King of Thanet Council

Bob Bayford

Having just put up Laura Sandys press release http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/2011/05/election-night-glamour-of-democracy.html and read Luke Edwards post http://www.thanetwaves.co.uk/2011/05/bob-bayford-for-pm.html thought I had better not nick his picture so I have run it through a simple piece of hardware, (sorry I don’t do doors) I thought I ought to do another one of my posts on the leadership of the council.

We have recently had an election about the running of the council as some of you may have noticed, however the real choices seem to be going to be made next Thursday at the council.

One thing we are going to get is almost all new senior council officers, including a new chief executive, strangely enough the council don’t seem to have announced who else is replacing who, possibly they don’t think that we are interested.

What’s the phrase, the people of Thanet don’t know they are born, or some such thing. One also wonders how exactly all the new chiefs are selected, I mean do they select each other or are they selected by the representatives that we elected?

Local democracy is one of those peculiar things where the more I find out about it the less I find I understand it, once upon a time I had a rather naïve notion of the local council as being a group of people who we elected by local people to represent them, who then selected a clerk and some people to handle the paperwork and went about the business of running the local area in the way that local people want.

In reality we have three different local councils all responsible for different things with a plethora of incredibly highly paid bureaucrats running a seeming endless number of departments, generating mountains of paper and some how in all this the rubbish gets emptied and if you are very lucky your road gets mended. 

Chances are if you ring up the council and say there is a pothole outside your house, you will be told that you have rung up the wrong council.

In all of this it is quite difficult to see if our elected members make that much difference, or if you as an individual can make any difference at al by contacting one of the elected members and trying to get some democratic representation.

You may for instance phone up your ward councillor and ask them to look into some problem, only to be told that the other political party got elected and won’t tell him or her anything about the issue.

This then leaves your only democratic option as the leader and the other cabinet members, in most cases one would assume the leader to be the obvious choice, particularly when writing to the council.

Like all large organisations, you don’t really expect the leader to reply in person every time, but you do expect to get some sort of reply.

After all what is the elected leadership supposed to be doing, if it isn’t representing the electorate?

Well from my point of view this bloke Bob is very reluctant to reply, despite knowing that in some respects I represent the readers of this blog who I assume are mostly local people.

Now he seems to be saying that he has a mandate to rule based on proportional representation, can this be right?

All the Labour and Conservative councillors working together is an option that sounds good, but I think in practice just means wreak leadership and the council officers pretty much doing what they want, unchecked.

As I have said before this leadership problem is of the council’s own making because of the way they handled the elected leader issue and now we have the situation where three independent councillors hold the balance of power.

Combined with this we have a Conservative group who seem to want to lead in a mainly secretive and exclusive way, they don’t normally issue press releases or communicate their ideas to us.

This leaves us with the perception that either they are not very concerned about local issues or that the situation in the council has got beyond their control and the officers are running rings around them.

Issues that I have looked into here in Ramsgate, like the historic vessels pontoon and the maritime museum suggest a jobsworth rather than common sense approach prevails within the council.

Sticking with the representation issue, the way the election has gone the two main towns are now red, so a Conservative administration would mean no cabinet members living in or representing either of our two main towns. Looking at the state of the towns they do look as though they are being governed by the surrounding villages.

So here we are new strong leader to select, very little constructive public information, something which suggests both the Labour and Conservative groups have gone into different corners.

I wonder if among all of the councillors there is anyone that a substantial majority of councillors would accept as leader, this would be one solution that would give us a strong council.

I wonder if any of the councillors really believe that neither Ramsgate nor Margate should have any cabinet representation.  

Of course the alternative is a leader elected in a a public election by the Thanet Electorate. 

    
Something I am not clear about is what they do if the they can’t make it work, I mean do they just muddle along for four years, or is there some way they can go back to the electorate?

Thanet District Council’s Secret Public Consultation.

More efforts by the council to rig the leadership consultation keep on coming out, the latest information being that they didn’t even tell the councillors that they were holding the consultation.

