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ARGH I HATE POLITICS

In which Jasneet Samrai shares the experience of being a young person involved in politics.

Being a young person in politics is hard. I wish it wasn’t, but it is. It’s also a rare occurrence.

Don’t get me wrong, being involved in politics is something that I really enjoy, yet as a young person it’s a system that is ultimately rigged against me. The crisis in both the lack of youth participation, and the culture within youth politics itself, is not due to a problem with my generation; instead due to a seismic failure within our own political system.

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Gillingham UKIP and the Tommy Robinson connection

In which August Scholl takes a look at the rise of the far right and how Gillingham and Rainham UKIP are embracing them.

Medway has lived with the intersection of the UK Independence Party, Brexit and the far right for a long time now. From as far back as Mark Reckless’ surprise Rochester by-election victory in 2014, UKIP has been in close proximity to deeply divisive issues and the extremist fringes who seek to exploit them.

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What lays beneath Medway History?

In which local historian Chris Sams digs into an overlooked tale of Medway history..

The Tory led council are very proud of our heritage and landmarks and well they should be. However you would not be considered foolish if, as a tourist you got off at Chatham station and only went to the Dockyard, Fort Amherst. or soaked in the carefully engineered aesthetic that is Rochester town centre.  

The other Medway towns also have a rich and forgotten history and landmarks that are being allowed to rot that could be used as tourist attractions.

So what else is there to see within the Medway towns?

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iFAQ: So predictable?

For this week’s iFAQ, we decided to ask all councillors a question about the state of democracy in Medway. Given the predictability of the ebb and flow of council meetings, and how it’s usually fairly easy to guess the outcome to any given question, concerns have been raised about how democratic our local structures are. As such, all councillors received the following question:

If it’s possible to accurately predict the response to every question and motion at Medway Council meetings, what does this say about the state of democracy in Medway?

As usual, all councillors were told that their responses would be printed entirely unedited, with the results presented below in the order they were received:

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Medway Council’s January meeting, told through the medium of tweets

Last night saw the first full Medway Council meeting of the year. If you weren’t one of the handful of members of public in the gallery, you might have missed out on all of the exciting local politics action. Here, thanks to the power of embedded tweets, we bring you the highlights of last night’s live Twitter coverage of proceedings.

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A C Word

In which Vicki Sigston looks at cervical health, and finds some troubling details about screening in Medway..

So, it’s 2019. A whole new year to grab by the horns and make some positive changes in this mad world that we find ourselves in.

I’d love to say that our local government and councillors have been doing just that but sadly anyone with even half a toenail in politics is still embroiled in the B word, and frankly I don’t have the energy to talk about that.

So instead, something that I hadn’t heard of until recently.. January is “Cervical Health Awareness Month”.

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A legacy of homelessness

In which Medway Labour’s Housing spokesperson Naushabah Khan looks at the homelessness situation in Medway.

Welcoming in 2019, I thought it was important to start the new year discussing an issue that we really have to get under control. A problem that frankly has no space in one of the world’s richest economies and one that should instead be close to eradication. Yet since 2010 homelessness, in all its guises, has been on the increase; exacerbated by a shortage of social and affordable homes and the politics of austerity, driven by a Conservative
government.

To give a sense of the numbers, rough sleeping is up by a startling 134% (in seven years) nationally, while there has been a 60% rise in the number of families living in temporary accommodation. In Medway alone over six hundred children are classified as homeless, the worst figures in Kent.

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