Not a Thanet Election Special

 Did you read the small print? Or do you think that we are voting for the same system of local government as we did last time?

This time when whoever gets elected returns to the council offices our system of government will be the new stronger leader and cabinet system. This means whoever is the leader of the council, they will have more power.

There was an alternative to this system, which was an elected leader, the council had a public consultation about this, it was so badly publicised that very few people knew about it and therefore took part in it.

 All of those of us who found out about it and took part wanted to have an elected leader. As the situation stands at the moment the two main parties will chose a leader and the money is on Clive Hart or Bob Bayford.

I don’t know if you have ever been to a party where a policeman and a criminal have been invited and they naturally gravitate towards each other, different ends of the same word, but world away from the rest of us.

The local politicians Labour and Conservative were confronted by a situation like this; the choice before them was something like this. If you don’t get elected, would you prefer a leader chosen by the opposition councillors or by the Thanet electorate i.e. the voting public?

 Most of them didn’t even seem to think about this one, not even with the unanimous result of the public consultation in favour of an elected leader, better someone from the same world than the world the rest of us live in.

So certainly one thing we will be voting for this week is our new stronger leader, albeit by proxy.

Of course you don’t really know which leader you are really voting for until after the election, so it could theoretically be any one of the local councillors, even one you voted for.

 There is always a bit of confusion about local councillors and local council officers, local council officers are not chosen by us, as far as I can see they are chosen by other local council officers.

Local councillors on the other hand are elected by us and theoretically are supposed to represent us the voters, I think the idea is that they are supposed to make local government do what we want it to do and not exactly what the paid officers want it to do.

Because in order to choose the leader one or another of the two main parties has to get the most councillors, and because most people in Thanet either vote Conservative or Labour in every election, without considering who they are actually voting for, both Labour and Conservative put up a candidate for all 52 seats.

 It is a forgone conclusion that most of these candidates won’t actually do very much, some won’t even answer your letters or emails, let alone try and steer the council into to doing what local people want.

Both main parties have had a problem with a potential candidate in this election, one was pushed and the other one jumped.

One was the Labour councillor Mark Nottingham, he was a councillor who did in fact answer letters and emails and like him or dislike him he took ones problems to the council and tried to get them sorted out.

 I think one thing that was very much against him was that he was relatively young and outspoken, some say he had his eyes on the post of Labour leader, I think the worst thing he did in the eyes of the other councillors was to publish his views on the internet where local people could read them and even disagree with them.

The other was the Conservative candidate Payam Tamiz well he is very young and engaged in the world of the very young adults on the internet on FaceBook. I am pretty old and think I have lost track of what is just humorous, in the world of young adults and what is seen as offensive.

Certainly when I was a young adult, I and the other young adults did things that the then older generation found unacceptable, they perhaps could understand what we said most of the time, but were far away from understanding what we meant.

 Anyway the local Conservative party have certainly dropped this young man and don’t appear to have given him any help in extracting himself from the mess he is in.

What is happening now is that Payam Tamiz is going down the ultimately far more damaging path of trying to lie his way into a seemingly less compromising position, saying that this all happened a long time ago and quite differently to how it actually did.

The problem here is that the internet, in fact anything to do with computers, doesn’t let you delete anything or disown anything, if you write something on a piece of paper, when you burn it and crumble up the ashes it’s gone, with IT if you delete something it is inclined to say visible often for years and visible to everyone.

 I haven’t looked at this in great detail, but according to Googles page cache he was a joint administrator (to clarify this I am the sole administrator of this blog, it means I write it and control the comments on it) and posted on the FaceBook site called “Girls in THANET...you are all slags , hoes , brasses , and bheads.” On the 13^th April 2011, possibly more recently than that.

Viewed objectively the content of this site is basically young people of both sexes discussing the proposition, Girls in THANET...you are all slags , hoes , brasses , and bheads, I don’t think any of them considered that the proposition shouldn’t have been proposed, nor do any of them seem to take offence at the proposition, although several of them consider that the proposition needs amendment.

