Just time for a quick roundup of the week, where we take a look at the big stories in local politics, what each political party has been up to, and a special Brexit debate special of Rehman About Town.
The Week in Medway Politics, 9 Dec
The Week in Westminster, 8 Dec “Brexit Debate Special”
This week the government lost three votes in the House of Commons;
MPs backed calls to have a direct say in the final deal, called for the government to publish the full legal advice regarding the Brexit Deal, and historically the Government was found in contempt of parliament.
With 2 of Medway’s 3 MPs having recently quit the Government and declared they could not support the PM’s deal, how did they vote?
The Week in Medway Politics, 2 Dec
What have we been up to?
Our Stories
Top Tweets
Enough about us, what about the others?
Continue reading “The Week in Medway Politics, 2 Dec”
The Week in Westminster, 1 Dec
A Comprehensive Internet Guide to ‘Medway Brexit’
Medway Council’s ruling Conservative Cabinet have rejected calls to investigate the effect of Brexit on The Medway Towns.
So Keevil set out to find answers, bestowed with the knowledge that everything is available online, including knowledge. Keevil went armed with a search engine and the words ‘Medway Brexit’.
We present to you almost everything we found in all it’s visual (and helpful?) glory.
The Week in Westminster, 24 Nov
While we tend to focus on the drama of local politics, it can be easy to forget that Medway has three MPs representing us in parliament. What are they doing? What are they saying? Our new feature will try and break that down, while also accepting that many of the workings of parliament are horribly dense and not particularly accessible. Which leads us nicely to:
Cllr Craven quits Medway Labour, sets fire to everything on the way out
In what seems to be a bit of a trend at the moment, another Medway councillor will be sitting as an independent as Cllr Sam Craven has resigned from Medway Labour,
Continue reading “Cllr Craven quits Medway Labour, sets fire to everything on the way out”
Rehman Chishti resigns from government to spend more time with his other jobs
It’s a busy day in Westminster with ministers resigning from government all over the place, a potential leadership challenge, and a fair chance that the government won’t make it until the end of the week.
None of which would be particularly exciting on a local level, until Rehman Chishti, MP for Gillingham and Rainham, announced he was resigning his position as Vice Chairman of the Conservative Party and as the Trade Envoy to Pakistan.
His full letter is below, where he makes it clear that he cannot support the current EU Withdrawal Agreement currently on offer. Chishti is the seventh government minister to resign over this today.
Fear and Loathing: GDPR on the Campaign Trail
It was inevitable that someone in Medway politics would screw up in this brave new GDPR world.
Politicians sharing reports and images from the campaign trail is standard practice at this point. Barely a weekend can go by without local activists telling us about the ‘fantastic response on the doorstep’ that they achieved. So it would have been easy to glance at the below image shared by Medway Conservative candidate for Luton and Wayfield Robbie Lammas and not think much of it.
Unless you care about data protection, anyway.
Continue reading “Fear and Loathing: GDPR on the Campaign Trail”
Vote for me! I’ll attend full council 44% of the time
In recent weeks, we’ve seen increasing questions raised about Councillor Rehman Chishti’s ability to juggle several jobs, and how much time he has left to be an active councillor for Rainham Central. As we pointed out previously, in recent years, he has turned up at less than half of full council meetings. Following this, we decided to analyse the attendance rates of all 55 Medway councillors.
First of all, some caveats to this data: We have used the attendance data made available from Medway Council, so if any councillor believes our data is wrong, we’d suggest they take it up with the council. Secondly, we are only analysing attendance of full council and not other committee meetings. While we may look at those in the future, full council is the only meeting where all councillors are expected to attend, so it creates a level playing field. Finally, we have used percentage attendance rather than number of meetings, so we can create a fair comparison between the 52 councillors that have served a full term so far, and the 3 elected in by-elections. Continue reading “Vote for me! I’ll attend full council 44% of the time”