The video of the meeting is very short and you can watch councillor Johnston saying that she hadn’t been informed of the consultation by council officers, but instead found out from the local paper when the consultation was practically over, that it had apparently been going on for some time.

The video to click on, is the top one, on the page at http://www.thanet.gov.uk/council_meeting_webcast.aspx considering that this meeting is about the future constitution of the council, watching it is an education in local democracy at work.

The council have finally managed to get both council meetings available on the internet, perhaps this had something to do with yesterday’s post, perhaps they were going to do it anyway.

As one would expect the council have opted to host the video files in difficult format, expensive for them and not easy for those with older computers. They have published them in a way that you can’t save them and view them at your leisure, they have also disabled the size expansion facility so you can only view them as thumbnails, presumably to make them as boring as possible, so people will be put off from watching them and the council can say that there was insufficient public interest and bring the whole project to a halt.

Why they didn’t publish them in ordinary video format to one of the free video sites like Youtube one can only guess at.

The one of the extraordinary meeting will form part of my complaints to various organisations, like the electoral commission, if you need it for this sort of purpose you can download it and save it to your pc by clicking on the following link http://www.thanet.gov.uk/files/ExtraordinaryCouncil.flv if you need any help opening it or converting it to a normal video file let me know. I haven’t bunged it up on Youtube as the council have published it with a copyright statement that I don’t want to infringe.

If you prefer to view the main council meeting video files this way and have overcome the technological problems with the file above, here is the one for the much longer main meeting http://www.thanet.gov.uk/files/webcast.flv 413mb so not that large.

Thanet District Council Inaction, are they ashamed of their democracy in action?

This is a case of now you see it, now you don’t. After the elected leader consultation debacle I have been looking out for the webcast of the extraordinary meeting that came at the end of the council’s meeting on 16th of December.

As things stood the webcast of the council meeting is just cut off when you get to that bit at the end of the meeting, now the link to the webcast has vanished altogether from the council’s homepage, the webcast is till there at http://www.thanet.gov.uk/council_meeting_webcast.aspx

This raises a few questions:

Are the so ashamed of the way that the rode over democracy and produced a result that was opposite to the findings of the public consultation, that they are never going to webcast of the extraordinary meeting that they did this at?

Are they ashamed of the main council meeting and have removed all links to the webcast to prevent us from watching it?

Are they hoping that as there is no link to the webcast people won't watch it, so that they can use the public's lack of interest to justify not webcasting future meetings?

Strangely the consultation hasn’t appeared on their, “Recently closed consultation - results and follow up” page at http://www.thanet.gov.uk/council__democracy/consultation.aspx

This raises a few questions:

Will the results of the publication ever be published?

Is there something about this consultation that the council wants to hide?

Now that the council have changed the result of May elections away from the consulted and expressed wishes of the electorate and have effectively left the only course of action open to rectify the situation as one that will cost us the taxpayer £100,000 I have to admit to not really knowing how to proceed.

I could try initiating an E-petition, see http://www.thanet.gov.uk/council---democracy/cllrs-democracy---elections/epetitions.aspx but as the council has already decided to ignore the public view on this subject I think it would probably be a waste of time.

Update, the link has reappeared on the council’s homepage and the council have updated their webcast page.

Now you can watch the extraordinary meeting and the top left hand corner of the full council meeting, this is mostly a movie of a curtain.

Thanet District Council Leadership Chosen

Last night the council held an extraordinary meeting to decide what sort of leadership the council will have for the next four years.

Either a leader elected by the local voters or a leader chosen by the councillors, this decision was based on a consultation aimed at determining the views of the voters.

The result of the consultation was unanimous, all of the local voters who responded said the wanted a democratically elected leader chosen by the local voters.

The council then decided not to adopt the wishes of the voters but to have a leader selected by them the councillors.

The main question here is why ask the voters if you aren’t going to take any notice of what they say?

A day left to say if you want to vote for the leader of Thanet District Council.

You have until 5pm tomorrow 15th December to take part in the council’s leadership consultation, what the council are asking you is do you want to vote for who will be the council’s leader for the next four years at the May election? Or do you want the councillors to do it for you?

