Cream Lapping

Figures published as part of the Taxpayers’ Alliance Town Hall Rich List 2012 show that of the 10 highest paid town hall officials, nine work for Tory controlled councils, and one works for a Labour controlled council.

There we have it; the Tories 'talk' a good game but locally have botched multi-million pound projects whilst claiming they can protect front line services by cutting the same front line services

Medway Tories, like their colleagues elsewhere, are hoodwinking the electorate. They are fiscally incompetent and can not be trusted with your money. Indeed; when it comes to lapping the cream 9 out of 10 of the highest paid Council Chief Executives sit in Tory Council areas:

Council	Position	Remuneration 2009-10	Remuneration 2010-11	% increase	Control
Hammersmith and Fulham	Chief Executive	270,474	281,666	4.14	CON
Essex	Chief Executive	267,442	271,060	1.35	CON
Kensington and Chelsea	Town Clerk and Chief Executive	268,423	268,475	0.02	CON
Suffolk	Chief Executive	267,775	267,775	0.00	CON
Buckinghamshire	Chief Executive	258,868	259,104	0.09	CON
Bexley	Chief Executive	250,627	258,782	3.25	CON
Norfolk	Chief Executive	263,700	256,900	-2.58	CON
Surrey	Chief Executive	176,073	253,133	43.77	CON
Gateshead	Chief Executive	245,581	252,838	2.96	LAB
Barnet	Chief Executive	249,210	250,818	0.65	CON

Cllr Mike is running...

Well after weeks of intrigue, innuendo and investigative mutterings in Gun Wharf the multititled Cllr Mike has now put his copper hat in the ring for the Sheriff top-job. 

Was he reading....?

This blog has been leading the charge, without handcuffs, for the Portfolio Holder for Community Safety and Customer Contact, and, Medway Community Safety Partnership Chair (breath) to announce his position on the role and put an end to the speculation. 

It is welcome to see him taking the advice of the opposition

We speculate however that Cllr Mike may be playing a clever move; ever the fox-like chess player; we think he may be pitching his deep blue tent firmly for the deputy job which will certainly not be a part-time undertaking if the Colonel takes the top job.

The big question on the lips of many is whether Cllr Mike can now continue to put the independent interests of Medway citizens first as Chair of the MSP, whilst also canvassing across the whole of Kent for this position; first as the Tory nominee and secondly as candidate for November 15th. 

The public will want a full-time pair of eyes on crime in Medway and not an individual with an eye on a bigger job elsewhere. Mike therefore should think about his position and dedicate himself full time to getting job. A foot in both camps and roles will look disengenious. 

All eyes are now the great and the 'white-haired' good on Kent County Council; will the blue-rinsers in Kent County Hall support a Medway Conservative candidate? I suspect they will find this difficult. Secondly eyes will be on the ever gregrarious Cllr 'River' MacKinlay, to see whether another Medway Tory will put his truncheon on the table for the top job

Medway is suffering at the moment; as Medway Tory factions play a death dance with each other over Council positions and police sheriffs we are seeing significant cuts to Police budgets of up to 20% and a rise in opportunistic theft; we are seeing crime statistics which were heading downward from 1997-2010 flatlining as upto 500 front line officers are being cut from the thin blue line

The Police are also threatened with privatisation as G4S and other private-providers move into police stations. The profit motive does not sit well with a force which is the last line of defence for individual liberty.

Meanwhile Labour will move ahead with its ballot for our candidate. I am hoping for a strong woman; who can show part-time Collins and sunset Mike a thing or two about managing law and order.

Mid-term blues hit early

With open hostility in the ruling group surrounding positions and the number of officer departures I suspect the hand-quivering clustershambolic leadership of Chambers and Jarrett must be on the close.

All eyes for this week will be on Full Council on Thursday night where we will finally get a confirmation on the Mayor and Deputy Mayor and on the discussion around member allowances. 