What I am getting at here is that what I take issue with and what offends me the most is that one of our local political groups handled both the selection of this candidates and his subsequent departure badly.

Also that the other local political party handled the deselection of Mark Nottingham badly, here we have a situation where all Mark seems to have done, is to have been a good and conscientious ward councillor, who was a bit too outspoken on the internet.

 Without the internet I doubt if either issue would have come to light, so without doubt we have an election that has already been effected by the internet, and it would appear that both political parties already are very good at using the internet badly.

Both issues have put me off of voting for either main party, based on the grounds that I want that party to govern Thanet, or on the grounds that I want either of the parties leaders to be new strong leader of the council.

Conversely there is very little from either party on the internet telling one about their candidates, or if there is I can’t find it which with the internet is just as bad.

There is also a sense, when voting in our system, that one could be voting to keep the other main party out of power, in Thanet if you don’t want Labour, your best bet is to vote Conservative and vice versa.

One thing that everyone I have spoken to seems so agree on is that this election is going to be a close run thing, there is a reasonable chance that either party could win or that the independents could wind up holding the balance of power.

In this situation I believe that both parties would put up a candidate for new strong leader and the whole council would then decide which one to endorse, I wonder in this instance would the candidates be the same.

 One problem for me when considering which political party and therefore leader we have in power, is that I have only taken an interest in local politics, to the extent of writing to local politicians, during the last eight years of Conservative rule.

More recently I have written to local politicians as the administrator of this blog, where in a sense I am writing on behalf of the three and a half thousand people who read it.

Different issues come and go and I try writing to different local councillors about them, mostly just to find out what is going on, the last issue being why hasn’t the maritime museum opened for Easter.

My Thanet council ward councillors are Labour and town council ward councillors Labour and independent, some of them reply to me but none of them claim to know what is going on with this issue.

That leaves cabinet members and the council leader, who presumably believe that in some way they represent Ramsgate, they are surprisingly reluctant to reply, or at least reply in any meaningful way.

As an example of what I mean is that I have twice emailed the current leader once just before the Easter bank holiday and once just before this royal wedding bank holiday asking why the maritime museum hasn’t opened and on both occasions I haven’t received any response whatsoever from him. 

When it comes to local government one thing I want to fairly certain of is that one of the elected representatives who is some position of power and who has some idea of what is going on, will at least have the courtesy to reply to me, even if it is only to say that they can’t or won’t tell me what is going on.

Here in my own ward and in this part of Ramsgate, things are not so good at the moment, this is partly to do with local government action and partly to do with local government inaction.

Business wise I am in the part of Ramsgate that was supposed to be pedestrianised but despite all of the local consultation and promises didn’t, so it’s broken road and pavement.

I have suffered from years of what’s happened to our seafront, in front of the eastcliff from the vanishing amusements to the vanishing parking. The surreal Pleasurama site, including major roadworks for a development that never happened, followed by the roadworks all being dug up again and re-laid for a development that is now years behind schedule and although now there is finally some on site activity, it isn’t the activity that we were all lead to expect.

In fact no one tells us the people who live here what is going on, promises of public information but no actual results.

There is also the business of the community housing in this part of Ramsgate and our council owned assets I suppose the question here is could we have done worse here under any outer type of administration.

I have been onto the internet to try and find out something about the candidates that we are supposed to be voting for Spokes East Kent Cycle Campaign asked them all some questions, and have published the answers of those candidates who replied on the internet.


There is a dropdown on the webpage and you should be able to find your ward on it, this at least gives some idea of candidates that are likely to reply to correspondence, here is the link http://www.spokeseastkent.org.uk/election/may-2011/eastcliff-ward-thanet-district

A few of the candidates appear on the Broadstairs online website, where you can ask them questions, here is the link http://broadstairsonline.co.uk/candidate/bill-pitt the links to the other candidates on the right of the page you arrive at.