Medway in a zombie apocalypse

In which Caitlin Webb ponders how things might go for the residents of Medway in an even more severe outbreak..

Day one. Most of us would shrug off the warnings and think “meh, this is just the flu.” “I survived foot and mouth, bird flu AND I grew up in Chatham, I can live through this”. We will keep calm and carry on and panic buy all the toilet rolls. 

The rest will completely panic. Raid the supermarkets and barricade ourselves in our homes and plan to ride it out with pasta, rice and chickpeas. 

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No to No Child Left Behind

In which Caitlin Webb considers why our three Medway MPs voted to stop unaccompanied child refugees being reunited with their families..

gray concrete wall beside grass

Any reasonable citizen would hope their representative on an almost £80k salary would vouch for some of the most vulnerable people in the world.

Yet this was put into question for those in Medway in January as their MPs voted against continuing to let unaccompanied child refugees be reunited with their families in the UK.

Rehman Chisti, Tracy Crouch and Kelly Tolhurst all swallowed the Conservative party line voting against an amendment of the Brexit Bill, which would have kept the EU protections so children can continue to come to the UK for safety.

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Medway Council Ombudsman outrage

In which Medway Council finds itself on the receiving end of yet another critical report, this time from a very unhappy Ombudsman..

Medway Council is in trouble with the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman for a second time as top councillors haven’t changed their rules about how to support families with transport costs to get to school.

Who is this Ombudsman?

His name is Michael King. He’s quite a nice chap, whose job is to make sure councils do what they should and everyone gets a fair deal. He investigates complaints about councils, is independent, and gives recommendations.

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Doing it for the kids, part 3

In which our intrepid reporter continues to look at the state of children’s social care in Medway following another damning report..

In case you hadn’t heard, Medway Council has not magically been able to improve children’s social care services in three months, following ten years of austerity. 

However, the council is not off the hook and will continue to provide social care for children in the towns. On top of that, the big guns that have been sent in to help the council clean up its act and will stay for at least another six months.

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Where do our candidates stand on animal welfare?

In which Mina da Rui quizzes our Medway parliamentary candidates on animal welfare issues, and analyses their responses..

Instead of our regular style of iFAQ, we’ve tried something a little different this week. There’s plenty of interesting subjects we know little about, and unlike Michael Gove, we are now sick of experts. As such, every now and again, we’re going to ask people who know particular subjects to pose questions to our politicians and analyse their responses. For this first edition, we invited Mina da Rui, former Animal Welfare Party candidate, to pose questions to our Medway parliamentary candidates on, well, animal welfare issues. Their responses, along with Mina’s analysis are below..

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Party or candidate, leader or policies?

In which Caitlin Webb tries to work through all of the different factors that go in to casting a vote at a General Election..

This has been called the most important vote in a lifetime, sound familiar? Feels like every time we go to the polling station, it’s to make a do-or-die decision. So deciding who to vote for is pretty important. There’s also the fact that people who have been living in this country for decades, people who have been cheated by the judicial system and 17-year-olds can’t vote, that drives me to put a cross in the box. But who will win my vote?

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Safeguarding Rehman about town

It’s election time and it’s not unlikely another one is possible next year as well! As elections ever more become social media battles, PPCs promote themselves to anybody who has a pulse and is willing to fake a smile. With that in mind, it’s worth looking at guidance regarding safeguarding and the sharing of images of children online.

This isn’t about if you should share pictures of children online, but if you are interested in that, The Independent covered it here.

The following piece was inspired by a social media post by Rehman Chishti MP. The editing, as will become clear, is by us.

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Doing it for the kids, part 2

In which our intrepid reporter continues to dig into what went wrong with children’s social care services in Medway, and what the council are trying to do to fix things..

Don’t know if you’ve seen but children’s social care in Medway is a ticking time bomb. The council have until the end of the year to prove they can turn around a bad mark from Ofsted and still take care of the most vulnerable children in the Towns in their time of need.

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5 weeks of imperfect balance

In which Caitlin Webb, the UK’s first Local Democracy Reporter, explains to us what purdah is, and how much it impacts an election campaign..

There’s a general election coming. There’s nothing more exciting for a political journalist. It’s where politics gets all serious and things could be really shaken up. We have now entered purdah, the pre-election period.

What is purdah and why is it so important? 

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