You only have to email one of the following two answers to Glenn.Back@thanet.gov.uk with your name and address so he can check that you are on the electoral roll and are eligible to take part.

1 I want a leader of the council elected by the people of Thanet.

2 I want a leader of the council chosen by the councillors.

This link takes you to the councils web page about this http://www.thanet.gov.uk/council__democracy/cllrs_democracy__elections/governance_models_consultation.aspx

The results of this consultation will be the basis on which the council decide what sort of leadership we will have, this link takes you to the officers advice to the councillors about how to make this decision http://tdc-mg-dmz.thanet.gov.uk/Published/C00000141/M00002146/AI00007769/$RevisedPoliticalManagementArrangements.doc.htm

Please pass this information on to anyone who you think may be interested.

Is Thanet District Council Rigging The May Elections

In May the council will either have a new style strong leader, elected by the voters in Thanet at the May election when we vote for the councillors, or it will have a new style strong leader chosen by the councillors.

One or the other has to happen because of an act of parliament passed by the government in 2007.

To decide which of these types of leadership the council will have, the council has to consult the voters to find out which type of council leadership they want, the council has two options for doing this set out in the act, one is to hold a referendum so that the voters can vote for which type of leadership they want, the other is for the council to hold a public consultation to determine what the voters want.

The council has decided, to decide what the voters want, by holding a public consultation, this consultation has been in progress now for eleven weeks and has determined the views of six voters.

To answer the question in the title of this post I don’t intend to present an argument, but instead to ask another question.

Do you think that the leader of the council, that we get after the May elections, will be the same person as the leader we would have got, had the council chosen to decide what the voters want by holding a referendum?

One of the problems with the council’s leadership is accountability, it is very difficult to elicit a response from the current leader and I believe this may be to do with the way he was selected. The following is a quote from the council’s website.

“A strong and stable democracy relies on people using their votes. By voting, you can hold your elected representatives accountable.

Make sure you have your say. Votes are power.”

Click on the link for the page if you want to read the rest of this http://www.thanet.gov.uk/council__democracy/cllrs_democracy__elections/elections_and_voting.aspx

The council officers have published their advice about how the councillors should decide this issue at next weeks council meeting, it is a very odd document, bits of it just don’t make sense, for example:

“8.1 As mentioned earlier in the report the Council must selected its preferred political governance arrangements have regard to the public consultation responses as well as the extent to which the proposals, when implemented, would be likely to assist in securing continuous improvement in the way in which the Councils functions are exercised, having regard to a combination of economy, efficiency and effectiveness.”

Does it mean, select or have selected. I think the difference is make their mind up at the meeting, or come to the meeting with their minds already made up?

4.1 Para 2 “In considering how to approach these requirements you will wish to have regard to the circumstances of today, including both the priority of cutting out all wasteful spending and the Government’s commitments to allow councils to return to the committee system, should they wish to, and on elected mayors.”

Does it mean the governments commitments, the committee system and or elected mayors are wasteful spending?

Here the rest of it read it for your self if you want.

http://tdc-mg-dmz.thanet.gov.uk/Published/C00000141/M00002146/AI00007769/$RevisedPoliticalManagementArrangements.doc.htm

Thanet District Council Leadership Consultation Only Six People Respond

It’s a funny old world, reading the blogs and talking to local people over the years I formed the impression that quite a few people were interested in the way the council is run.

I think the population of Thanet is about 150,000 from memory and I believe the number of those eligible to vote is just under 100,000, so when the council are obliged by the local government act to hold a twelve week consultation about the way the council will be run over the next four years, you would expect quite a few replies.

Well there is only a week of the consultation to go and according to the council only about six people have responded, it isn’t as though it is a complicated consultation, the council are only asking two questions and you only have to make one answer.

1 Do you want to vote for the leader of the council?

2 Do you want the councillors to chose the leader of the council?

You only have to email one of the following two answers to Glenn.Back@thanet.gov.uk with your name and address so he can check that you are on the electoral roll and are eligible to take part.

1 I want a leader of the council elected by the people of Thanet.

2 I want a leader of the council chosen by the councilors.

I asked the council about this consultation ten days ago and have been promised a response, but haven’t received it yet.

