The Political Medway - Page 7 of 43 - It's about politics in Medway

November 30, 2019November 30, 2019

Boring History: The Zinoviev letter

In which Chris Sams looks to the past to try and figure out the General Election, and finds a Medway parallel along the way..

As the nation enters the throes of another General Election the bored electorate seem to be heading out to vote again, but there seems to be such divided opinion it would only take a news event to cost either of the big two parties their lead.

This is what happened in 2017 with Theresa May, when she singlehandedly cost the Conservatives votes by speaking at debates and events causing people to slide away. This time around Boris could do the same, Jacob Rees-Mogg may have already done so with his Grenfell comments, but who can tell at this stage?

November 29, 2019November 29, 2019

If not now, then when?

In which Steve Dyke takes a look at what each party is pledging to do to tackle climate change, with very mixed results..

Thanks in no small part to David Attenborough, Greta Thunberg, school strikers, Extinction Rebellion and the predictions of IPCC scientists, the environment (and in particular the climate emergency) has featured in this General Election campaign far more than in previous ones. In the past, such issues were largely the preserve of the Green Party, for whom environmental protection is a core principle. However in 2019 it seems as if any serious political party feels it must have policies and pledges to attract voters concerned with the climate crisis. Do I personally feel attracted by what is on offer?

November 22, 2019November 22, 2019

Political Figures Predictions: Rochester and Strood

In which Alan Collins from Medway Elects looks at the third and final Medway constituency, Rochester and Strood, to see what the future may bring..

It’s November. It’s cold. And there’s another election looming. I have fired up my data projection model and already analysed the potential results in Chatham and Aylesford and Gillingham and Rainham. Now as I conclude this series it’s time to take a look at Medway’s third, and arguably most volatile, constituency.

November 21, 2019November 21, 2019

iFAQ: Who are you and why are you standing?

Look, we’re all trying to deal with this General Election in our own way. We’re now covering our eighth Medway wide poll in the five years we’ve been doing this thing, and mostly just wondering when we’ll be allowed to rest. But whether we like or not, another General Election is upon us. It’s all been a bit rushed, and a number of last minute selections have had to take place. As such, we decided to try to get to know our General Election candidates a little more by sending them a couple of straightforward questions.

As usual, we told all of them that we would publish their responses unedited. You can find them below, grouped by the constituency each of them are standing in.

November 19, 2019November 19, 2019

Tell me a birth story

In which Vicki Sigston looks at the consequences of funding cuts on one area of the NHS..

As an Antenatal Practitioner and Breastfeeding Counsellor, I hear a lot of birth stories – home births, births in midwife or consultant led units. Vaginal and caesarean births. Inductions. Forceps. Babies born unexpectedly in cars and bathrooms. You name it, I’ve heard it.

I feel honoured to do this job and to be a tiny part of people’s journeys to parenthood but one thing I feel more and more uneasy about is the way our NHS is letting these parents down. Alongside the positive and heart warming birth stories I am hearing more and more worrying experiences.

November 15, 2019November 15, 2019

Medway Councillor and Deputy Mayor Steve Iles expelled from Conservatives over social media posts

The Deputy Mayor of Medway Councillor Steve Iles has been expelled from the Conservative Party after being named by LBC as being a part of a dossier handed to them containing Islamophobic content posted by councillors across the country.

November 15, 2019November 15, 2019

Political Figures Predictions: Gillingham and Rainham

In which Alan Collins from Medway Elects takes a look at what the General Election what might bring for Gillingham and Rainham..

They say that a week is a long time in politics, and in the time since my analysis for Chatham and Aylesford was published, the Brexit party have announced that they will not be standing in any seat won by the Conservatives in 2017. That means their three candidates in Medway have been stood down (whether they like it or not).

This not only impacts on the projection which has already been published, but also on the remaining projections. The question is, how does one divide the projected vote share for the Brexit Party between the remaining parties? Contrary to prevailing belief, the Brexit party were not likely to just be a vote drain on the Conservatives.

November 13, 2019November 13, 2019

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.

November 11, 2019November 11, 2019

Youth politics in a toxic atmosphere

In which Anna McGovern, the Chair of Medway Youth Council, looks at the challenges and abuse that have become all too common in our politics..

Politics has changed. It is not just about making a “difference” anymore; it is a slandering competition on who can score the most “party political” points. I have seen this myself, locally and nationally – and it only seems to be getting worse.

It is not only the “political activists” of Twitter subject to daily abuse, offline and online, for following a certain ideology. It is not only the local councillors who have to deal with being under permanent scrutiny for every action they make, whilst balancing full-time careers, family life and other personal affairs.

More than ever, young people are the demographic being subject to pertinent abuse. Young people being abused by young people. Young people being abused by adults, who surely should know better. There are so many cases of online (and offline) abuse I could name which could account to multiple articles in their own right. My point is that abuse in politics is so common nowadays that it overshadows what politics in itself should be about: making a difference locally and nationally.

November 8, 2019November 8, 2019

Political Figures Predictions: Chatham and Aylesford

In which Alan Collins from Medway Elects takes a look at what the General Election what might bring for Chatham and Aylesford..

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. No, not Christmas, but the one where almost everyone in Medway with access to the internet seems to cry out for change, only for the Conservatives to be re-elected by a wide margin.

So for this series of articles, Messrs Jennings and Keevil have asked their resident data nerd to run the numbers and try to predict, on the numbers alone, whether that mythical change might happen, or whether we will wake up on 13 December to the news that the three Conservative candidates have been re-elected.

To answer that question I shall be taking a look at what the data from the 2015 general election tells us about what might happen next month. No, I’ve not forgotten that we also voted in 2017. However, the election in 2015 presents an extra set of data which is infinitely more useful in comparing how the attitudes of Medway’s voters has shifted: the local elections. I shall, therefore, be taking a look at how the results in each ward for Medway’s three constituencies changed between 2015 and 2019, and using that to try and determine whether any of our three MPs are likely to be queuing up outside a job centre on 13 December.

I have form for this. A comparison of the shift in local election behaviour was one of the key principles behind the data model I produced in 2010 which, as I explained at the beginning of the year on this very website, was remarkably accurate. Whilst I have created a similar model for this year, it comes with its own caveat: there are additional parameters to account for both the 2015 and 2017 general elections, so essentially there is more data to go wrong in the projections that have been generated for each constituency. Just to fill you all with confidence…

That said, these have only ever been projections, not predictions, and the usual caveat that they are only a snapshot of where support likely sits, not a demonstrative prediction of what the vote will actually be, applies.