, even if not by all that much ordinarily – but, as I said, this is no ordinary election, especially with the 'locals' (council).

As I cannot perceive any reason for withholding this information – indeed, one of the Conservative Associations has declared its 22 candidates whereas the other two Associations have not disclosed theirs – this does seem strange, and is perhaps indicative of a malaise I have perceived within a couple of the local parties, which is a tendency to think in a somewhat introverted, 'we know best' way.

Even with the occasional (welcome) innovation, they still seem to be stuck in the ways of the past, and don't react positively when another party does something they ought to know that they too should have done. The example I have touched on here is merely an indication of the attitude problem that I suspect is more broadly thought to be one of several major issues for each of those parties of whom I am thinking here.

The excuse will be that there are other, bigger issues each party has to face. Yes; but how much effort would it have been for someone in a constituency office to make a minor one-off effort to send the list of selected candidates to their media mailing list via email?

For myself, this particular example doesn't really matter (which is why I am using it: no personal vested interest) as I have long known the broad outcome of the council elections here, and as always will firm-up my predictions only once the official Statements of Persons Nominated have been published, a few weeks from now.

I am hesitant to make those predictions public on this critical occasion, by the way, for fear of causing unintentional harm by letting the opposition know too much – but there are a select few individuals to whom I have already told something of my 'broad sweep' predictions, so they know...

Medway Budget Council Meeting 2015 – Actuals

Well, that was it. I didn't stay until the end, only until the Budget item was dealt with (including convolutions caused by amendments) and voted upon, with the usual (and expected) result: it passed and the amendments were defeated.

So, was the process the same as in previous years? Essentially, yes – just as I outlined in my previous post, but a little shriller, with three Labour members shouting during their speaking times, quite apart from the usual heckling and hectoring for which the Labour group is notorious. It was obvious that elections were coming...

The matters I mentioned in my previous post did come up; and the alert observer would have sussed out very easily what was really going on, especially with the local media present. Tonight's claque was primarily the Trades Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) who are probably even more Communist-alike than the Socialist Workers Party – though I suspect it is close to being a tie!

As I always do at these annual events, because one member of each party gets unlimited speaking time, I time each of them, so here are this year's figures, for the record...

• Cllr Alan Jarrett (Con) – 50 mins 45 secs
• Cllr Vince Maple (Lab) – 28 mins 48 secs
• Cllr Geoff Juby (Lib Dem) – 6 mins 40 secs
• Cllr Chris Irvine (UKIP) – 3 mins 38 secs

An interesting 'factoid' is that Cllr Maple said 'Let me be clear' five times during his (scripted) speech, and once more later in the debate,so that seems to have become his personal phrase.

There was little of particular note this time, policies-wise, really just the FUSE Festival, which (it transpired) had been cancelled because the Arts Council, who had previously provided match-funding, had this year withdrawn that funding as this particular festival was considered 'poor value' to be subsidised from the public purse.

That echoes my own feelings, and I have long considered that the only way to be sure of its ongoing viability would be for it to become essentially self-financing and the council become merely a facilitator and promoter through its 'What's On?' print and on-line facilities.

In the end, what seems to have been some unspecified nifty footwork behind the scenes has resulted in the Arts Council re-opening the file and partially relenting. Thus the festival will go ahead after all, but in a slimmed-down form as its funding will, in total, be a little less than half its customary level.

There were other 'political footballs' including the canard that is the mythos regarding Rochester Airport. I have dealt with this topic elsewhere, and might even upload a video where I discuss the topic in moderate depth (it's already recorded, I am just thinking about whether to make it public) so don't need to go into it again now.

This was, however, a handy opportunity for Cllr Jarrett to give a little history lesson about Labour and the Lib Dems and their pursuance of the closure of the airport for a good fifteen years. A number of truths I know only too well came out in that one-minute summary, but I could have added even more, given the chance!

Another valuable history lesson was given by the Leader of the Council in response to Labour's claim that they were 'expressing the views of the people of Medway' whereas the ruling Conservative group didn't reflect public opinion. The leader  did what I have done on this 'blog and elsewhere in the past: point out the always-increasing Conservative presence on the elected Medway Council, from May 2000 (when I was first elected, incidentally) to the present day. The full Medway public obviously differ in viewpoint from the claque and their Labour buddies, who between them counted as well under a twentieth of a percent of that number...