Medway Labour of course had a consistent policy on both these issues last year which we believed reflected the public interest; namely a return to the fair points-based system around mayoralty selection, which takes the pathetic partisanship (observed in the Conservative Group this year) out of the Queen's appointed representative for Medway; and a cut of the Conservative party chairman & deputy chairman perks who we believe are 'lapping the cream' of public money whilst the majority of Medway taxpayers continue to pay huge sums of Council tax for poor political leadership.

It is of course good to note that members will be taking a pay cut this year, as per the recommendations of the independent panel, but this does not go far enough in my mind and what we need is specific focus on those mid-level takers of public money.

We do not need so many Tories on the payroll at Gun Wharf. 

The other points to note from the meeting come from the public and member questions for the evening. A number of noticeable themes emerge

The first is that the Tory attempt to introduce a 'fake' Freedom Pass, as promised in their local manifesto in 2011, has clearly backfired badly. The Tories have a terrible record on the Freedom Pass having spent most of 2010 opposing any form of public subsidy for bus travel for young people because of cost, seemingly taken out of a hat, and pubicly lambasting the opposition Labour Party for proposing the idea. In 2011, the Tories took the Freedom Pass and audaciously added it to their local manifesto and claimed Labour were opposed; but the budget in 2011/12 only allocated a pathetic sum to the scheme, and so Labour called the Tory rat out. 

Rightly so, as we now have a scheme which to huge numbers of parents is woefully substandard; and I expect many more will continue to articulate not only the rank Conservative hypocrisy but also why we continue to suffer a worse deal then our neighbours in Gravesham, Sittingbourne and Maidstone who have a Conservative-controlled County Council.

Roads and re-surfacing also make an appearance with the announced overspend of £1.2m on the Stoke Crossing, dubbed the 'Bridge to Nowhere' by the press. With Tory-leaning Parish Chairman and Councillor's citing the money could have been better spent elsewhere, and the public outraged at the scale of spend whilst residential road budgets are seemingly 'gerrymandered' into Tory wards with a number of roads slipping budget cycles, this will prove controvertial.  We all know the Tories have spent millions on road schemes in Chatham no one voted for or wanted, and that have gone millions overbudget; taking money from what could have been spent on residential roads. 

Tories will no doubt spread the blame; who will it be this month... I cant wait. 

A number of other questions relate to the botched care home closures and privatisations which have been totally mishandled by the administration, and which descended into a farce, when the Council refused to extend the consultation on a proposal from Medway Health to take on the closing Balfour Centre. The Tories also ignored local campaigns calling for a limited partnership and stakeholder co-operative model of management favouring overt privatisation. We now go into the future with no public care home provision as a number of privately-owned homes continue to fail CQC reviews. 

The way in which the cabinet managed the Balfour process was nothing short of incompetent; as standard from Medway Tories. 

Marlowe Park and the campaign by Cllr Igwe to safeguard this facility is also on the table; Cllr Igwe led the campaign and called-in the manner in which the Medway PCT communicated and acted. 

Lastly the Community Safety Plan is due to be discussed; now that Cllr OBrien has returned from his 'fact-finding' tour of Kent it is interesting to note the precious little change in the document that all these visits were apparently tasked. Given Medway has seen a massive reduction in crime from 1997-2010 there will surely be commentary around the cuts to PCSOs, cuts to Police numbers and the real concern that opportunistic theft and crime is increasing across our towns. We may also get an announcement on whether our multitiled Cllr Mike will be standing for Police Commissioner on the back of his record as Medway CSP Chair. Then again; we may not.

A busy night ahead. 

Mesothelioma vote highlights lack of local concern

A lot of eyes were on the vote on Tuesday night for the Legal Aid, Setentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, dubbed LASPO by those in Westminster.

This was an important vote, not because it impacts everyone in Medway, but because Medway is currently a hotspot for mesothelioma. Not only is their a moral question therefore to the vote but also one which reflects whether our MPs are custodians for the local electorate, or simply concentrating on other issues.

