Meanwhile, I have written about the result itself, and what it might mean for the future, on my own ‘blog HERE.

After Desmond Swayne’s (actually very good) fifteen-minute speech at a dinner at Gillingham Golf Club, which also had a local reporter present, I asked him a question about the Conservative Party’s thoughts on where we go after the resounding success at Haltemprice and Howden. His response showed clearly how the party is very strongly in tune with this whole issue and for what David Davis was campaigning.

David Cameron himself has seemed a little reserved when asked about this whole resignation and by-election business, and the more experienced of us who have dealt with the media will have understood that this was done for very good reasons. However it has (among other Westminster Village originating reports) given scope for opponents to imply that there are major splits within the party.

In reality, although inevitably there will be differing opinions and feelings, as one would expect within a party with almost certainly the “broadest church” membership of any (and all of this is healthy), in reality it became beyond doubt that the two Davids are in accord on policy, and the party is behind them and the civil liberties issue. Swayne’s choice of words, delivery, and his body language all showed that very strongly, from one of the very people in the country who really knows, from the top of the Conservative Party.

What he said is encouraging for those who might think that Cameron and his team are just a cloning of the Blair formula. They most certainly are not! Yes, they’ll have to start from whatever situation the country is in at the time they come to government, just as Mrs Thatcher did nearly thirty years ago in 1979.

History is repeating itself to an extent, and the huge damage that has been done to our nation in the economic, freedoms and crime and justice arenas in particular, will take time to repair, just as they did under Mrs Thatcher.

The conclusion one must draw from David Davis’s result, Cameron’s speech last Monday, what I heard yesterday eveing, and all the other indicators, is that the Conservatives will be next government and will be able to mend our poor, broken nation. By applying Occam’s razor, we find that they are the only party capable of doing so. A few of the other parties might have plans to deal with one or two major issues, but none of them is credible in terms of getting Britain back on its feet and functioning how it should and could.

Fortunately, none of those others stands any realistic chance of winning the next General Election, and the chances of a hung parliament are now rapidly receding, so there will need to be no diluting of the required efforts that a coalition with (say) the LibDems would undoubtedly result in being inflicted upon us.

David Davis’s by-election win will go into the history books, of that I have no doubt. It will mark the moment when the country turned sharply toward preserving freedoms, after a long period of this topic being below most people’s radar.

This is the point at which the people (thousands of whom have written comments on the subject) clearly said “No!” to Labour’s erosion of our liberties, publicly, electorally and in discussions in the home, pub and workplace. The rot stops here!

The Labour Party is in a very difficult position, and it is difficult to see a way forward that they can ‘sell’ to their membership and to a sizable number of the British public.

The party itself is still in dire financial straits, and the Unions obviously want (expect?) their agenda to be implemented as government policy in exchange for bailing the party out yet again. This has been covered all over the media recently, though it has now gone quiet so we must assume that talks are being held even more secretly than usual for such events.

Meanwhile, the deep unpopularity of Gordon Brown has put the party into possibly the trickiest position it has ever experienced — certainly in the past several decades. A change of Leader after just a year would be extremely humiliating, and there would be widespread calls for a General Election to give the replacement PM a clear mandate. This call would come just as much from Labour Party members and Labour supporters as from elsewhere. However that as-yet hypothetical election seems doomed to result in a Conservative Government, even if it fails to win an overall majority of seats in the Commons.

However, it is clear to observers and commentators right across the political spectrum that the longer a General Election is left, the worse it will be for Labour. Not only would the prospect of an overall Conservative majority increase with time, as the country plunges deeper into the mire, but also the period of time that Labour would have to expect to be out of power would rocket upward from its present two-to-three terms to a generation or more.

It isn’t as if a change of leader would improve Labour’s standing, as they have no real talent suited to the position of Prime Minister, even on a caretaker basis. Polls have shown that the public would be even less supportive under any of the feasible alternative leaders than they already are under Gordon Brown’s premiership.

Harriet Harman would probably be the worst choice of all, especially electorally. Few male voters would support someone so vehemently anti-men (as the latest Fathers 4 Justice action shows) so that’s almost half the nation’s possible votes that would be threatened by having Harman running Britain. Some of her policies, including very recent announcements that will still be in people’s minds for some time to come, are so extreme as to assure Labour of yet another significant drop in support should they put her in charge. It would be political suicide.

