In order to write this post, I had another look through the list of candidates, produced in the run-up to the elections, and I was surprised, considering the fact that I have only been involved in politics for a few months, at how many people I knew, or have been connected to, before the election started; and distressed at how many of them I have since discovered are batting for other teams.

Gillingham North

Phil Plaistowe (Conservative)
Phil runs Medway Print and Medway Hosting, who are currently hosting this site and also the Gillingham Conservatives website. I got referred to him by the Association Chairman when I asked who was running the website after John Gilbert-Jupp (below).

Gillingham South

John Gilbert-Jupp (Conservative)
I emailed John when he ran the Association website for various reasons. He is one of very few of our unelected representatives who have provided information for the website either before or after the election (even if I haven’t got round to putting it all on yet).

Hempstead & Wigmore

Diane & Rodney Chambers (Conservative)
The Chambers own the card shop I always use near Christmas or someone’s birthday, and I know that both of them work in there occasionally, so I have probably been served by at least one of them during one of my visits. I was introduced to Rodney at Reh Chishti’s Christmas Party.

Peninsula

Steve Pendleton (Liberal Democrat)
Steve would only have ever been a paper candidate here, but he does work hard for St Dunstan’s charity for blind ex-servicemen (of which he is one). He approached our squadron to ask us to participate in the St Dunstan’s Cadet Challenge. I wasn’t there on the day, but Conservative Mayor (now former) Cllr Angela Prodger was. Oh what a laugh that must have been.

Rainham Central

Discarding Reh, who had introduced me to Political activism, the ironic situation in Rainham Central was the number of people I actually knew before the election.

Barry Kemp (Conservatvie)
In the 1997 Medway Council elections, Barry Kemp stood alongside my mother in St Margaret’s Ward – thus, by default, my father would have been running around the Ward delivering leaflets with his photograph on – and he didn’t get elected. This year I was running around Rainham Central delivering leaflets with his photograph on – and he did get elected. Must be something in my technique…

Mike O’Brien (Conservative)
In his days as an insurance salesman, Mike served both my parents, and I have a distinct memory of sitting in an office one day whilst my parents sorted outtheir insurance.

Bob Collinson & Roger Shade (Liberal Democrat)
These two uncharismatic Liberals visited my school, after my email consersation with Roger, and seemed perfectly happy to slag off one of their female MEPs (can’t think why…).

Matthew Fearn (Independent)
Aside from the fact that Matthew Fearn’s name is signed at the bottom of the letter enclosed with my membership card this year, this Tory-turned-Indy candidate received the vote of one of my friends because they went to school together (aah, how sweet…).

Rainham North

Discarding David Carr, here, as I only met him during the campaign, when we canvassed for him (in the road where Harry and Mary Keane, below, live, and those that surround them).

Vaughan Hewett (Conservative)
Aside from Reh, Vaughan was the first politician I had a proper, informal chat to on a range of subjects, at Reh’s Christmas Party. It was my first party event (which is why I went accompanied by two friends from Cadets), but Vaughan made me feel at ease, which is something I will never forget.

Harry and Mary Keane (Labour)
I know Harry and Mary through Cadets (yup, another one, or two). Or as I should say my parents know Harry and Mary through Cadets. Sadly they were both just paper candidates, and no, Mary, I don’t think Paul Clark would ever try to speak to me and convert me to the evil ways of Brown.

Rochester West

Ted Baker (Conservative)
When Ted was Mayor of Medway (all those years ago…) he paid a visit to our squadron (there are more, I promise) one night and was kind enough to present us with a cheque to help pay for damage repairs after our worst bout of break-ins. That was the night I was enrolled – as he watched. There exists a photograph of the happy occasion. On the wall at the squadron. And possibly on a computer somewhere. Hopefully.

Strood Rural

Tom Mason (Conservative)
Tom Mason, aka the “Singing Barber”, who was always singing when my Grandad paid a visit to his barbers in Wainscott. When it was still there. Next to the Post Office. When that was still there. How things change…

Strood South

Sue Haydock (Conservative)
Okay, so most people on this list are actually Conservative, and this is another candidate who, when Mayor of Medway, was inspecting officer at one Annual Inspection, when I answered her question with an unintentionally sarcastic answer. Oh how we laughed…

Twydall

Diana Lawrence (Conservative)
Diana Lawrence stood in 1997 alongside my father in Gillingham North. Not that this should constitute a connection. They probably never met. My father was too busy helping my mother lose in St Margarets. Oh the joys of being paper candidates…

Watling

This is a unique ward in that I have connections with all opposition candidates (the ones who won).

