Thanet District Council Hung, Election Special

 The, were do we go from here? Question must be surfacing in the minds of several of our councillors.

Neither party has a clear mandate to run Thanet, nor do the independents have any real mandate as we have three independent councillors now the same number we had before the election.

I suspect that I am going to make some mistakes in this next bit, so any corrections or explanations in the comments please.  

 What comes next is the council elects a new style strong leader, because of the legislation laid down by the last government, the old weaker leader or leader for one year isn’t an option.

There is the new Localism Bill coming soon, probably about a years time, but I don’t think that this will make much difference to the new strong leader business.

 The new strong leader will then be responsible for:

Determining the size of the Cabinet;

Appointing the members of the Cabinet;

Allocating portfolios or areas of responsibility to the various Cabinet Members;

Allocating decision-making powers to the Cabinet and to individual Cabinet Members; and removing and replacing Cabinet Members.

When the council decided against the unanimous results of the public consultation to have a leader chosen by the other councillors and not a leader elected by the local voters, they made a definite decision between two leaders who were already in place.

The Labour councillors decided they would have Bob Bayford for leader if they lost and the Conservative councillors decided they would have Clive Hart for leader if they lost. Perhaps this was a case of better the devil you know.

 Now their decision has created a rather unusual position, the new stronger leader of the council won’t be chosen by the voters in an election, won’t be chosen by the majority party’s councillors, but will be chosen by three independent councillors, Jack Cohen, Robert Grove and Thomas King.

Hopefully, the three wise men.

This leads to the interesting thought that one or both of the two main parties may put up a different leader as candidate, one that would either be more acceptable to the other main party, or indeed the three wise men.

Looking at the national trend I wouldn’t say that the local Conservatives did that well and certainly they don’t seem to have any seats in the two main Thanet towns. When it comes to Ramsgate and Margate Labour do indeed seem to have a strong mandate.

In a general sense I think that both parties prospective leaders were chosen with that party having a strong mandate to govern in mind, a problem here is that the leadership job is really a full time one with low pay and really needs someone in their prime to do it. By this I mean someone who would already have a full time and reasonably well paid job, it isn’t really a job for someone in retirement.

With a strong mandate this can be overcome by having a figurehead leader supported by a group of councillors who are in their primes. Strong organisational and communication skills being required, in short a team effort. There is sense where this may not work so well where the leader hasn’t a strong mandate and may have to give out positions of responsibility to stay in power.

I should point out here that there is one way to remove a new strong leader and this is by a full council vote.

My recent experience of writing to the leader asking why the maritime museum hasn’t opened and getting no reply or even an acknowledgment of receipt, suggests that all is not quite well in terms normal organisations skills and keeping ones finger on the pulse.

It is in fact more suggestive of a muddled operation where council officers are expanding their own domains within Parkinson’s law, rather than a leadership ensuring timely and appropriate benefits to the area.

I intend to ramble on about this one today as thoughts occur to me, the results are in the post below and on the council’s website although the comprehensive breakdown of who got how many votes hasn’t appeared there yet.   

The detailed results are now published at http://tdc-mg-dmz.thanet.gov.uk/mgElectionElectionAreaResults.aspx?EID=49&RPID=1265874

An interesting one for me was that Payam Tamiz got 312 votes, was this based on the fact that it said, The Conservative Party Candidate, next to his name on the ballot paper?


Update the parish and town council results are out, with all of Ramsgate’s independents gone, the results hardly seem believable.  