I asked my MP to ask the council about this consultation, because time is running out and she got a response from the council, as obviously not many people are interested in this subject, I will put some of the relevant bits below, here is the link to the whole response http://www.thanetonline.com/1110/id8.htm

This all relates to an act of parliament, here is the link to the relevant bit http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2007/28/section/64

Next some parts of the councils response in red.

We have not received many responses to the consultation so far. Of the half-dozen or so we have received, all of those expressing an opinion have stated a preference for the Mayoral model, and that will be reported to the extraordinary meeting of Council on 16 December. It is worth noting, however, that the current statutory threshold for triggering a Mayoral referendum is very nearly 5,000 people on the electoral register. It will be for Council to decide how much weight to give to the relatively small number of responses we have received.

Before I go on I will endeavour to explain this bit.

The Mayoral model, is not as some of you could expect a charming young lady accompanying the mayor but means an elected leader, it has nothing to do with dressing up of either models or ceremonial mayors, think of it as a Boris Johnson type of mayor if you like.

The “statutory threshold for triggering a Mayoral referendum,” is a bit misleading in this context as this is the figure for a mayoral petition organised and presented to the council by a member of the public. It has nothing to do with the figure required for a consultation organised by the council, which is what he is talking about.

I will add to this post if I get time this evening.

Next the really bizarre correspondence between the council and one of the readers of this blog.

Here is the pertinent bit of what he asked the council:

The Act requires that the local authority must publish in one or more newspapers circulating in its area a notice which—(i) states that the authority has drawn up the proposals,(ii) describes the main features of the proposals,(iii) states that copies of a document setting out the proposals are available at their principal office for inspection by members of the public at such times as may be specified in the notice, and(iv) specifies the address of their principal office.I read the local papers fairly closely and I don't remember seeing such a notice published. Please advise in which paper and on what date such a notice was posted.

And this the council’s reply:

Section 64 of the Local Government & Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 requires Councils to consult the public before drawing up their proposals (i.e. before they are put to Council). It goes on to say that after drawing up their proposals (i.e. after Council has taken the decision) those proposals must be published in a local newspaper. So there is no legal requirement for a notice to have been placed in a newspaper at this stage.

In other words the council are interpreting the act as meaning the consultation should be publicised after it has happened.

The King of the council?

This civic throne of leaders, this septic isle,
This dearth of majesty, this seat of Bob,
This other chamber, semi-paradise,
This fortress built by a Leader for himself
Against defection and the hand of law,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious chair set by the silver sea,
Which serves us in the office for us all?
Or as a moat defensive to the group,
Against, less envy of the happier lands,--
This blessed blot, this dirt, this realm, this Thanet.

Robert The Unborn of Thanet Act 2 scene 1

Sorry about that I am loosing patience waiting for council to respond to my questions about the local leadership consultation.

Thanet District Council Leader, the choice is yours, or is it?

Not happy with the way the council is run?

Then you have ten days to change the way that it’s run, so don’t complain afterwards if you don’t take part in the consultation process.

The choice is a simple one:

1 Do you want to vote to elect the leader of the council? (Directly elected Mayor)

2 Do you want the councillors to choose the leader of the council on your behalf? (New-Style Strong Leader)

You can do this by email, send your answer, with your name and address, so that the council can check it against the electoral roll to make sure that can legally take part in the consultation, to Glenn.Back@thanet.gov.uk

You can do this by post, send your answer, with your name and address, so that the council can check it against the electoral roll to make sure that can legally take part in the consultation, to:

Glenn Back
Democratic Services and Scrutiny Manager
Thanet District Council
PO Box 9
Cecil Street
Margate
Kent CT9 1XZ

This link takes you to the council’s webpage about this http://www.thanet.gov.uk/council__democracy/cllrs_democracy__elections/governance_models_consultation.aspx

That’s all really, although I am going to write a lot more about this, partly because it is a very important issue for Thanet and partly because I am not so sure that this will be a fair and democratic process.