Labour's 'surveys' (to which they made several references) are selective and slanted in how they are done – I know: I've had them here – and they use scaremongering techniques when surveying by door-knocking – several of my 'eyes and ears' have reported their own first-hand experiences of this, including from three former (Labour) mayors. Therefore, do not fall into the trap of thinking these rather convenient outcomes are valid.

Overall, the budget debate – along with the distractions of the Labour and Lib Dem amendments – went on a little too long, but wasn't quite as bad as I had predicted. It was close, though. 


UPDATE 1: For a (very much) Left-dominated view of the proceedings, in tweeted form, check this out.

UPDATE 2: Here is a breakdown of where much of the money is set to go.

UPDATE 3: This is the audio recording of the entire meeting, lasting 3 hours and 41 minutes (though the first 3 mins 20 secs are blank).

Medway Budget Council Meeting 2015 – Predictions

In this dual-election year, I thought it might be worth placing on the public record my expectations in advance of this evening's budget-setting meeting of the full Medway Council. It's not because it will be momentous, but just worth having 'on file', so to speak, so that one can see after the event whether I was anywhere near accurate.

Of course it will follow the pattern of recent years in particular; and beyond that also, to some degree. The ruling group will present their well-structured budget, bemoaning the reductions in Government grant yet again that mean they are having to 'take difficult decisions. They will gloss over or ignore the mistakes that have been made in the last two or three years that have cost a lot of money, much of which would be said by most to have been wasted – though some of it was, in practice, unavoidable, but by no means all.

It is true that the Conservatives have been able to produce what are known as 'balanced budgets' for many years, though often using a number of wheezes in order to achieve that desired outcome each time. They have, to their credit, been more pragmatic than dogmatic, and that approach has consistently produced the proper 'bottom line', if only by the skin of their teeth on a few occasions!


On the official opposition side, the big difference this decade has been that the only Labour councillor here at Medway who has any idea about council finance, the estimable Cllr Glyn Griffiths, was removed from the position that made him their finance spokesman – deputy leader of the Labour group on the Council.

His replacement as deputy leader hasn't a clue (but is very 'mouthy') so their current group leader has taken it upon himself to double-up on the job of finance spokesman, even though he doesn't have all that much more of an idea than their deputy leader.

As I expected would happen once this structural change within Labour's councillors had occurred, their budget meeting speech in response to the budget proposals turned into an almost entirely irrelevant rant about national politics, point-scoring being the sole driver of most of what was said in these more recent years. The only exceptions were when they had a (Union-dictated) agenda to pursue at local level.

This year's such matters will be (predictably) the so-called 'living wage' and reduction in numbers of (Unionised, subscription-paying!) council staff. They will quote (especially on that first matter) what 'so many other councils, of all political persuasions, are already signed up to' – or similar wording, as if that has a direct bearing on what should happen here.

Incomes have gone up in the country in recent years, not by putting increased pressure on employers – which means fewer jobs affordable from the same-sized salaries pot – but through reduction in Income Tax and raised personal allowances. Note that an increased hourly rate for council staff would mean even more job reductions, directly contradicting Labour's other big policy plank this evening(!)

Purely locally, there is also the anticipated loss of the Fuse festival as an issue that Medway Labour have taken up – again, somewhat predictably..

I have sat through these events for years, and although Glynn's interminable rambling rants were tedious and a lot of what he said was irrelevant, at least some of it was applicable and he did inject some (usually fairly dry) humour into his budget speeches. All that mitigation has now gone, and the whole thing is orchestrated.

Each year a good-sized claque occupies the public gallery, and one can hear in the way Cllr Maple (the Labour group leader these days) uses tone of voice and significant pauses to try to get this (somewhat dim, it has to be said) group to cheer and appluad at the 'right' moments. They have been known to miss their cues several times, and it is a picture to watch Cllr Maple try to signal to them, in order to get the reaction he wanted the journalists in attendance to notice and report on.

Yes, it's all 'manufactured' – and will be more intense this year, as it is both a General Election year and also coincides with the Council's all-out local elections for the 55 seats on Medway Council.

Will the local media fall for it? Are they merely complicit and will go along with it anyway, even knowing the extent of the fakery and deceptions, the slants, selective statistics and the rest of it?

We shall know only when we read what they report after tonight's meeting. I shall be there, though, and I'll know exactly what was really going on!

The Future Is Nearly Here

On the local political front, at council level here in Medway, I have noticed during recent conversations with a fair number of my sources that their assessment of how things look to be going turn out to be broadly in line with what I predicted, four years ago, would happen at this time if the wrong decisions were made back then.