Herbert Crack (Liberal Democrat)
Father to one of my mother’s friends. I remember discussing the results on a K&ESR train when my mother said “…and Vivian’s Dad won”. He was also in Gillingham High Street on my first political activity, but you’ll have to wait for my autobiography to find out the significance of that. If I write one. Which I will. If you’d buy it. Which you wouldn’t…

Diana Smith (Liberal Democrat)
Finally we come to Darling Diana Smith, the only person on this list with whom I have a personal, emotional connection (not like that! – she’s old enough to be my Grandmother! – no offence meant, of course!). I remember after one Battle of Britain parade when I was about six (and about the same height as her, now I, like most people other than Reh, tower over her) and either her or her husband was Mayor of Gillingham (my memory isn’t that good, I was after all about six). I shared this weird bond with her late husband about our love for breadsticks (probably best you don’t ask about that one…). Then, as he was sat down, he called me over and took off of his blazer his Gillingham Borough Council badge and gave it to me. I still have it. For luck. For memories – although all of them associated with Diana rather than her husband (whose name escapes me). Diana, as a family friend, smiled at my jealous sister and promised to send her one in the post. I will never forget that – my very first experience of a broken promise from a Liberal: it never arrived. Typical of Diana…

But though age has had dramatic affects on both of us, she recognised me in Gillingham High Street on my first political activity, when, after we had packed up and gone over to speak to them (read the autobiography for details), I instantly recognised her, and she smiled at me. Oh dear. If only she knew…

So that’s it – if anything more comes to light, then that’s pretty much tough. It’s taken over five weeks to compile this list – I have other things to concentrate on now. Like sleep. ‘Cause it’s early. In the morning. And I’m tired.

Or so I thought. Because whilst my faith in the electorate’s ability to select a suitable candidate on merit isn’t entirely dead yet, one of the little darlings of the RMGS Year 13 darlings decided who he was going to vote for based on the name. Or, to be more precise, the name Crack.

Yes, Herbie Crack, veteran Liberal and even bigger darling of Watling Ward (who lives one road up from Rainham Central Conservative Councillors Barry Kemp and Mike O’Brien) had the all important “X” marked next to his name because of some kind of infantile sense of humour.

Ironically, this Year 13 darling is the frowned upon extreme right-winger in a class comprising mainly moderate right-wing students – we are the lucky year, with a Tory activist, Socialist member of the Labour Party, BNP sympathiser and Communist amongst our seven students, a class gripping the Year 13′s interests for the last year with our amazing diversity.

Of course Herbert Crack got elected in Watling alongside Diana Smith, but were all his votes the product of people with a similar level of maturity?

Looking back to 2003, I would safely say that the answer is no, and that people in Watling remain as intelligent as people in Rainham. In Luton and Wayfield, Herbie polled just 234 votes – 110 votes less than the BNP candidate Simon Brown

Looking even deeper, I found that Herbie is even a family friend (unsure of my moral standing of admitting such an afilliation with a Liberal), so I should probably be careful how I write the ending of this post.

I believe that Herbie got his 1304 votes mainly by party, but also by being seen to be doing things in the area – their visibility was far more prominent than the failed trio in Rainham Central – but it is clear to me that the other factor was also present.

It is a sad state of affairs if politics has come to the stage where people are handing out votes because a candidate has a funny surname, because candidates may as well start delivering leaflets asking people to vote for sex!

Spanning two pages, they provide a brief assessment of their achievments and also explain what they are going to do in the next four years – including knocking on all 6,500 doors in Twydall (they obviously see this as some kind of achievment, try knocking all 5,000+ doors in Rainham Central twice in four months).

However, reading through the single page of text (with just one diagram, but I will come to that later), it became clear to me how even Labour Councillors are spin perfectionists – and how they are hinting at more to come.

They start by declaring that they secured “more than 50% of the votes, with the Labour vote increasing by 750″. I don’t know about you, but to me that sounded impressive. That was until I got onto Microsoft Excel and the Medway Council website and did some number crunching myself.

In 2003, the total number of votes cast was 7691, in 2007, that number was 9562. In total the number of votes cast rose by 1871, or 24.3%. In order for a Party to be truly successful, they need to match or better that figure.

So how did Labour do? Their increase from 4203 to 4953 is an increase of 750 as they stated, but it is only an increase of 17.8%, marginally better than the Liberal Democrat’s 17.5%, meaning that their support has actually dropped when you take into account turnout. This is further evident when you see that their share of the vote in 2003 was 54.6%, compared to 51.7% this year.

How about the others, then? Well, the BNP cannot be counted, as they did not field a candidate in 2003. UKIP are up 62 votes (from 219 to 281), doing best with an increase of 28.3%, but the Conservatives, the second party in Twydall, increased by 634 votes (from 2327 to 2961). Although that was less than Labour’s increase in terms of votes, when you see the percentage increase of 27.2%, nearly ten points ahead of Labour’s increase and above the 24.3% threshold, things look more promising.