So, where do Labour go? The least bad option would be for Gordon Brown to announce that failing health means he has to step down as PM, and to call a General Election this autumn. I wonder whether they have the wisdom to bite the bullet and take this path. Even knowing that the alternatives will prove far worse for them in the longer run, can they think beyond the here and now and make such a decision?

It doesn’t seem to be in their natures to do so, and I suspect that the Conservative Party chiefs are well aware of how Labour are most likely to go and are planning their own strategy with that taken into account. They will also have contingency plans ready in case Labour do twig, and go for the resignation and election (or even just the election, with Brown still in office) .

Whatever they decide to do, let’s just hope they don’t completely wreck the country in the process. It has been speculated in some places (I have seen it in three completely independent places) that — in order to damage the future Conservative Government’s credibility — they will pursue a so-called “scorched Earth” policy, deliberately turning our country into the worst possible mess they can make of it. This would be unsurprising, as Labour are well known for putting their own political aims and ambitions above everything and everyone else.

There are certainly going to be some very interesting times ahead…

This last week was dominated by the Ray Lewis business and the Glasgow East by-election (most notably, Labour’s difficulty in finding a candidate). There were also a sprinkling of other issues and happenings, such as the G8 summit — which appears to have had little media or ‘blog coverage.

Possibly the most interesting facet of the Lewis affair is that it all concerned matters from over a decade ago. They are of course still important, and the allegations must be thoroughly investigated — but even if found to be valid (and there is at least one that shows relatively mild dishonesty — the “JP” claim on Lewis’s CV) it has to be said that Lewis (and Boris Johnson) did the right thing by his departure.

Yes, full checks should have been made before he was taken on. My personal suspicion is that — as a “Cameron man” — Lewis might well have been assumed to have had all the checks done by Conservative Party Central Office before David Cameron recommended him (or however it was done) to Boris. Whatever the cause, lessons will need to be learned. It is quite possible that there is an endemic problem at City Hall, which would explain how other seemingly dodgy characters such as Lee Jasper were taken on. I don’t know how far back Jasper’s “history” goes, but it is unlikely to be just eight years.

Fortunately, Boris is sufficiently astute to learn and act to ensure there is no repeat. He is new at the job of Mayor of London and all it entails, so I (and, I suspect, many others) am prepared to cut him a bit of slack in these early times — as long as he tightens up his ship’s operations and procedures. His prompt action in this case — in contrast to the way Ken Livingstone handled the Jasper issue (which went on for many months before Jasper finally departed) — shows that he has a markedly different attitude and takes his responsibilities very seriously.

Interestingly, the mainstream media behaviour in these two parallel cases has also shown differences in how they treated the two cases. Even though the allegations against Lee Jasper concerned what he was claimed to be doing with huge sums of public money at that time (i.e. not from a decade or more ago, and certainly very serious in nature), it was only one newspaper — and initially just one reporter on that paper — who was pursuing the Jasper story.

By contrast, the (largely Left-leaning) British mainstream media came out almost universally, all guns blazing, against Ray Lewis and (as far as they could) Boris Johnson at more-or-less the first sniff of a story. The effort they must have put in between them to get hold of what they have been putting about is vastly (perhaps infinitely?) greater than they did (with the singular exception of Andrew Gilligan at the London Standard) concerning Jasper.

Now there’s a lesson for all of us to learn, in all of this: we really cannot trust the media to be impartial.

No, not the Davids Owen and Steel: that was a very long time ago!

Rather, as he had promised to do, Conservative Party Leader David Cameron has now been to the Haltemprice and Howden constituency to support David Davis and what might be called his pro-liberty campaign. This three-minute-long video provides just a flavour of how that went.

This is a tricky issue for those of us who genuinely want to find out what people’s wishes are, their opinions, and (around election times in particular) their voting intentions if they are prepared to disclose this. Incidentally, that last is actually quite useful as far as the one questioned is concerned, but that is a lengthy discussion, so is for another time, I think.