This is good, because it means that others have worked out for themselves what is now happening, at least to some extent. A few of them were at the ward candidate selection meeting in 2010 where I stated a couple of these (what were then just) predictions, but several were not; and my other predictions I kept to myself at that time, as it wasn't the purpose of that event. I was just putting down a marker, for the future, and that future is now virtually here.

I am not going to disclose any of that material until after polling day – but enough people on the inside now know sufficient of it to be able to recognise its accuracy (or otherwise!) when the new Medway Council is elected, three months from today. Okay, strictly speaking the results won't be out until the following morning, but the election itself will be on the 7th and that is when people will decide, or earlier if they have a postal vote.

These recent conversations with my various sources have also allowed me to sow further seeds in their minds, so that messages have been conveyed and they will realise all too soon that there will be lessons to learn within the local party, both in the constituency associations and within the council group.

This will now have to be the hard way, as I was not heeded four years ago and (as some party members have privately admitted to me) their collective weakness as a group on the Council has now allowed their main opponents to profit substantially in the last couple of years in particular, and this will inevitably harm the ruling group significantly this coming May.

My own absence from the Council has, exactly as I predicted, also emboldened the main opposition members, as there is no longer any truly effective counter to their fabrications and manipulations – nothing more substantial than a battle of words, in fact: one person's word against another's – and their change of group leader has also tipped things their way. Again, this is something I (probably alone) foresaw a few years back, as that party group leader is well aware and could confirm if asked.

Harmful stories have been appearing in the local media that I'd have killed off before they could have been published, but that was possible only by my speaking at the Council or, in a few cases, a committee meeting at which the attempt was being made, with the concrete proof in front of me, on my trusty portable computer. A retraction a week later is no good: the damage will already have been done by then and will not be reversed. It has to be dealt with at the time it is brought up at the meeting, in a way that immediately makes it impossible for the reporter to use.

I did this five times at Council during my time there, more than all other group members were able to do between the lot of them in the same period. This has not changed since my departure.

Overall, it is going exactly as I foresaw would be the case if I were not back on the Council for this one crucial term (I'd not have been needed so much after this); and I still to this day have no reason to believe that my alternative and markedly different outcome – with me back on the Council from 2011 to 2015 – was any less accurate.

The deviation from that path is quite marked, and has become sufficiently obvious that, as I mentioned at the start of this post, others have independently reached the same conclusion that I had foreseen some four years ago. As I never tire of saying, the clues are all 'out there' for anyone to find and evaluate with a modicum of intelligence. I am not particularly clever, as is now obvious(!)

In fact, it is now a much stronger forecast than it was back then, simply because the two former Lib Dem members who were elected as Independents in 2011 subsequently joined Labour. The numbers are now near-enough rock solid: that variable (a three-way marginal ward) has thus been taken out of the equation.

We in Medway are in for an 'interesting' time ahead...

On The Right Road

This started off as just an update to my previous post, but needed to be broadened out so warranted its own post.

First, some good news: two of the road repair jobs I mentioned last time – Anchor Road and Mooring Road in Rochester East ward – are to be resurfaced throughout. I had the confirmation of this a little earlier today, and it looks like they will be done quite soon.

Note that these have been completely neglected by the (Labour) ward councillors for years: I first spotted them when I was early for candidate selection in a nearby church hall, back in 2009. I had assumed that they would have been in hand, but even then still not realised the callous disregard Labour nearly always have for anything that does not profit them politically.

Indeed, it was only the following year onward when I moved home into a Labour ward and saw first-hand at close quarters the permanent sneer and telling body language of one or two of their councillors that I finally learned just how much they hate us all, and hate doing any actual work. I have plenty of detailed material on this for my memoirs, which I might start writing soon...

I can't see the point of being elected to represent an area, a community, and not even bother to act for them on what are, after all, council matters. If some of us can do it, then all elected members should be pro-active in ensuring their own 'patch' is up to standard.

I have mentioned previously the purely political reasons why Labour in particular have a vested interest in keeping roads in a bad state, but my sources indicate fairly strongly that those members and activists aren't out and about unless they are on a specific party political quest. They have no interest in simply patrolling the ward and noting things needing attention, getting stopped in the street occasionallyand getting further input from residents.

It's a completely different attitude, almost diametrically opposite; and it is a good indicator of who each side believes serves whom, and what is most important. For me it was always the community and its needs that came first (hence my rock-solid reputation) and for Labour it is entirely about the people serving their political ends as mere pawns in their game.

