Of course, YourMedway publishes the whole paper as a PDF or via an on-line reader, which is far better overall. Interestingly there weren’t any letters on this topic in this week’s issue. There was easily enough time to get them in, and plenty of room on the letters pages (just two part-pages this week), so a bit odd.

Anyway: it’ll be interesting to see what the public-at-large make of all this. I suspect that without the rabble-rousing nature of those with vested interests (i.e. the opposition party members) and the media slant, most of Medway’s people probably either won’t care much if at all, or will be pleased that their elected representatives are going to actually vote for a mayor.

They might well prefer this to having it being essentially dictated by bureaucratic procedures (which, as your explanation clearly shows, are much more complex and involved than a straight vote, as a moment’s independent thought would show) somewhat like a EU Directive.

At last the Mayor will always represent the largest group of residents of Medway (not a single ward: the Mayoralty represents the whole borough) who expressed an opinion at the Ballot Box, bringing Medway into line with most other councils.