Being pestered on one’s own doorstep, or in the street, is something about which many of us feel uncomfortable. So much “cold calling” and similar still goes on in this way, especially as other forms of cold calling have (rightly) been outlawed, such as by telephone, fax or email. Obviously, this was done for very good reasons: it wasn’t a spurious reaction, but in the interests of consumer protection.

Not that the legislation stops them: they merely ring, fax or email from abroad instead. Obviously, any outfit going to such lengths to flout our British laws has to be dodgy, by definition — and that leads me onto my subject for today.

Yes, it’s the ongoing saga of energy providers to pay people to come around with clipboards and identity badges to try to persuade you to change your energy provider. The fact that they feel the need to “cold call” in this way — despite the clear message from legislation in this area that the practice is considered unacceptable — once again shows that they are not to be trusted — ever!

It is nowadays well known that the cold-calling “representatives” at your door are very highly trained to elicit a sale, particularly to the most vulnerable and susceptible members of society, and even in extremely difficult circumstances — they have the “patter” and the techniques to break down resistance. Personally, I put them in the same category as all others with a similar self-serving agenda. To me, they are amongst the lowest of the low. I can and do handle them, usually quite emphatically after reminding them that no reputable business would conduct itself in such a manner (which it plainly wouldn’t).

I permanently “blacklist” any organisation that ever tries this on: they will never get my business. This is the only way to discourage these people — make sure they lose out through their dubious practices.

Remember that, no matter how attractive the sales pitch might be, that is all it is. The rep’ will do very well out of a sale (i.e. by signing-up to them) as will the company behind the initiative. These people aren’t trudging around our streets as volunteers — they are well-paid employees (or equivalent) of very profitable companies.

My advice: don’t deal with them — ever!

Councillor Ward is one of the 3 Councillors for Rochester South & Horsted Ward on Medway Council – you can view his website here.

A small group of friends go out for a meal at the local Macdonalds (or similar). On checking the money they have hey find there isn’t enough for them all to have (say) a burger, fries and a cup of tea or coffee. So, they pick on the least liked member of the group and say “Sorry, you’re having just the burger — no fries, no drink — so that the rest of us can have ours.”

That’s what the Government wheeze called “floor damping” means to Medway Council and Medway residents: several million pounds taken away after an already poor financial settlement, for no proper reason.

In the case of our group of friends, the correct approach is of course obvious: all to have their burgers and fries, and make a brew-up when they get home. It’s what I’d have done!

Instead, central Government chooses to take millions away from Medway every year, starting two years ago. Worse than ever, today’s published setllement shows that the level of floor damping for the next financial year (2008-2009) has been increased by an additional three-quarters of a million pounds! It will be no less than £5,369,000 top-sliced off our funding, with no possible justification whatsoever.

We already know how tight things are here, what with the restrictions we have had to place on opening hours at the Stirling Centre, closure of creches and additions to parking charges, including extending their hours. Today’s settlement is the clearest, most blatant case of fiddling wuch funding that this country has probably ever seen in its entire parliamentary history.

We all accept that there are reasons for small tweaks to iron out funding discrepancies, as and when these are identified. When the Government’s own data shows that this can been carried to such an extreme that, if Medway were funded on the same basis as (say) Leicester City Council this would result in no less than an additional £365 million coming to us each and every year — well, it’s something that quite frankly should be made illegal.

Bottom line: why should our more than a quarter of a million people — including 29 of the most disadvantaged and deprived neighbourhoods in the nation — have to suffer and go without, just because our national Governmnt (already in huge disgrace over their own Party funding) feel that they can play fast and loose with taxpayers’ money to suit themselves?

It’s about time the law on all this were changed, so that governments were legally compelled to serve the nation, rather than their own personal and party ends. I’d vote for that!

Councillor Ward is one of the 3 Councillors for Rochester South & Horsted Ward on Medway Council – you can view his website here.

It’s official — from Medway’s Labour Group. There is no deprivation in Medway, and that of course includes Twydall. Well, that’s news to me!

It was at last Thursday’s meeting of the full Medway Council that this year’s budget situation was raised, and official figures quoted showing how Medway received so much less per head of population than other areas of the country (which is how Government funding of Local Authorities is decided — the infamous “Barnett Formula”) that we are tens of millions of pounds underfunded every year.