In May of next year the council comes under various legal obligations because theoretically we live in a democracy.

One of those obligations is to hold an election to select new councillors, I have no problem with this aspect of the election.

This election however isn’t like the other elections because prior to this election a new the system of government for the council has to be chosen because of the 2007 act.

Now this act stipulates that, this system of government has to be chosen by us the electors and if we choose one of these systems then it makes the May elections very different, as we would also be electing the leader of the council as well as the councillors.

There are two ways that the council can use to decide which method of government, one is an electoral referendum, this way the council would ask us to vote for which system we want to have. The council have decided not to use this method, instead they have opted to use the other way, the public consultation method to decide which system of government to use in Thanet.

I have no problem with this provided the consultation is done legally and properly and the council abide by the results of this consultation.

The problem however is that the council appear to be trying to rig the consultation, it is really a very simple consultation consisting of a choice between two options.

1 Do you want to vote for the leader of the council?

2 Do you want the councillors to choose the leader of the council on your behalf?

This is a very big decision for Thanet we either have an elected mayor, like London has Boris Johnson or we have a leader like the ones we have had in the past, chosen by the councillors.

The deadline for this consultation is the 15th of December that is only eleven days from now and you would expect such an important thing as a change in our system of government to be highly publicised well in advance.

Well the first mention I can find of it in the local papers is in yesterday's Gazette.

You would expect there to be a simple consultation on the councils website explaining the two options and enabling you to tick one of two boxes to make your choice.

You would also expect there to be some explanation of the electoral referendum, which should also be an option that people could choose.

You would also expect this consultation to appear on the councils consultation website http://www.thanet.gov.uk/council__democracy/consultation.aspx but it doesn’t.

The only way that you can take part in this consultation is by writing to the council, either by snail mail or by email.

If you read my previous posts about this http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2010/11/new-style-of-leadership-forced-on.html and http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2010/11/thanet-district-council-leader.html you will know that I have written to the council asking them about this consultation and it is my intention now to publish how I have been getting on with this consultation.

Please be patient if you want to read this as I have to extrapolate the information from various emails, removing councillors and council officers names and I have to sort this out between customers in the bookshop.


My initial email to the Democratic Services & Scrutiny Manager


Hi ****
I would like to take part in the Consultation on new Governance Models for Executive Arrangements, also I would like to publicise this consultation a bit more as it seems to lack the publicity one would expect.

By this I mean there doesn’t seem to have been a press release about it nor does it appear on the council’s consultation web page at http://www.thanet.gov.uk/council__democracy/consultation.aspx

There are some aspects of the consultation that appear to have been presented in a somewhat biased manner, it may well be that I have misunderstood something here so would appreciate any clarification you could give me.

The only mention I can find of this consultation on the council’s website is at http://www.thanet.gov.uk/council__democracy/cllrs_democracy__elections/governance_models_consultation.aspx if there is any consultation form or online survey about this I can’t find it.

Please could you let me know if either of these are available on the council’s website?

The main area where I would like clarification is about the difference of cost between the two options and the way in which the council would proceed if the mayoral option were taken.

It appears from what is said on the council’s website that were the mayoral option to be approved as the preferred option this would necessitate a further and expensive election.

Could you please explain why a mayoral election couldn’t take place at the same time as the May 2011 council elections?

Where is says that the council’s initial preference is for the new-style Leader and Cabinet model, what is meant by the council in this instance? By this I mean are the councillors included in this reference to the council or does this only mean some or all of the officers? Does this mean that all of the officers including yourself are unanimous in supporting the preference for the new-style Leader and Cabinet model?

It appears that in this instance the council’s main concern and their reason for supporting new-style Leader preference relates to the councils inability to remove a democratically elected mayor can you please confirm that this is the case?

In the instance of the council removing a leader does the word “council” mean the same as it does in terms of preferring the new-style Leader option?

Is there any part of the council where I could obtain impartial advice about this issue?

Will the summary of consultation responses be available on the council’s website?

If it will, then will it be available there before the council’s decision?

When will the summary of consultation responses be available for the public to view?