The Lords had tabled several amendments to the bill which would allow mesothelioma sufferers to have greater legal entitlement and less exploitation by unscrupulous 'no-win, no-fee' legal firms who have been raking in huge fees off the back of peoples suffering. 

Sadly two of our MPs Rehman Chisthi and Mark Reckless failed to support amendment 30, relating specifically to respiratory disease cases, which the Coalition government won by 292 votes to 256, and the more general vote on industrial disease by 297 to 252.

Medway Labour is absolutely right to be dismayed that two Medway Conservative MPs failed to stand up for vulnerable mesothelioma sufferers across Medway. The asbestos death rate is 6.5 per 100,000 people whereas the national average is 2.5. Between 2006 – 2010 106 people from Medway died of mesothelioma, making it a national hotspot for asbestos deaths. Many people were employed at Chatham Dockyard where asbestos was widely used for ship repairs and building. There was also the British Uralite Factory in Higham, Medway where a number of asbestos-based products such as chimney pots and pipes were made from raw asbestos.

Not only does the Dockyard sit in the constituency of Mark Reckless, whose residents have been leading the calls locally for better representation, but Mark is himself a lawyer who should know full well the implications of the amendments. Once again, we have a serious case of him talking about issues which do not directly impact the constituency, whilst talking 'Westminster' centric issues like a referendum on the EU and the nuances of the ECHR. It is totally out of touch with the reality on the ground; people talking about rampant immigration under his government, an economy stagnating, the omnishambles that is the Conservative administration in Gun Wharf, the performance of local schools and the cuts to our armed forces. 

The complete mess that the Conservative Government made over Abu Qatada is alas a Conservative Party mess. The government is, as most voters now know, a clustershambles of Toffs who are simply out of touch. I congratulate Mark for highlighting this 'Olympic-standard screw up' but he has dropped the local ball once again.

Rehman is however a worse offender because at least Mark attended; given hundreds if not thousands of his constituents worked directly at the Chatham Docks, which the Conservative Party closed down in the early 1980s, leaving our towns bereft of blue-collar employment since. He should have been in Parliament at least making an argument either way. I understand he is out of the country at present; but that in itself when Parliament gets a huge holiday entitlement is questionable; I would argue it is not good enough for those in Gillingham & Rainham who did not vote for a part time MP. 

Of course there could be personal reasons to absent yourself from the vote, but none of the other Medway MPs made any apologies or cited a reason for his absence, and nor indeed has he done so on any public forum that I am aware of. It is almost a callous disregard for local issues which is becoming symptomatic of an MP who, if boundary changes are to be believed, needs to seriously up his game. I know huge numbers of Tory colleagues cant even bring themselves to mention his name, but there really isnt any excuse for not attending and speaking up for local residents.

It is interesting to see the local Liberal Democrats on this cause as well; there own colleagues in Westminster shamefully, and that is part of the reason why UKIP has now overtaken them as the third party, rejected the amendments as well. Dont let them pretend otherwise

This vote was symbolic of whether our local MPs would stand up for local voters. Two out of three of them are simply out of touch with the community they purport to represent. 

Public Money wasted by Tories

The £1.8m overspend on botched bus station; and Tories not accepting blame...

The £1.2m overspend on bridge to nowhere; and Tories blaming each other

Tory overspends on these two projects alone: £3m of Council Tax payers money

I thought these two news items neatly juxtapose the current position of the Conservative Administration in Gun Wharf.

They simply can not be trusted with our money.

Meanwhile in the rest of Medway we all have to suffer with potholes and poor road quality

That is all

Medway Times eviction

Medway Times evicted because of 'political' content

The news last week that the Medway Times was evicted from its premises at the Medway Innovation Centre has been met by mumurs of concern amongst the chattering intelligentsia in Gun Wharf and beyond.

The Medway Times, for those that dont know, is an independent news website with a focus on the Medway Towns. Established about six months ago it has presented itself as a niche newsite in that it publishes, in one place, all the press releases from organisations, people and charities from across the Medway Towns.