Figures quoted from official Government sources showed that, if Medway were dealt with on the same basis as these other (generally northern Labour) councils, it would make a difference of up to £60 million more coming here every year.

As I said at the Council meeting: I hadn’t realised just how vast the gap was, and it was no wonder that we were now struggling so hard against these more-or-less impossible odds.

However, the Labour finance spokesman, Twydall’s Cllr Glyn Griffiths, claimed that the difference was down to Medway not having any deprived areas: there is a part of this funding formula that gives extra funding to such areas, and we aren’t getting any of that because we don’t need it, as we are a prosperous area.

Really? I say to him: tell that to residents in your own ward of Twydall, Councillor Griffiths! They aren’t in need of any extra support, then? Not according to you!

It is little wonder that, with attitudes like this, most Medway residents no longer really want any Labour representation on the Council. Interestingly, there are signs of this dissatisfaction with Labour brewing in the few remaining wards where still they have councillors, including Twydall.

Now that the three Rainham wards nearby now have only Conservative Councillors, how long can it be before Twydall goes the same way as Rainham, Strood and other parts of Medway that have voted Labour councillors out of office? Okay, Strood tends to keep one token Labour member somewhere in the urban part, but I expect even that to end at the next local elections.

If the Labour Group continue to so misrepresent and sell short the people in their own and other wards, this “Incredible Shrinking Party” (to borrow a movie title!) will simply wipe itself out, as it has been doing for the last ten years.

The Labour presence on Medway Council has gone down at every election since the Unitary’s creation (and even between elections) from 39 members in 1997 to 25 in 2000, 17 in 2003, 16 when Cllr Chishti crossed the floor to our side, and earlier this year the number reduced still further to just 13 members.

Unless local Labour members buck up their ideas in very short order, and for starters at least join us in fighting the dishonest funding regime that deprives Medway of huge amounts of funding, they will be perceived even more than they already are as out of touch and merely tame “pawns” of their national Party.

That is no use whatsoever to the communities of Medway — and if they don’t change their ways even more of them will be thrown out of office in three years or so from now, perhaps even all of them. They’ll then have only themselves to blame.

Councillor Ward is one of the 3 Councillors for Rochester South & Horsted Ward on Medway Council – you can view his website here.

So sang Sir Harry Secombe in “If I Ruled The World”.

Well, although I have no wish to rule the world, or even to become an MP (I leave that to those better equipped for the task, such as our own Rehman Chishti!), I am not immune to having pipe dreams about what I would do if I were ever placed in such a position. Probably most of us have had similar thoughts from time to time.

Anyway, I wouldn’t plan to run before I could walk, so I have limited my ideas for change and improvement to this nation of ours alone.

The first and most basic change I would make would be to introduce a formal Constitution — something I know many want, but political parties claim is “unnecessary”. I happen to disagree with that stance.

My proposed Constitution would be in two parts: the first would be a set of principles that would cast in stone, so to speak, never to be compromised. The only way any of them would ever be permitted to be changed would be via a national referendum.

One of those principles would be respect for all democratically-elected institutions, and no-one to overrule any of them from above or beyond.

Thus local communities would be allowed to determine their own futures without the threat of bullies like John Prescott or Gordon Brown imposing their own agendas — no-one in most of the affected communities voted for them, and certainly not on any kind of basis that permits interfering in local matters!

There would be NO housing quotas, imposed pack-em-in densities or other externally-dictated policies, under any circumstances! We here, who know what is best for our a area, will make all the decisions ourselves, without overruling from outsiders of any kind. There are plenty of legitimate recourses in case of perceived maladministration or similar, so we never need central government, regional assemblies (which would be permanently banned, by the way) or overseas agencies to try to tell us our business. This would be made unchangeable law!

Europe would be pushed back into what it does well: essentially just a trading bloc, rather than the attempted superstate that is still being pushed upon us in one guise or another. Oh, and where’s our promised referendum on the latest version of this, by the way?

The second part of my Constitution would be the changeable sections, including methods of taxation. One change is this arena that I’d like to try is for virtually all taxes to come to local communities in the first imstance, and for those communities — via their own local elected representatives — to effectively sub-contract a noational governmental organisation to deal with those very few things that really should be done that way.

