Thanet Election Special

Sitting on Westbrook beach yesterday I tried to read the Thanet Conservative Manifesto on my rather old mobile internet phone, this thing is known by my children as Dad’s RaspBerry and dates from when mobile internet was expensive and exclusive, all I got was a message saying “file type not supported”

This post is in an experimental stage at the moment, click on the image to enlarge it and you will notice the dog in the sky.

I will add to it once I have made sure I can read all three parties manifestos on my RaspBerry   

Conservative Manifesto 

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/411/id10.htm

Labour Manifesto

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/shop411/id3.htm

Liberal Democrat Manifesto

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/411/id8.htm 

List of candidates

http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/2011/04/election-of-district-and-townparish.html

My postal voting form has now turned up and I am left with the problem that I have only had one flyer, that was from Gerry O’Donnell and spoken to two of the candidates, Gerry O’Donnell and David Green.

I am in the Eastcliff ward, run shop in the middle of it and have been asking everyone I know who lives in this ward if they know anything about any of the other candidates.

As a starting point local politicians who reply to reasonable questions about local issues get my vote.

Funny thing local democracy while all this is going on the real players in the game and the people who cost us the most are being switched around with no public input whatsoever. Richard Samuel replaced by Sue McGonigal, Brian White replaced by Glen Black and so on.

Even more ludicrous is the business of us electing the council leader, you will remember the council held what they called a public consultation about this and all the people who responded said they would rather elect a leader than have one chosen by one of the local political groups. The council decided they didn’t like this idea so didn’t even consider it. Well that’s public consultation for you. So ultimately I suppose the choice now is between Clive Hart and Bob Bayford.

I am usually pretty restrained about using names here but at the moment these names are all published elsewhere on the web.

What I am asking. Who? Myself really I suppose, is what are we engaging in here and why do so few people bother to vote, is it democracy? You can chose between these two leaders.

Obviously the election is going to be a pretty close run thing, suppose the balance of power is held by the independents, frankly with most of my candidates being unknowns and some of the independents being very well known, there is certainly a chance.

On the one day of the year when crucifying our leaders is in some of our minds, perhaps humanity need to do this sort of thing from time to time, I wonder if we should investigate some of our historical methods of leadership.

At some time before the conquest there has been a suggestion that it was the person who could pee furthest up the mast of a longship who was destined to rule.

This seemed to be a bit jumbled up with the best fighters, local lords often went out into the middle east to fight for a bit, it was the crusades then, perhaps now the grail could be substituted for the oil supply.

I think here in Thanet a local Knight, the prior or abbess of the local monastery, slowly moved to the prominent figures in the local trades guilds the burgers ruling, of course the bishop would have been involved too.