They are on the wrong road, and always shall be, with no actual value to their community, however cleverly they can sometimes make it look otherwise. All of this is why decent folk despise and shun them, and rightly so!

My Way on the Highway

As many people around these parts in particular are well aware, I am a formidable force for good action (and strategic planning!) when it comes to highway and related matters. It is probably my strongest suit when looking and my ward work from when I was on Medway Council and subsequently as well.

Indeed, since leaving the Council, and moving home, I have been getting all manner of street scene and similar issues dealt with in other parts of Medway, most notably in the ward where I have been living for the past several years.

This, as I conclusively documented at the time, was because the Labour councillors for this ward had neglected to do anything for years, and nothing was even in the queue of outstanding work. Thus I felt no qualms about taking on the task of dealing with a range of issues from a broken kerb (trip hazard) at a crossing point outside an infant school to resurfacing damaged sections of roads, with two lots of graffiti removal, sorting out collapsed metal fencing, and having overhanging branches (two lots again) dealt with, also in the mix.

My wry smile at last night's Council meeting when Labour councillors complained about 'the appalling state of Medway's roads' might have puzzled others in the public gallery at the time, but not if they had known the reality.

You see, it is generally only in the wards of Medway that have just Labour councillors that the roads remain in a bad way for years on end. That is because they do not want them to be fixed, because those roads' only use to Labour councillors and activists is as a political weapon. If they are dealt with, that weapon is lost. It is exactly the same philosophy as Labour's intention to 'weaponise the NHS', which is something that is currently in the news.

I am very careful when getting highway (both road and footpath) repair work done on what might be considered to be someone else's patch. For a start, I make sure that it has been in a bad way for some time and is not already scheduled to be fixed (when the facility for that check is available – and there have been no fewer than three such systems coming and going in recent years!)

Occasionally I embarrass the existing ward councillors to do something themselves – as seems to have been the case in regard to the footpath repairs on Eastcourt Lane, Twydall, after years of neglect (I had been checking in Google Street View images going back at least three years). Only once I have – very publicly – pointed this out did it suddenly become of interest to at least one of the three Labour councillors for that ward, and was subsequently fixed. I went back to check...

I spend many hours using Google aerial and street view imagery to check out various parts of the Medway borough's roads, taking careful note of the dates of those images, and plenty more hours on the ground, checking first-hand. For example, St Albans Close in Strood South ward was one of just two roads that were then, on Google Maps, still showing need of significant work.

I checked it out (and it's a slightly involved walking route from the nearest 'bus stop!) and found that it had been recently completely resurfaced. They'd done a good job too. I reported in the other road (Beech Road) myself last year, having first checked that no-one else had done so already, and offering suggestions to aid with the logistics of that task when it came to implementation.

That is a mixed-representation ward. Labour-only Rochester East ward has several long-neglected roads whose entire length in each case is a disgrace.Why has this not been tackled? I have waited a long time for these to be done, even feeding the 'intell' on these roads to a former Conservative activist who lives there – but has now gone to UKIP so I am not expecting any results, especially after his general attitude toward the running of the council on a number of fronts.

As a direct result of that, I have today reported those three roads in Rochester. For anyone who wishes to see what I mean, search for Anchor Road, Mooring Road and Fairway Close. The same two Labour councillors have represented those three roads for eleven years and done nothing about them in all that time! Now that is the real story of Medway's roads.


UPDATE 24 January 2015: Medway Labour didn't like this post, but rather than commenting here have instead tried to counter it via Twitter (their favourite medium). It appears that the official figure they are using is a simple count of how many roads have (or had when the exercise was last run) an issue of any kind, as a proportion to the total number of roads each Local Authority administers.

This isn't all that useful, as we (and, I suspect, many other areas) have roads of differing lengths, numbers of lanes, amount of traffic and so on. Also, 'an issue' might be the tiny blemish on Wells Road close to Bligh Way shops in Strood, or the full-length resurfacing needed on the three roads I mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago.

I can find no evidence of 'crumbling' roads as Medway Labour claim in their image – and I have almost certainly put in considerably more effort into watching this than all of them put together – and they have tweeted that they are not interested in providing a list, so I suspect they have done no actual work on the matter at all, merely looked up a central government ministry statistic.