Much of what national government currently does shouldn’t be dictated by them at all, but be left to the affected communities to deal with in their own way. After all, no outsider can have more than an inkling of what is really needed and how best to implement it.

A big clue to this is in how Medway manages its regeneration, as part of the Thames Gateway. We do this ourselves, rather than via any of the indirect methods utilised by other parts of the Gateway Region, all of which have had similar levels of investment but are way behind Medway in
so many ways.

Thus we clearly demonstrate the superiority of local management of projects and initiatives (and there are many more I could list, from Liveability to our Olympic Village plans, from our excellent libraries to our Contact Points and Centre, and so on) and other areas show their approaches to be next to useless by comparison.

Of course we shall still need “watchdogs” such as auditors and inspectors, but more sensibly applied, such as ten years ago when the costs to our council were just 30,000 Pounds or so per year. Now it’s over a third of a million pounds a year, all coming out of the same pot that provides local services. The next time any local service is being considered for review, it’ll be worth remembering this one of many externally-imposed reasons why the review has become necessary.

My Constitution would seek to provide a genuine incentive to reduce all bureaucracy by personally penalising anyone introducing new forms without a rock-solid case for doing so, and would reward those who find ways to get rid of such waste.

Okay: there are the bones of my ideas. Who here is with me?

Councillor Ward is one of the 3 Councillors for Rochester South & Horsted Ward on Medway Council – you can view his website here.

How many times have we all been taken in by the most reasonable of voices, the most charming of people, and the most disarming of spiels?

Yes, I perceive hands going up all over the place as people read this!

We’ve all had it done to us, and usually many times. It is really disheartening to know that so much of what is soft-sold to us, whether a product, service, religious cult or political ideology, is in fact nothing like that in reality.

What do you do? The natural tendency is to become cynical and distrust anyone with a persuasive argument to put. This, though, is throwing out the baby with the bathwater, as they say.

No! We all need to be much sharper in our dealings with the all-pervasive sales patter, wherever it originates — not automatically rejecting everything (which would be pointless) but being far more selective without giving up completely. There is good stuff out there, even including political stuff, as this old cynic found out first-hand after disillusionment with my previous preferred political party.

Don’t get me wrong: the Liberal Democrats in my previous home area were generally very good, and I had high regard for them. I hope they are still maintaining those worthy standards, though I do realise that the party has deteriorated as a whole, which is a great shame.

Meanwhile, I have had to steer a very careful course through the mire of political misinformation that tends to come from some directions, however well dressed-up it appears to be. There is a lot of that about, by the way, and I suspect it pervades all parties in particular locaties from time to time.

Here in Medway, it is the Labour party who are by far the worst offenders, and it is disappointing that not only are they expert in making themselves look credible and believable, but also there are still so many people in this general area who are easily taken in that it simply encourages them to do more of the same.

Anyone making even a modest effort would soon see through almost everything the Labour Party in Medway ever puts about — but so few ever do! In my ward we have a disproportionate number of seasoned professionals, and they are certainly no-one’s fools! They even start off treating me with suspicion (despite my considerable track record) though once they know me well enough, an unshakeable bond is then established.

If only the majority of Medway residents were at least in the same ball-park category of perceptiveness as my wonderful (but challenging!) electors are in places in my ward that I could list here(!) then the Labour people would have virtually no support. It has been declining over the years as the last several local election results have clearly demonstrated, but the lesson still hasn’t been fully learned.

It needs to be learned!

As for the LibDems: well, they are a mixed bunch, and do at least have the potential to become a useful and valuable force within Medway. They too have the unfortunate habit of misleading people with gloss and easy claims, but I see signs of hope on the distant horizon. Medway does need a credible opposition: it would be healthier than a one-party elected Council.

At the moment there is none, so I for one wish to encourage one to come into being. Just don’t let it be a continuation of the plausible sales pitch of a dishonest outfit, dependent upon a gullible public.

I think we all deserve better than that!

Councillor Ward is one of the 3 Councillors for Rochester South & Horsted Ward on Medway Council – you can view his website here.