Category: Uncategorized

Hello. Just a quick post to say we – quite obviously – aren’t doing much as The Political Medway anymore, but there’s also something new and exciting to share.

Unfortunately we’re no longer in a position to carry on this project in the way we started. Anyone following us in the past year or two will have noticed that we are no longer putting out the kind of content we were able to in the past. Part of this is time (we both have day jobs) and part is that we’ve never found a way to make this sustainable. Also we’re very tired.

This entire project has been held together by us giving hours of our time for free to keep it running, and the things that need paying for have been just about covered by the generous souls that have donated over the year. To those people we are eternally grateful. Neither of us are in a position to put the kind of time needed to keep this thing running anymore. We really wish we were, but we just aren’t. As such, we have wound up most elements of The Political Medway.

The main website will be mothballed, other social channels wound up, with just the Twitter account being retained. Most of our engagement comes via Twitter these days, and it’s the easiest for us to keep going, so we’ll still be tweeting any relevant Medway politics news there.

So what are we up to now?

Steve is spending time working with Second Chance Medway, a charity supporting people in Medway with housing and food insecurity. He’s also training to be a host for a FoodCycle project in Sittingbourne. He’s also a trustee for a new SEND college teaching catering to 18-25 year old special needs students. All very worthy, I’m sure you’ll agree.

As for me, I can’t let this kind of thing go, so I’ve launched Local Authority, a new newsletter for Medway covering local politics, news, culture, and more.

It’s free to sign up and you’ll get all of the latest Medway news delivered to your inbox every Friday. There is an option to join as a paid supporter, where you’ll get an extra newsletter every Tuesday and the good feeling that comes from supporting independent local news.

If you enjoyed what we did with The Political Medway, I think you’ll probably like this too, so it would be great to have you on board. You can read it and sign up here: https://localauthority.substack.com/

In which Lia Mandaracas sets out how just how commonly women are harassed and violated going about their everyday lives..

Medway Fawcett launched on the 13th March, through an online event supported by several inspiring speakers. At our launch we discussed incidences of sexual harassment, and I realised that these conversations happen quite often between women but rarely are men included. If the conversations on local community groups, discussing #ReclaimTheStreets that evening are anything to go by, communication seems to break down when men are asked to understand just how draining life as a woman can be. That is why I decided it was important to highlight just some of the times, as a 33-year-old average woman, I have been harassed or violated whilst just doing everyday things.

This list is by no means exhaustive. I’ve left some bits out to protect people who I would not want to be tarred by association. I have left other parts out as they are too traumatic for me to feel comfortable putting in the public. And some will have just slipped my mind because this is so common that not everything gets banked.

I’m not sure where to start so the following are in no particular order.

It is said that elections are won on the doorstep, and that may well be true. Being armchair activists, it’s difficult to check up on that.
Twitter and blogs however are part of our social media present and future, and if the election was decided there, how would each of the wards be looking?