What became quickly apparent was that the site did not have its own editorial position; it seemed to many to be quite literally a cut and paste of press releases.

It was therefore a surprise, no actually an angered shock, that I read that the Medway Times had been evicted from its premises last week and that the justification for its eviction was based on the content of a number of its press releases.

As a former legal editor of Palatinate (as Treasurer of the Student Union) I had to read over the content. On a number of occassions the articles over-stepped the mark and I would receive legal letters from media lawyers calling for me to withdraw the article because of libel. It is from that process that I know that proving libel is not only expensive but very difficult; in essence as long as their is a reasoned context to say something from evidence that you rationally believe, its likely it is not libel. If you make efforts to redress, in all but the most serious of cases, there is no further recourse.

The allegation by the Medway Times was that they had been evicted because they printed ad-verbatim the press release of Jack Hope.

What I cant understand is how one press release; they printed ad-verbatim and probably in good faith, could lead to a business being evicted on a whim. Surely, even if this were true, and of course that has to be proved, the appropriate sanction would be to request the paper withdrew the piece and print a retraction; which the paper did when requested as I understand. It should have ended there...

But it didnt end there.

What gets more fishy is that according to the Medway Times a senior politician had deliberately intervened in the process to ensure that the independent website was evicted from the premises. Not only is this a commercial breach of sensitivity but it smells fishy when any party (including my own) tries to control the content of the free media.

If true, and this is an if, it presents a very dangerous step indeed; because in effect a politician has used a contractural loop-hole on 'political organisation' to evict an independent media organisation solely for printing, and it is my belief not with malice, articles which could be deemed to libel.

A paper will have an editorial slant and in many cases a vantage point. The irony in this case is that Times has neither and in my mind was not party political; it printed everything sent to it. It is almost apolitical.

I absolutely understand the online forum has to be careful, but to the public this smells like something an overkill of dangerous propotions. My suspicion is that there is something behind this if someone were to dig.

Maybe there are other issues at play but then why would the editor deliberately lurch out as he did if this were solely an issue on premises and rent.

Allowing this type of incident to occur, without redress, makes it look like that political actions have led to the closing of the modern day equivalent of the print press. The public dont respond well to that type of behaviour; anywhere.

People respond badly when the free press is silenced and especially if there is a perceived political motivation behind it.

Luckily for the Medway Times they live to print another day; elsewhere.

Heathrow and Hoo as Tory Truth outs?

As someone with a big mouth you may say, I actually admire Boris Johnson for his brazen ability to put his proverbial foot in it.

Quirky characters in politics can be a good thing; they can make elections more exciting, engaging and energetic.

Boris Johnson however - gaffe prone that he is - presents a clear and present danger to Medway.

Thus far local Conservatives, many of whom slavishly serve the party machine in Westminster, have dutifully followed the line on Boris Johnson.

Many who actually stood apart from him in December and January are now effectively boosom buddies to him now. Endorsing his every move and whim.

I have expressed my major concern that local Conservatives need to make it clear that if they are now backing Boris, which many on the Peninsula appear to be doing, they are effectively backing the Estuary Airport. Boris is the lead, indeed the arch, proponent for the destruction of the Peninsula and with an electoral mandate for a Conservative in London we will see an elected individual with the full force of millions behind him. It makes the prospect of a full-blown fight, an expensive fight at that from your council tax, all but inevitable locally.

And what slipped out today should send shivers down the spine of anyone living on the Peninsula.

All the debate thus far has been about Heathrow v Estuary Airport and whether one woud need to close to open another. What if, the estuary airport was in addition to Heathrow; a smaller airport in the Thames Estuary.

That prospect today came very much closer when Boris spoke to the Evening Standard:

Read the Full Article Here

So there we have it. It is not either / or anymore. It is Heathrow AND Hoo. A very very different position indeed.

Cameron should come clean now; and tell us whether the government is considering the maintenance of Heathrow with additional capacity in the North Kent area.