Parish of Acol

Sheila Mary Patricia Bransfield No description


Jonathan Henry Inchley No description

Helen Mitchell No description

Bob Norris Other

Elizabeth O'Reilly Other

Parish of Birchington -

Birchington North

Ward Bill Furness Liberal Democrats

Steve Hayden Independent

Bernard Anthony La Roche Independent

Parish of Birchington - Birchington South Ward

Josh Coombs Other

Amelia Marie West Independent

Linda Ann Wright Other

Parish of Broadstairs and St Peter's - Bradstowe Ward

Bill Epps Conservative Party

Bill Hayton Conservative Party

David Saunders Conservative Party

Parish of Broadstairs and St Peter's - Kingsgate Ward

Robert William Bayford Conservative Party Candidate

Parish of Broadstairs and St Peter's - Viking Ward

Jo Gee Conservative Party


Mave Saunders Conservative Party

Timothy Bernard Seed Conservative Party

Chris Wells Conservative Party Candidate


Parish of Cliffsend

 Emma Louise Best No description

Maureen Fiander No description

Philip Griffiths No description

Beryl Florence Harrison No description

Vera Ellen Hovenden No description

Ratna Ratnasingham Other

Parish of Manston

William James Bell No description

Jennifer Mabel Fletcher No description

Linda Samme Other

Parish of Monkton

Gilly Brown No description

Nick Cole Independent

Tony Davies No description

David John Spillett No description

John Alexander Way No description

Parish of Ramsgate - Central Harbour Ward

Peter Campbell The Labour Party Candidate

Mary Dwyer The Labour Party Candidate

Tony Ovenden The Labour Party Candidate

Parish of Ramsgate - Eastcliff Ward

Rick Everitt The Labour Party Candidate

David Green The Labour Party Candidate

Corinna Huxley The Labour Party Candidate

Parish of Ramsgate - Nethercourt Ward

Steven Alexandrou The Labour Party Candidate

Kim Gibson The Labour Party Candidate

Parish of Ramsgate - Newington Ward

Pat Moore The Labour Party Candidate

Richard Russell Nicholson The Labour Party Candidate

Parish of Ramsgate - Northwood Ward

Kay Dark The Labour Party Candidate

Ian Driver The Labour Party Candidate

Elizabeth Green The Labour Party Candidate

Parish of Ramsgate - Pegwell Ward

Patrick Edward Doyle Conservative Party

Parish of Ramsgate - Sir Moses Montefiore Ward

Michelle Fenner The Labour Party Candidate

Alan Poole The Labour Party Candidate

Parish of St Nicholas at Wade and Sarre

Bernard Eric David Clayson No description

Richard Charles Garrett No description

Terry Robson No description

Terry Waterton No description

Election Special including the absolute duffers guide to AV

 After not having received anything from either the Labour or Conservative parties relating to tomorrows election, I emailed both parties yesterday saying that I was trying to fill out my postal vote wosisname and didn’t have any info on their candidates.

I got an email response from the Conservatives listing the names of their candidates standing in my ward, as they were already listed on the ballot paper I had told them I was trying to fill out, this wasn’t particularly helpful. It is this type of gormless logic that makes one wish one had a Monster Raving Loony Party candidate.

The Labour Party sent a candidate, so at least I got a response.

Next AV after a very uphill discussion about what this actually means, this is a best shot at a duffers explanation.

There are three candidates standing in the imaginary constituency of Fanit.

Ludicrous Lazyboy, standing for the Loony Left Party.

Ridiculous Roarer, standing for the Raving Right Party.

Mischievous Michael, standing for the Mad Middle Party.

So the three candidates are LL, RR and MM.

Under the present first past the post system 31 people vote for LL, 30 for RR and 30 for MM, LL gets elected.

Under AV 31 people vote for LL, 30 for RR and 30 for MM, as their first choice,

None of the Loony Left voters want the Raving Right Party to get in so they make their second choice MM.

None of the Raving Right voters want the Loony left to get in so they make their second choice MM, MM gets elected.

It does look as though the local elections here in Thanet are going to be a close run thing, so I would say it is worth making an extra effort to vote as every vote will probably count.

I have to admit that there seems to be a bit of a state of apathy about the whole thing here in Ramsgate neither party seems to have that much to offer us, with the main emphasis being on Margate. Certainly at the moment Margate needs all the help it can get so I don’t think anyone resents this, there is a bit of a things couldn’t get much worse feel to the whole thing, in terms of council owned assets there really isn’t that much left to close here.

Press releases in and published from Laura Sandys and Clive Hart, both asking us to vote tomorrow but nothing in from the Conservative candidates, do they want us to vote?

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.

Thanet Conservative candidate resigns

The article is in the Evening Standard see http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23944760-tory-candidate-resigns-over-thanet-girls-are-slags-outburst.do

It’s in the paper, so it must be right, I will try and find out a bit more about this one. 


This really doesn’t look too good, the offending material has been removed from Facebook but is still all in Google’s cache, frankly too offensive to publish on this Blog.

Comment from Jim Nock, the chairman of the association is that: 

Payam Tamiz understands that his Facebook postings were unacceptable and offensive and as a consequence he has, this morning, resigned from the Conservative party and apologises unreservedly for the offense he has caused".  

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.

Thanet Election Special

The council have published the lists of persons nominated to stand in the forthcoming local elections, these are the elections where you vote for the Thanet District Council councillors and the town or parish council councillors.

I have published them on the Thanet Press release blog, here http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/2011/04/election-of-district-and-townparish.html I hope I didn’t miss anyone out, please let me know if I did.

Thanet District Council have also published this list on their website, although you may have a bit of a job finding it and when you do they have published it in the most peculiar way imaginable. 

Most people when putting a document on to the internet use html which is a computer code that you internet browser turns into what you see, what the council have done is to publish each wards list of candidates as a separate text file and put up a page of links to these files, see http://www.thanet.gov.uk/council__democracy/cllrs_democracy__elections/elections_and_voting/candidates_at_lg_election.aspx

What happens when you click on the link will depend on what programs you have installed on your computer and how they are configured. I would say that on most computers clicking on the link would cause the document to open in Microsoft Word.

Having just tried to look as who is standing where, I gave up opening documents lifted the whole lot and published them on the press release blog.

Budget protest in Ramsgate today

I heard on the BBC news there were going to protests in some towns today including Ramsgate, this seemed to be something to do with public sector pay, but was all a bit vague.

Anyway I went off to see what this was about and it did indeed seem to be something to do with today’s budget, as this was during my lunch time and the budget hadn’t been read it made things a bit difficult for the protesters.

I was a bit difficult to understand what it was that they wanted people to do about the budget that they didn’t know the content of as well. They were in Ramsgate Marketplace with a banner that read STUFF THE MARKET, their caps and indeed they were shouting through a megaphone.

Here is the link to the inevitable pictures http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/610/id30.htm
Here is a little admission of mine, during the last few days when anyone from Jehovah’s Witness, Big Issue seller or political protester tries to either hand me a leaflet or sell me something, I now hand them a card with the address of this blog on it and tell them that the pictures of them will be published online later today and linked to the blog post. So far it has done the trick every time.