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...

Sweeps Festival 2013

I generally try to have a look-in at our annual Sweeps Festival in Rochester, and this year's (the 33rd) was no different.

The festival stems from the practice in a bygone era of the boys who were sent up chimneys to clean them having a special free day where they could have a great time away from their miserable day-to-day lives. These days, it is more a celebration of the sweeps, so boys dress up as sweeps and make themselves 'look dirty' as if it were a working day for them (I imagine they originally washed off the grime for their day out).

In reality, it is one of our slightly less interesting events, as essentially it's just a load of Morris sides performing in the street. In fact, it is believed to be the biggest congregation of Morris men (and women) in Europe, apparently with more than sixty sides taking part. Yes, there are the usual fairground, ice cream vans and burger bars in the Castle Gardens, but the event itself is rather one-dimensional.

Don't get me wrong: I am quite a fan of the Morris, and have been for many years, following a couple of sides in my home town of Wimbledon for example. It's just that it doesn't seem to be sufficient somehow, even with the dressing-up that local people do at the drop of a (Victorian) hat.

It is therefore very gratifying to find that just about all of historic Rochester was more-or-less packed, as least as much as we get during the summer Dickens Festival. The warm sunny weather will have contributed to this, but on a bank holiday weekend when many people go away for these few days it was a remarkable success story, finishing later today.

I didn't take any kind of camera with me, still or video, as others always do, and several video clips of this year's event have already appeared at YouTube, such as this rather well-produced one by a John Martin...

Santa Fun Run 2012

Once again the Rotary Club of Medway has held its annual charity Santa Fun Run. The ever-excellent Rochester People – though nowadays without the wonderful Jaye Nolan, but still coping well despite that – covered the event, and has posted a couple of short video clips and a photo gallery. I notice some Olympic torches being brandished by several of the runners...

We here in Medway are really good at events, from festivals via national and international sporting events to 'fun runs' (including our own Medway Mile), even if not everything always goes perfectly.

Most of the time it does, though, or near enough in all but the – extremely rare – very worst cases. It is unusual indeed to encounter a significant issue, and then everyone with an axe to grind pounces on that and makes it out to be more than it really is, detracting somewhat from all the good things that we do here. I advise us all to concentrate on the overwhelmingly predominant great things we do!

In reality, we are very good at this stuff, whether council-driven or not. As the photos in this event's gallery show in particular, from the very first photograph, we have the setting: that's taken at one of our castles, with our cathedral in the background. The settings adds a 'feel' to every such event, that if you are there yourself you will feel it to some extent, even if you are engrossed in the activitity of the day itself.

You cannot help that: it's an inescapable part of not only what we do here, but how, why and where we do it. All these are interlinked.

The Santa Fun Run stands on its own (running!) feet, but it also reminds us of the special character of any event we hold here in Medway, and especially in the heart of historic Rochester.

Monaxle Photo-Walk Pictures

Back in August 2009 I participated in the photo-walk in recognition of the ordeal through which local photographer Monaxle had been put by over-zealous police. Mark Reckless, at that time just a candidate and not yet an MP, posted this concerning the incident.

At the time of the photo-walk I posted this short item with the photos themselves being stored and made publicly visible elsewhere.

Since then, that photo-hosting social media site has been taken down, so here is the full set of 35 photos I took on that occasion. Clicking on any of the following images will display a larger version (though still reduced in size from the original to be manageable on a normal computer display) and your browser's Back button then enables you to return to this page...

Bloggers Forum

I was one of around twenty local bloggers in this area who participated in a Bloggers Forum this afternoon, which formed a part of the Unfinished event held by Rochester Literary Festival (Roch esterLitFest). The session was facilitated by the wonderful Jaye Nolan of Rochester People fame (and other sites and work).

The start was delayed, so I was able to spend some time beforehand with such Medway blogging luminaries as Alan W Collins (formerly the Twydall Tory) and Chris Sams (the Ginger Liberal) as well as Ed Jennings who no longer blogs as such but does have other on-line activities in the social media.

Once it was time to go upstairs to the venue's fairly large meeting room, what came about was a very interesting one-hour session, covering a range of topics from niche blogging genres via reviewing products to video blogging (vlogs). Not everyone there spoke – although I think a little over half of us did – and I tried to be helpful on a couple of occasions. I might even have succeeded, perhaps once anyway...

Overall it seems to have been judged a successful and worthwhile venture, and it looks as though there could be a programme of regular meet-ups of Medway's bloggers in the future.

When the official write-up and photos taken at the Forum appear, I shall add links as appropriate. I hope it'll be okay to post the group photograph here; but if not I'll leave it at just the link.

From Chatham, Looking Outward

I had a two-hour photographic walkabout today, starting here in Chatham and looking across the town borders into Rochester one way, and Gillingham across and beyond the Great Lines.

On my travels I met an excitable dog on a tether in Silver Hill Gardens, and was able to get close enough so it could sniff and lick me before choking while I was out of reach(!)

Although I took a fair number of photographs, several of which showed this "looking outward", here are just a few of them, reduced in size to speed page loading. Clicking on any image will display it larger than within the page...

Jacksons Fields (Rochester) taken from across the road in Victoria Gardens (Chatham)

St Bart's Hospital

The War Memorial on Victoria Gardens

Passing over Railway Street, along New Road Avenue

Whichever way you're heading, you have to go downhill then up again!

Medway Maritime Hospital viewed from Old Road, Chatham