They conceded that they were unsuccessful in overturning the Conservative majority in Medway, but said that they would fight for issues that Twydall residents voted for. These included half price bus fares for young people. The same half price bus fares for young people the Conservatives introduced in this year’s budget that the Labour Councillors (the three Twydall ones included) voted against. So why include them? They are planning for the future.

In the following paragraph, they stated that they “have already had a success in forcing the Tories to promise not to introduce fortnightly bin collections”. When you look over the past few months, the Conservatives spoke out against the fortnightly bin collections, and the promise the Labour Councillors speak of was not a promise, but a reiteration of opposition to the scheme that the Labour Government is trying to impose on Councils. It’s a vicious circle.

So it comes back to half price bus fares. When they are introduced in September, the Labour Councillors, having included in their pre- and post-election literature a promise to campaign for half price bus fares, can then send out another leaflet claiming that their campaign to see half price bus fares introduced was a success. Oh to be in politics!

In my opinion, though, the icing on the cake came when I had a look at their graph the 51% for Labour was represented by the colour blue. So it seems that it is not just Rainham that has turned blue!

The Chatham Regeneration Action Group (CRAG), alongside Kent Reliance Building Society (KRBS), provided a clear message to voters in the run-up to the local elections: “Don’t Vote Tory”.

Mike Lazenby of KRBS denied that it was Party Political, but all key Conservative wards, including Rainham Central, were targeted by CRAG’s leaflets, directing people how to vote tactically against the Conservatives. This in itself made the local press sceptical of the local businessman, but they still provided great coverage to the cause.

Under the leaflet header “help get Medway moving”, they explain the Council is to blame for everything from the road improvements accross Medway to the “disastrous” two-way system in Chatham. On the back, they list 21 of 22 wards (excluding Gillingham North, where Tim Butcher, Rifat Chishti and Phil Plaistowe did fantastically considering the fact that they were fighting a losing battle in a Labour-Liberal fight) and which party to vote for tactically to prevent the Conservatives from winning:

Gillingham South – Liberal. The Gillingham Lib Dems won this Liberal stronghold, but Labour overtook the Conservatives based on the 2003 poll, pushing the Conservatives into third place. There is nothing to suggest that this had anything to do with CRAG, but the Conservatives could have had their last clinging of hope to win this site stolen for many years.

Rainham North – Liberal. David Carr and Vaughan Hewett stole the seats off former Liberal mayor Ken Webber and local Whip Richard Guichard after campaigning from people throughout the association, myself included on one day.

Watling – Liberal. There is nothing to suggest that CRAG’s influence stole the second seat off the Conservatives in this previously Liberal-Conservative split ward. The Gillingham Lib Dem’s online spin-machine certainly played a part, however, although they have removed the news page since the election.

Rainham Central – Liberal. CRAG’s leaflet pushing (as I discovered whilst leafleting myself and seeing their unmistakable purple-and-black-on-white leaflet on someone’s mat as our leaflet dropped on top of it) failed to influence the vote. Conversely, the gap between the Conservatives and the Liberals in this ward has widened to make it one of the safest seats in Medway.

Rainham South – Liberal. Very few people believed that the Conservatives could have lost this seat regardless of what influences may have been on the back-burner. I am unsure whether or not CRAG targeted this seat, but whether they did or not, this ward was held by the Conservatives.

Hempstead and Wigmore – Liberal. Ironically, the two Labour Candidates polled greater than the Liberals in this seat, but still fell around 600 votes short of the two Independents who stood to rattle things up. Despite them and CRAG’s campaign, the Chambers had no problems in polling over 1400 votes each.

Twydall – Labour. Here in my home ward of Twydall, we heard nothing from Labour until I went away. We received nothing from CRAG, nothing from the Tories, nothing from UKIP (who were apparently using Scouts to deliver their leaflets) and nothing from the BNP. However, UKIP and the BNP delivered elsewhere in the Ward but I’ve heard nothing from people here about CRAG. Regardless, there was more chance of Gordon Brown calling a General Election when he takes over on 27th June than Labour losing this seat. And it was right.

As you can see, I have only considered the wards within my Constituency, but with only two seats actually lost, the Conservatives gained more seats in Medway than CRAG would have liked. The photograph of Diane Turner, CRAG ringleader, at the count shows her annoyance.

I could conclude this assessment and state that CRAG failed in it’s objectives – after all, the Conservatives have an increased hold over the council – but they managed to win a battle in the run-up to the elections.

As I reported earlier on this blog, the Conservative Cabinet agreed to re-open the Sir John Hawkin’s flyover to normal traffic – one of CRAG’s demands, supposedly pledged by all opposition parties in writing. It was a single-issue campaign, which very rarely succeed anyway.