I am aware of their claim of a £35 million total cost to bring all our roads up to top-notch standard; but as several millions are spent each year on a rolling programme of repairs, and it has been increasing year-on-year ever since the Conservatives took over running the council some fourteen years ago, this huge exercise is being managed well enough and without draining finances from other services.

I don't claim that all is rosy, and never have; although Medway's road have for years been recognised as being in the best condition of any in Kent – but I cannot recognise this supposedly 'crumbling' place when I, at least, do make the effort to make frequent checks of main roads, back streets, closes and all other places I can reach, throughout the five towns and as far onto the peninsula as I can physically reach – as well as with the continual aid of online aerial and street imagery.

Labour, on the other hand, do no work on street scene matters in many (if not all) cases, and all they are capable of doing is knocking Medway – which they do with monotonous regularity on every subject they can find. For voters in the local elections here this May, the choice seems to be between lazy,miserable dragging-down negativity with Labour, or actual achievements with the positive-attitude Conservatives.

Medway Council Meeting – 22 January 2015

I thought I ought to write something about this as we are approaching the local (as well as national) elections, and this was bound to have an effect. Although I couldn't stay until the end, as something cropped up and I needed to return home to deal with it, I caught enough to be able to tell precisely what was going on.

Fortunately the meeting was video-recorded, so I hope a straight, unedited copy of that will be uploaded to a publicly-visible site such as YouTube n the days to come (it's not there yet). So much of what I have been saying for several years will become clear to the truly observant that many of the public – reading what ends up being written in the local newspapers – will probably never realise!

Here are some thoughts I hurriedly posted to Facebook last night, assembled here for convenience and with a little 'fleshing-out' where that could be helpful...

Labour Gaffes

I got a signal (on one of my communication devices) that required me to leave this evening's meeting of the full Medway Council in order to deal with something from back here, but not before I had witnessed several Labour gaffes in their attempts to secure headlines from the no doubt broadly compliant (complicit?) journalists present.

There were several gems for anyone paying proper attention – and the meeting was video-ed so it will be possible (for the first time!) for readers here to see for themselves what I mean when I mention these things – though this is my favourite, from the Labour group leader...

Good ol' Vince: he said that the Labour group rarely call-in decisions (i.e. bring Cabinet decisions before the Full Council, as they are entitled to do) as they do so "only when they have a concern" (or very similar wording).

This of course means that they have no concern about most of the Cabinet's decisions – and yet, purely for party political purposes (and again this will become evident to anyone listening closely to what actually transpired) they spend most of their time at Council whingeing or otherwise criticising those very decisions.

In fact, on an almost trivial matter, the same individual gave their true game away much earlier in the meeting. He actually had a valid point, regarding the council's official Twitter coverage, and I'd have had some sympathy with the thrust of his case had it been handled properly – comfortably in advance of this meeting.

If he had, it could have been put in place for this meeting (which it should have been); but because this was a purely party political manipulation technique designed only to grab headlines, he left it until this evening – when it was obviously too late to do anything – to make his point.

Thus you get to understand something of the true nature of Labour: it isn't (and never has been,by the way) about 'right and wrong', only about what serves themselves. Note that they clearly weren't interested in getting the Twitter coverage in and of itself.

 The Fool On The (Lodge) Hill

Another interesting event at this evening's Council meeting was the result of a know-it-all (self-confessed) hot-head whose lack of understanding meant that he dug himself into a hole. This is a result of one of those I have been coaching getting above themselves and thinking they 'know it all', despite all my cautionary advice.

If the individual concerned had come to me, I could easily have explained the issue's history, posed a rhetorical question or two to aid comprehension, and predicted what was going to happen if he attempted this course of action. I'd also have suggested a better approach.

Instead of that, he went his own way, switching political parties in the process and is now beginning to look ridiculous, despite a predictable by-election success that he is labelling a 'referendum' (it is glaringly obvious that it was and is nothing of the sort).

This individual has a HUGE amount of growing-up still to do – and, quite frankly, was never suited to elected office: the peg simply cannot fit the hole, which always means more harm than good is done, eventually. Very few who end up in this kind of situation have the wisdom to recognise this truth, so I am expecting some not very good times ahead, and the lesson to be learned the hard way.
Ah well, so be it...

Questionable Practices

Yet another aspect of the past evening's Council meeting was the well-known 'trick' of asking a seemingly-innocuous question, which is published on the agenda and for which an answer can be prepared in advance, and then the infamous 'supplementary' question that is the real (political) question.