Please could you confirm your receipt of this email as I have had difficulties with the council’s email server in the past?

In view of the very short time remaining I hoping for a prompt reply from you, if you can’t reply today will you please tell me when you will be able to reply by?

Further notes:

My address is

72 King Street
Ramsgate
Kent
CT11 8NY
U. K.
Telephone (01843) 589500

Any information I publicise about this will not contain any officers names or contact details.

His reply

In a message dated 29/11/2010 13:17:16 GMT Standard Time, ***@thanet.gov.uk writes:
Mr ChildI acknowledge receipt pf your email, which I will reply to within thenext few days.

Regards ******
Democratic Services & Scrutiny ManagerThanet District CouncilTel: 01843 577187

my follow up email

>>> 03/12/2010 15:42 >>>
Hi *****, that appears to have been five working days and there appear to eight left before the deadline for the consultation.

I believe I did make it clear that I need the information that I asked you for to help me publicise this consultation properly.

Obviously I could go down the official complaint route here, this would be a little pointless as that ten-day period would take us to after the deadline date here.

Perhaps you think that some of my questions are unreasonable, if this is the case could you please answer the ones you consider to be reasonable.

The first publicity about the issue that I have found appeared in today’s paper, not an official statement by the council but an article by Saul Leese, as I put a small notification about this on my weblog, which I know he reads, then I assume that is where he picked it up from.

I note from the article that all three local residents interviewed were for a mayoral election.

I also note from the paper that the leader of the council has confirmed that he considers consultation on non-controversial issues to be unnecessary, does this mean that as everyone interviewed if for a mayoral election it is seen as non controversial and we will be having a mayoral election without more consultation now?

Either way it would appear that this consultation seems to have such a low profile that very few people will take part in it and because of this I would consider it to be invalid, of little consequence perhaps in terms of consultation however as this consultation effects the content of an election then presumably and election based on an invalid consultation would be a rigged election.

I also notice that the consultation doesn’t even mention the option of a mayoral election referendum, does this mean that the council wouldn’t consider going down this road?

Best regards Michael

His reply

In a message dated 03/12/2010 16:02:04 GMT Standard Time, ****@thanet.gov.uk writes:
Dear Mr Child

Thanks for your follow-up email.

I regret the delay in replying to you, but although mine is the contact name on the web page, I am not in fact "leading" on the governance consultation. I need to liaise with another officer before replying to you, but that officer has been away on a residential course for a few days, and adverse weather has then hampered the ability of that officer to return to work.

I hope to be able to reply to your points early next week, which I believe will still be within the Council's corporate standard for dealing with correspondence.

Regards,

******
Democratic Services & Scrutiny Manager
Thanet District Council
Tel: 01843 577187

My reply

Subject:
Re: Consultation on new Governance Models for Executive Arrangements
Date:
03/12/2010 16:30:34 GMT Standard Time
From:
MichaelChild@aol.com


Sorry to make a fuss about this one *** but is seems to me that the council are trying to rig this consultation and in doing so rig the election.

I have now waited a five working days out of the thirteen and you tell me that you are going to work on the ten working day response rule, during a thirteen working day time frame.

Presumably at the end of the ten days you will tell me the name of the officer I should have contacted in the first place, whose name should have been published on the webpage.

Please could you send me the contact details for that officer now?

If you had told me at the beginning of the week that you were going down this road I would have contacted the electoral commission then.

I am now taking the line that the council is trying to rig the election and will publicise this.

Best regards Michael


As you can see by this point things are getting a little heated and I have ccd the stream of email to the chief executive, leader of the council, local MP and a few other candidates.

I then received the following from the council’s chief executive.

From:
****
To:
MichaelChild@aol.com
CC:
BCC:
Date:
Fri, 3 Dec 2010 16:49

This is not an election it is a decision that will be taken by the council at its special meeting on Dec 16th. The officer dealing is ****** Head of Legal & Democratic Services *******Chief ExecutiveThanet District Council


You may think that he is being a little short with me here, but I have been a bit Difficult over the last few years, so you can concede that he has his reasons.

Here is my reply to the chief exec I have edited it a bit to keep people’s names out of it.

