Rochester and Strood MP Mark Reckless has welcomed a refurbished branch of Barclays Bank in Chatham High Street.

The atmosphere in the High Street was buzzing, with performances from dancers, sword swallowers and other artists, as Mark and Chatham and Aylesford MP?Tracey Crouch officially opened the branch.

Residents and shoppers were also given the opportunity to have their photograph taken with the Barclays Premier League Trophy.

Speaking after the event Mark said:

“I was delighted to open this exceptionally well-refurbished branch. It?s important that companies continue to invest in Chatham High Street and Barclays has done just that.

“It was a particular pleasure to open this branch from the Premier League sponsors, and with Tracey, who has successfully coached a girls? football team herself.”

The website, yourfirstinchatham.org.uk, was promoted only days ago by Medway Labour activist and blogger Tristan Osborne, as the Labour Party tries to win back voters following the controversial election of “Red” Ed Miliband as party leader.

Medway Labour sources are keen to impress that there was no personal or secure data stored on the website, and that it was merely a basic website with a secure link to the national Labour social network Membersnet.

They also indicate that the server has not been compromised, leading to suggest that the Chatham Labour website was the intended target.

However, it is not the first time that Labour’s online presence has been the target of hackers.

Last year, Gillingham and Rainham’s former Labour MP Paul Clark had to apologise after his website was hacked twice (April and May).

Medway Conservative blogger Alan W Collins warned of the need to maintain strong online security after Paul Clark’s website was hacked.

Following this incident, he said “It is one thing for a single editorial oversight, it is quite another to lose your entire website to a hacker.

“There seems to be a flaw in whatever system the Labour Party is using for their online communications with voters, because they keep succumbing to these attacks.

“It hardly presents a credible message to voters that the country is safe with them if they cannot even protect their own websites.”

An official comment from the Labour Party in Chatham is yet to be released.

In particular, the leading Labour blogger in Medway, Tristan Osborne, has been spewing his bile about Ashcroft’s funding of Tory posters in his new locale of Chatham.

However, the Labour candidate for Luton and Wayfield has clearly not read the latest party donation reports, which show how little Lord Ashcroft has donated to the Conservative Party when you look at received Party donations overall.

Or how trade union funding – often without members’ knowledge or consent – is all that stands between Labour and bankruptcy.

Nor has Osborne examined his own Party’s non-dom donors, who have donated a total of over 6 million pounds compared to Ashcroft’s 5 million pounds.

There was once an unwritten convention that politicians avoided attacking their opponents’ donations lest they opened a horrific can of worms.

Perhaps party-affiated bloggers using these figures for party political point-scoring should follow suit, if only to save themselves the embarassmet of realising, quite publicly, that their party is not whiter-than-white either!

I am currently at Lordswood Social Club having just met David Cameron.

Mr Cameron, the Leader of the Conservative Party, was here meeting members of the party from the three Medway constituencies, before heading off to a Cameron Direct event in Chatham.

Update @ 23:30

Over 100 people (rough estimate) were present at the event organised by Chatham and Aylesford Conservatives. Among those present were several local councillors and the three Medway Parliamentary Candidates, Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham), Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) and Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood).

Mr Cameron went round and spoke to everyone in the room before briefly addressing everyone collectively. Even whilst still sounding slightly hoarse (anyone who had seen him on Andrew Marr yesterday morning (video/transcript) will know what I am talking about), Mr Cameron spoke confidently in a display which boded well for his subsequent Cameron Direct event.

Update @ 23:36

It appears that Iain Dale was at the Cameron Direct event, live-blogging it here. His report is here and Tracey’s is here. I shall link to the webcast as soon as it is made available.

Update 13/01/09 @ 00:58

A selection of photographs have now been uploaded to my Flickr account, in the photo set “David Cameron Visit“. They are also embedded in a slideshow below.