We had several examples of those, all from prominent (and well-known) Labour party members and former candidates in elections gone by and one Liberal Democrat former candidate. One of them was new to me, but I'd known the others for some time: the names Garrick, Heathfield, Jeacock, Munton and Pranczke might ring the odd bell or two with any readers who have been following the scene here for a while.

Earlier Council agendas will show not only these same questioners turning up time after time, but the records of those meetings (i.e. including the supplementary questions) show the true, purely political motivations of these five – and a few others not included in this meeting's batch..

Again, this will be most evident from the video-recording of the meeting once it becomes available (I am assuming it will be uploaded for public viewing), and the purely political manipulation of what was always intended to be a helpful adjunct to the regular 'public questions' agenda item will be seen for what it has largely become.

Paying Attention

It is amazing to me how poorly-informed many opposition councillors are, even those who had spent time as part of the ruling group. Time after time in the 'Questions from Members' section of the agenda even political group leaders got basic facts wrong so were asking useless, irrelevant or nonsense questions, wasting their opportunity to achieve something of value.

I have already touched on one of these above, but the Lib Dem leader's question made reference to 'a large number of contracts with Medway Citizens Advice Bureau'. Well, perhaps two is a large number to the Lib Dems – it would be no worse than Ed Balls' recent inability to cope with counting to three, as in the short video clip I posted on my Facebook page earlier this week...

There was also an attempt to portray the Conservative Group as split on an important issue, but again – because of focusing on the political goal of the questioner rather than the (non-)issue – it fell completely flat. It is a lesson that Labour folk in particular never seem to learn, as their aims are completely skewed by their near-enough desperate need to jump on anything they think they can use for their own political advantage. Time and again, down the years, we have come to realise that this truly is the be-all and end-all of their (literally) miserable existences.

Indeed, the tenor of all of that party group's offerings to that point in the meeting were easily shown to be exactly as they had been for a decade and a half at least (I quote that time period because I can personally attest to its veracity)which is to continually 'knock' Medway and paint a dreary picture that does not accord with reality.

Not that the almost-rosy picture the Conservatives like to paint is accurate either, though in reality it is a lot closer to what those of us who are 'out there' a lot find and can feel (well, at least Sensitives like myself, who can tell more than merely what people say and their general demeanour,though of course I take those fully into account as well).

Bearing in mind that I live in a predominantly Labour-voting area, with its consequently expected moan-at-anything outlook, perhaps surprisingly it usually takes prompting to generate negative reactions here – though I have witnessed Labour people doing precisely that, in order to 'manufacture' the response they want rather than what is true. I could cite specific examples; and one day I expect I shall write a detailed post containing a number of those, just to drive the point home.

Some people like moaning (it's a convenient way to shift blame, among other temptations) so it's always easy for those coached in the ways of Labour campaigning to produce a falsified picture of life here. If the public paid sufficient attention too, in this case to how they were being statistically manipulated, perhaps they could discourage Labour by providing no usable results for them.

Summary

Overall, at least in the two-and-a-quarter hours that I witnessed first-hand, I'd have to say that the opposition (especially Labour) achieved very little for themselves politically, despite a lot of bluster – though, interestingly, not as much as I had expected. The public gallery was sparsely occupied, without the usual Labour-supporting claque, and remarkably quiet and well-behaved.In fact, it was one of the less unpleasant Medway Council meetings of the past year or more.

Of course, Labour leader Vince Maple's big opportunity will come late next month at the Budget-setting meeting, where he will have unlimited time to make his usual national politics speech (nothing really to do with the business of the meeting, purely party political posturing). After that, there will be one more regular Council meeting before May's elections, in late April, and that will be where the rest of the fireworks will be set off.

Tweet of the Day that wasn't – 10 January 2014

I haven't done one of these in a long while, but this one was just begging to be immortalised, just in case it got deleted. Oh, oops, it has just vanished, and I did try to be quick...

It referred to Labour's candidates for the 'Rochester & Horsted' (sic) council ward as including one 'Derek Mutton' (sic again). I bet they're feeling somewhat sheepish about that one! Hopefully it managed to get into an archive so will be publicly visible once its index has been updated.

UPDATES: a corrected version has now been posted; and they are now titled 'Rochestersth&Horsted'...

"Your candidates Derek Munton, Joe Murray and Elaine Thomas feel 4.4m may be better spent on our failing primary schools"

The ward is, of course, correctly named 'Rochester South and Horsted' – and I am sure that better brains than theirs could have come up with a better shorthand ID to fit with the Twitter specifications.