Subject: Te audire non possum. Musa sapientum fixa est in aure
michaelchild to Richard.Samuel - yesterdayMore Details
From:
michaelchild@aol.

To:
*******
CC:
BCC:
Date:
Fri, 3 Dec 2010 18:43

***** I appreciate your courtesy in replying, I know I am not the easiest person to deal with.

I did cc **** Head of Legal & Democratic Services the initial email, but I don’t think he is at home with email, he seems to prefer the telephone.

I did have a long chat with him about the mayoral issue about six months ago and understand his position on an elected mayor and to some extent was persuaded by him.

I would say that there is some consensus on wanting what is best for Thanet here.

The problem for me is the way that the decision is arrived at, added to which is the problem of the position of the leader if that decision is not arrived at properly and legally.

I am afraid that I am more familiar with the 2007 act than I would like to be, it was never my intention to become the council’s conscience but the other bloggers who were, have had to stop.

Anyway that aside the question of who decides which system of government TDC use is not quite as you suggest a matter for councillors to decide.

The question would then be, do you the councillors wish to vote for your leader, or do you want the rabble to?

The problem of course viewed the other way, it is another forgone conclusion, if you have a mayoral referendum then you are asking the people who vote, do you want to vote?

Now all I was asking for here is a properly run and publicised consultation, with the results of that consultation implemented.

The alternative being that I will start a mayoral referendum petition, so if you are considering sending me down this road could you please supply me with the documentation I will need to produce a valid petition?

I am assuming that it would need to correspond with the electoral roll in some way that is acceptable to the council.

In the meantime I stand by my premise that the council is trying to rig the election by rigging the preparation.
Best regards Michael

Here is the chief executive’s reply to me. As you can see I have made it very clear along the line that this information is for publication so I suppose you can call it the chief executives reply to us.

Re: Te audire non possum. Musa sapientum fixa est in aure

Details
From:
****
To:
michaelchild@aol.com

BCC:
Date:
Fri, 3 Dec 2010 23:03

Michael
I'm afraid I gave up latin at 13 so your header left me a bit cold. However the last Government left a piece of law hanging that said that councils had to make a choice about their leadership models.

The incoming government has committed to repeal that law and hand the choice back to local councils. We have been explicitly asked not to spend too much time and cost consulting on something that will be possibly extinct in 5 months or so.

Hence most councils including Thanet have complied with the law and conducted consultation accordingly and proportionally.


The 'excitement' about possible elected Mayors in Thanet or anywhere else is - dare I say it - not shared by most electors.


Elsewhere few people have responded - Ashford had one - and it is only in the big cities where referenda will take place.

Hence my point to you that this is not an election merely one of many decisions the elected council has to take. In our case that will be on 16th December. Given your interest I am sure you will be there.

There is much more detail of course but this is the gist of things.

*****Chief Executive

My reply to the chief executive:

Re: Te audire non possum. Musa sapientum fixa est in aure
michaelchild to *****- 20 min agoMore Details
From:
michaelchild@aol.com

To ***@thanet.gov.uk
CC:
BCC:
Date:
Sat, 4 Dec 2010 16:43

Hi **** sorry about the delay in replying my bookshop has been busier than expected despite the inclement weather.

Also apologies about the Latin, roughly translated it means, I can't hear you. I have a banana in my ear, it can only be excused by saying that my children take an interest in our correspondence.

I have put our correspondence on to the internet as there is also some considerable public interest in this matter.

As I said I would at the beginning of the correspondence I have removed the officers names, I hope that I have published it a way that you consider accurate and appropriate.

My understanding of the policy and intention of the present coalition government is that they with to hand local decision making back to the local electorate and that district councils are intended to one instrument for achieving this, not as you suggest a means on their own.

Could you kindly be more specific as to which act they intend to repeal? I am assuming that repealing the law is a sort of Cromwellian typo and don’t think that going into the constitutional implications of repealing laws would be helpful here.

Could you also please tell what you base your hypothesis on that: “The 'excitement' about possible elected Mayors in Thanet or anywhere else is - dare I say it - not shared by most electors”?