They claimed the Conservatives don’t listen, they claimed their campaign was not political, but on May 3rd the public had their say. They said that they wanted a Conservative Council – with an increased turnout and an increased majority.

And at the end of the day it is the public the Council serves. It is the public that matters.

A LITTLE while ago, I wrote a post on the outrageous case of Brighton & Hove Labour Councillor Juliet McCaffrey, who was ousted from the committee whe sat on for wanting to use her democratic right to freedom of choice to perform her democratic duty to represent the people who voted for her.

At the end, I pleaded the people of Brighton & Hove to vote the dictatoral Labour Councillors out on May 3rd. I am pleased to report that they have done just that, returning 26 Conservative (just 3 short of a majority), 13 Labour, 12 Green, 2 Liberal and on Independent Councillor. Juliet McCaffrey kept her seat.

VOTERS in Gillingham North responded to one resident who was used as a political pawn by her local Labour candidates in the run-up to the election.

Donna Still, 43, who lives in the Vineries estate and led the rise of the Mum’s Army political party in Medway spoke out against the Tory administration on sitting Labour MP Paul Clark’s website just before the election. She met up with the candidates and Mr. Clark, stating that she chose “to support Labour as I find that they are doing more to find a solution to anti-social behaviour and are willing to work with the people affected by it by setting up the Respect agenda.

“As a political activist and former member of Mums’ Army I developed a keen interest in local issues and came into contact with my local Councillors Adam Price and Mark Last. After seeing how hard they both worked in the Gillingham North ward I decided to back them and hope to work with them closely.”

And the voters? They responded by giving the candidates a massive thumbs down and voted in the Liberal Candidates with a majority of 579 instead. People power really does work.

SOME saw the local elections on “Super Thursday” as the biggest test of public opinion since the General Election two years ago. The mainstream media has been spinning the results for a couple of days now, so I can finally analyse the situation.

Comparisons have been made between this result and the potential result at the next General Election, so I compared the vote between Cllr Rehman Chishti and Sheila Clark, mother of Paul Clark, MP for Gillingham. As shown in the diagram, Reh achieved far greater support (2204 to 503 votes) and, overall, Reh achieved the highest majority in Medway: 1123 votes ahead of Liberal Bob Collinson.

In all fairness, the Liberals managed to achieve something that most people never thought was possible and swiped Gillingham North from the jaws of Labour, leaving twice Conservative PPC Tim Butcher floundering in 7th place. They held Gillingham South and took both seats in Watling after having previously held just one, but their total number of seats went up by just two as the Conservatives pulled off a stunning result elsewhere.

Turning Rainham blue, the Conservatives held control of Rainham Central and Rainham South, but swiped former mayor (and Councillor of 21 years) Ken Webber and Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader Richard Guichard’s seats in Rainham North. The look on Ken Webber’s face on Thursday night (stroke Friday morning) was rather sickly indeed.

So from Rainham North, we welcome into the fold Councillors David Carr and Vaughan Hewett (the first Conservative I had a full conversation with other than Reh, at Reh’s christmas party) alongside Rainham Central victors Reh Chishti, Barry Kemp & Mike O’Brien.

Further election comment will follow soon. The elections page has also been updated with the results.

I am keeping an eye on the time. Why? Because as I just leave my lovely bed I do so safe in the knowledge that I may not return until tomorrow night. I shall come home from school then go out canvassing at 5pm (it never stops) until close of polls at 10pm. After which I shall be going to the count (got my ticket while I was away).

Ordinarily, the counts last until about 2am anyway, so I knew I was in for quite a lack of sleep. However, I read in Monday’s Medway Messenger that the staff have been warned it could continue until 6am Friday morning! If so, I shall come home, have breakfast then go to school again.

Still, I only have Mr. Ward first…

Medway published the list at about 4.45pm, which gave me just about enough time to print off and read through the names before eating then going out canvassing Rainham Central with Reh. I returned at about 9.45pm, starting to type up the names by 10.45pm.

It’s all a bit hectic here at the moment. I have exams next month which I am revising for, I am going away for two weeks on Friday, I am helping Reh out as much as possible, and now he has an important task for me to complete. However, tomorrow I shall write and publish my last full post for a while, on the candidates.

This morning, I looked on Medway Council’s website to see if they had published or if they were hanging out until the deadline. Their election page was the same as it was last month.

But when I looked at it five minutes ago, the previous two elections (2005 general and 2003 local), which had been linked to from the top of the page, had been archived under a new link, “previous elections”.

The hard-working Council webteam (who still have one Councillor listed as Conservative, despite the fact he resigned from the Party last month) are preparing for the impending election. I will list all candidates in Medway as soon as the statement is published.