I don't blame Labour for targeting my old ward, by the way: they have been coming second there ever since the boundaries changed, displacing the Liberal Democrats into third place long before that latter party's woes nationwide. They know it is a 'nexus ward', and with its nexus member out of contention (that's me, by the way) it is nowadays much more vulnerable than it has ever been since coming into being. Its main strut has been removed, and all parties locally know it.

The poor handling by the ward incumbents of the Rochester Airport improvements has allowed a situation to develop that is now against the Conservatives' stance and plays right into Labour's – something that was never within a million miles of happening when I represented the ward, and of course never would have happened while I was there.

They are also as keen as ever to get their ageing former councillor Derek 'Mumbling' Munton (not Mutton!) back onto the Council – to which he has failed to be re-elected in 2003, 2007 and 2011 and is in reality a spent force, though local Labour either can't or won't see that. Thus they continue to field him in one ward after another: Strood South in 2003 and 2007, Rochester West in 2011, and now Rochester South & Horsted in 2015. The proven loser still fights a hopeless battle...

It is probably worth mentioning that, although I do not personally dislike Derek Munton, he is the one who tried making mischief for me in both the local newspapers and with the governmental councillor watchdog, but to no avail as it was easily shown that I had no case to answer and his vindictiveness fell on stony ground. I have all the evidence on file, and have shared it in public in the past.

However cleverly (and craftily) local Labour try to manipulate the agenda and public perception in the ward, their chances are still not that great – provided that the Conservative councillors extract their digits and stop treating the job as a casual, spare-time activity.

It is no secret that the state of affairs in the ward would now be orders of magnitude better and more secure if I had been back on the Council – but it is too late for that now, and I am no longer interested. The bed has been made and they need to lie in it. The Conservatives' position in the ward are a long way from being secure, and it is exclusively the result of their putting their own agenda above the interests of the communities (ten of 'em!) they purport to serve.

They are going to have their work cut out for them between now and May, not exactly helped by having a General Election running alongside, but it is possible to hold those three council seats. If they don't put this first in their lives, they deserve to get kicked out – so the ball is in their court, no-one else's as far as this is concerned. Otherwise, my people might end up with 'Mutton', however dressed up, when they deserve much better!

Rochester Airport Improvements

I notice that the council's Planning Committee has decided to defer a decision on the application for a paved runway and a number of other improvements at Rochester Airport, so that a site visit can be held.

I am not surprised by this, nor do I think it is a negative move: it is important that no allegations of riding roughshod over concerns and suchlike should be able to be levelled against the planning authority (the council) and this is the right way to proceed. The minimal additional delay will be negligible.

I say additional delay because this whole plan for the airport should have been implemented at least five years earlier, and perhaps even ten. There has been no material change in circumstances during the past decade, except that the airport itself has deteriorated and now needs a considerably higher investment to put right – by my reckoning, three times as much as it would have cost a decade ago, though I cannot be certain of the figures as I have been 'out of the loop' for nearly three-quarters of that period.

I have in the past covered the falsity of the fears aroused by scaremongers – and all the intelligent observer needs to do is check what the consequences of the other eight (or perhaps nine by now) small airports that have already been down this path, years ago, have been. I think anyone doing so will find that there has been no problem, and indeed there has if anything been an improvement in (for example) noise levels and safety records as a result of modernisation – which is exactly the same as is being proposed for Rochester.

Is there something odd about our little airport that doesn't apply to those others? I can't find anything...

I notice that the local media are, as usual, putting their own slant on how they are reporting what is currently happening. Here's a good example...

"Councillors dither over plan to use taxpayer cash to expand airport"

Three errors (spin?) in so few words:

1. it's not a question of dithering, any more than any other site visit the Planning Committee holds is ever labelled 'dithering' – it's a standard procedure to ensure those taking the decision have on-the-spot knowledge of the site and how what is being proposed will be in practice;
2. it's capital investment.to reap ongoing returns – another standard practice in business, government and anyone else with an asset that needs something done in order to be able to generate a return – slanting it in the above manner is not only incomplete, but is a hundred percent biased in the message it conveys; and
3. the airport is not expanding – indeed, it is contracting slightly, while the site remains exactly the same size but with new facilities added in one corner.

How's that for being (and it looks to be deliberately) misleading?

Nothing new in that, of course, as I have noted – and recorded in my files, and occasionally in public forums such as this over the years. Never mind: we press onward regardless.