I should point out that the local paper only published the views of three electors and they all seemed to be in favour of an elected mayor, this is all I have to go on.

I assume you are privy to the consultation results, so far, so perhaps you can share these with me, to give me a more accurate picture of the situation.

I am interested that you say that referenda are only available to big cities, I hadn’t realised that they wouldn’t be allowed in Thanet, could you please tell me what the limiting population figure is?

I am interested that the councillors seem to unanimous in their opinion that an elected mayor is not something that they want and wonder would this preclude them from voting on the issue?

I am afraid that the council meeting coincides with my daughters Brownie meeting and I suspect you would be as powerless as I am to cancel such an important engagement, so no I won’t be attending.

Best regards Michael

Thanet District Council Leader, consultation or chaos?

Over the next fortnight the council are asking you about how you want to select a leader of the council.

Do you want to vote for a leader when you vote for the councillors, or do you want the councillors to chose their own leader instead?

At the moment our national government seems to be supporting much more local consultation, I am pretty sure that they are sincere in this intention.

In this instance I take the national government to be the MPs who are part of the coalition supported by the government civil servants, represented by the cabinet and prime minister.

Locally things appear to be at odds with this, the council seems to be against local consultation.

In a way this depends on what you call the council or even what councillors and council officers mean by the word council.

If you take this to be the majority Conservative group, supported by the council officers, represented by the cabinet and council leader, then all is not well when it comes to public consultation.

To quote Bob Bayford the leader of Thanet District Council:

“This new government has promised to cut down on public consultation, decisions should be left to elected members because that is what we have been elected for, there is far too much of this consultation going on”.

I did email Bob to check that he wasn’t misquoted or quoted out of context there, click on the link for the email http://www.thanetonline.com/1110/id5.htm

He didn’t reply, I don’t know is this was because he approved his comments, is just plain rude or is a computer illiterate, so until I hear to the contrary I can only assume that this is the view of the council.

By the council in this instance I mean the officers and councillors collectively.

Back to the consultation about how the leader is selected, I posted about this last week see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2010/11/new-style-of-leadership-forced-on.html now I am particularly worried about how this consultation is being run, more so now in the light of the leaders comments on public consultation.

I have emailed the council’s democratic services about this see http://www.thanetonline.com/1110/id6.htm

New style of leadership forced on Thanet District Council

The council has to change the way that it is governed, the present system of cabinet and leader has to be changed under the 2007 act.

The council is going to change this at the May 2011 elections and this change will be to one of two types of leadership.

Either the new style stronger leader appointed by the councillors, or a leader elected by the ordinary voters, hopefully at the same time as they elect the councillors.

The council is obliged to engage in a public consultation about this issue, if you want to take part in this consultation your views have to be sent to the council by 15th December 2010.

Oddly enough the council doesn’t seem to have one of their normal consultation forms or interactive websites, that I can find, they don’t seem to have sent out a press release about this, in fact information on the council’s website about the whole thing is a bit on the sparse side.

Here is their webpage about it http://www.thanet.gov.uk/council__democracy/cllrs_democracy__elections/governance_models_consultation.aspx
Strange that this consultation doesn’t appear in their list of consultations either, see http://www.thanet.gov.uk/council__democracy/consultation.aspx

In the past all of the councillors who have expressed a view on this seem to be in favour of keeping the status quo. Well that isn’t an option anymore, so it would be interesting to hear what they think.

I have discussed this in some detail with some of the senior council officers and they seem to very concerned about the prospect of us, the electorate, choosing a leader.

At the moment they seem to be saying that no matter what the result of the consultation they wouldn’t allow a new leader to be elected at the same time as the councillors, as this would make the electorate electing a leader more expensive, what we apper to have here is a rigged consultation.

They are in effect saying that if you want to choose the leader of the council they will ensure that it is more expensive.

My main gripe with the current system is that the cabinet chooses the leader and the leader chooses the cabinet.

OK having written this, I have to admit that the workings of local government is not something that I understand that well, so it may contain mistakes and corrections would be welcome.