Although I do not know what the committee will decide in due course, I expect the application to be approved – though possibly with changes or additions to its conditions as a result of the site visit. I don't those, if they are imposed, to be big or difficult to manage for the airport.

As far as the scaremongers are concerned, and their buddies in the local media: longer-term residents of this area will no doubt be well aware of the previous (Labour, with Lib Dem collusion to achieve majority voting) council administration's plans to close the airport altogether and have it concreted over, so that 'crinkly shed' automated warehouses could ply HGVs by the hundred up and down the adjoining roads and beyond.

That plan was sneakily inserted into a planning policy document that went to central government as the council's official position, even though it was not the version that the elected representatives of the people here had voted upon. There were another couple of 'new' items sneaked into that version that also had not been included in the version approved by the elected Council. The whole thing was underhand, and still reeks to this day of a corrupt agenda that is being pursued even now.

As long as this decision is made, and is effectively legally binding, before the May elections then the future of the airport will be more-or-less assured, even if there should then be a change of political control. That, as people will soon enough discover – some to their surprise, I imagine – will be the best possible outcome, and set things up for a much brighter future around those parts than any of the alternatives.

Press Matters

Here and there over the past couple of years I have been encountering complaints by opposition councillors on Medway Council regarding the bi-monthly magazine that goes out to our households in the borough: Medway Matters. They have even referred it to the Secretary of State (SofS), claiming it is in breach of what is called the Publicity Code for Local Authorities.

Now, I am no expert on that code, but – although I have long-standing concerns with the publication – I doubt that it is actually in breach, and even if so, only marginally, which could be easily remedied with specific guidance from the SofS's office.

I do believe it to be, in parts, a little too close to being a Cabinet-dominated vehicle for that select band of councillors (just ten of the 55 elected members), as an inspection of a couple of recent years' worth of issues will reveal. For anyone with the time to spare and sufficient interest, I'd suggest going through all of the back issues for, say, the last five years for a more complete assessment.

However I do see that one charge thatis being made, if not strongly, is that because it takes in-house (i.e. the council's own) advertising – which helps fund it by the way – this is connected with the plight of our local press. This is specious, as the reason both local and national printed media are losing circulation is because more and more people are reading their news, sport and the rest of what appears in such publications not in print form, but on-line. This applies all around the country, not just here in Medway, where it has to be said all three such local news print outlets run busy websites themselves.

Although the graph at this page is a good year and a half out of date, the trend for all national UK newspapers is clear and has continued since, as Guido and others have periodically reported.

For example, the Kent on Sunday is still going strong, but it long ago dropped most of its YourMedway type publications, which were editorially identical to the Sunday product anyway, apart from pages 1 and 2 which were the only pages covering the specified area. I soon bored on reading mainly about what had happened in Maidstone or Ashford or Dover. The only other newspaper that was then still available was Your Tunbridge Wells(!)

The point here, though, is that almost all other areas in the county were similarly affected, thereby taking the Medway Matters element completely out of the equation: it is a red herring. Different, but not dissimilar in this core point, stories apply to the Messenger and News, the latter now publishing on-line only, and in a joint 'Medway and Maidstone' form.

If one looks at the amount the council 'spends' on its advertising in Medway Matters in a recent year, it's around £20,000 – which represents a drop in the ocean relative to even a local newspaper's annual advertising revenue. In fact, the council still advertises some things in the local press anyway (because it is more appropriate, for legal reasons, or something else that requires it), probably much more than the above amount, so the effect of 'Matters' is even less pronounced than might be assumed at first glance.

No: the real reason the opposition councillors don't like the council's magazine is because they don't have any editorial control over it. As we know from all left-wing régimes, and even many Labour-run councils, they are always dependent on propaganda in order to get any votes from outside their core activist and support base.

This is why, when the boot is on the other foot in such councils, there can be a much more serious issue with council publications and related matters (of which there are a fair number, by the way: it's not just magazines) and I have learned of quite a few of these. I might be quiet on this 'blog nowadays – though that might change soon, as we have local as well as national elections coming – but I am never idle, and my sources feed me all manner of solid evidence about what (usually) Labour-run councils are up to, in many ways.

Thus the months to come could again be very interesting on these pages – but I haven't yet decided how to play this January-to-May 2015 period of activity here, or even if I shall participate at all. By the end of the year I should have a clearer idea on that; but in the meantime this post is a reminder of my traditional myth-and-spin debunking style that many will well remember...