Dude, where’s my signature?

By now, you’re mostly likely aware of the Rochester Town Council campaign. It’s been running for a while now, with the primary aim to give Rochester more say over it’s own affairs. This article is not about the pros and cons of such a council, it’s about the process and barriers that the campaign is having to deal with.

Disclosure: I am a supporter of the Rochester Town Council campaign, and signed it’s petition. The reason this is relevant will become clear later on.

The campaign for a town council formally began in March of this year. It needed to collect signatures from 7.5% of registered electors in the area of the proposed council to trigger a Community Governance Review. This essentially forces the council to hold a full consultation on whether or not a new council needs to be created. 7.5% of the electors of Rochester meant 1644 signatures were required to meet this threshold.

Throughout the campaign, Medway Council have made their feelings on the matter clear. Despite the fact they have to give the campaign a fair hearing via the Community Governance Reviews, cabinet members (especially the portfolio holder for Democracy and Governance, Andrew Mackness) have stated on several occasions that they see no merit in creating an additional layer of local government in Medway. While this can be dismissed as personal opinion, there are some rather more worrying signs from the council about their commitment to treating the campaign fairly.

In October, the campaign formally submitted their petition to Medway Council, having collected 1785 (141 more than required) signatures in the previous seven months. After two months, the council declared the petition to be invalid, after refusing to accept signatures collected online rather than on paper, despite previous suggestions that these would be accepted. Granted, the campaign should have probably done more to ensure they had the status of online signatures in writing, but it’s not difficult to look at this and wonder why the council didn’t flag this earlier.

The second issue is the way in which the council is verifying the signatures, even those submitted on paper. The council decided to compare the submitted signatures with those on June’s electoral register. This was not the start of the campaign, nor was it the end, instead it’s somewhere in the middle. It’s also how they were able to deny my own signature.

I moved into the town council petition area in September. I duly notified the council and added myself to the electoral register, and received confirmation in writing that I had been accepted. As such, I signed the Rochester Town Council petition, yet have since discovered that my own signature was declared invalid as I didn’t live within the town in June. Which leaves me in a slightly odd position of living within Rochester, being on the electoral roll in Rochester, while also apparently not being a valid resident of Rochester at the same time. I am Schrödinger’s constituent.

The Rochester Town Council campaign are not giving up though, instead attempting to collect all of the online signatures on paper (and some extras too). These will be submitted to the council in the new year, when the council hopefully won’t find another arbitrary hurdle that the campaign has to overcome.

The Week in Medway Politics: Dickens, bombs, and broadband

Medway MPs in Parliament

Syria Vote
The biggest issue in Parliament this week was the polarising vote on whether or not to launch airstrikes against IS in Syria. All 3 Medway MPs voted in favour of launching airstrikes. Tracey Crouch wrote a detailed explanation for her vote on her Facebook page, while Rehman Chishti and Kelly Tolhurst have offered comment via the Medway Messenger.

Votes

Out of a maximum of 8 votes in Parliament this week, the Medway MP vote tally was as follows:
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham & Rainham) – 7 votes
Kelly Tolhurst (Rochester & Strood) – 7 votes
Tracey Crouch (Chatham & Aylesford) – 2 votes

Elsewhere in Parliament
Kelly Tolhurst claimed that after knocking on thousands of doors (presumably in Rochester and Strood) in the past year, immigration nearly always comes up. Apparently the broadband in Rochester is pretty shit too. Rehman Chishti also won his battle against Islamic State, but in the most pointless of ways.

Medway Council

Dickensian Christmas
This weekend saw the usual tatfest that is the council organised Dickensian Christmas festival in Rochester. The council seemed to think it went well, with just some “minor traffic issues”, which is hardly how most drivers in Rochester and Strood would likely describe things.

Rochester Town Council campaign
Medway Council this week rejected the initial petition for a Rochester Town Council on the rather tenuous reason that collected electronic signatures are not okay, despite previously implying they were. This definitely not a delaying tactic will not deter the campaign though, who now need to collect the signatures on paper and submit them again in the new year.

Political Parties

Medway Conservatives
Still missing, because why do they need to actively do anything given the state of the Labour Party?

Medway Labour
Not a busy week for Medway Labour, as they’ve managed to come up with 8 paragraphs on the subject of whether shops should be allowed to put signs on the pavement.
The national strife of Labour may be heading to Medway, as Momentum Medway is holding their first meeting in January, featuring a range of Labour and non-Labour faces.

Medway UKIP
Missing, because it’s Medway UKIP.

Medway Liberal Democrats
The party this week called for more support for small businesses in Medway. All of which is very noble. The party even had some nice quotes on the subject:
Lib Dems

While the Lib Dem leader on Norwich City Council said the following:
Lib Dems

The moral of this story? If you’re going to take a national campaign and make it local, at least vary the words a bit to something vaguely resembling your own.

Medway Green Party
The Greens made a strong play for the local arts/culture community this week, by supporting the crowdfunding campaign for the fantastic WOW magazine.
Unsurprisingly, they aren’t too happy about bombs being dropped on Syria either.

Medway TUSC
Missing, presumably filling in their Momentum membership forms.

Other News

Rehman About Town
This week, Rehman managed to have his photo taken with Eileen from Medway Hospital Radio, the Ambassador of Kuwait, some shipping containers with an invisible George Osborne, a professor in Parliament, the Speaker of the National Assembly of Pakistan, the Daily Politics green-screen, a Tesco manager in a giant Christmas jumper, some residents all from a similar demographic, former council leader Rodney Chambers in his card shop, a bipolar focus group, some guys from the Bahraini embassy, some windswept residents, Dorris and Dave, some kids at a Christmas fair, the team from a remembrance service, and a squash racquet and a lot of sweat. Imagine what he’d be like if there was an election campaign on.

The Week in Medway Politics: Ofsted, Oldham, and alcohol

Medway MPs in Parliament

Votes
Out of a maximum of 4 votes in Parliament this week, the Medway MP vote tally was as follows:
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham & Rainham) – 3 votes
Kelly Tolhurst (Rochester & Strood) – 3 votes
Tracey Crouch (Chatham & Aylesford) – 2 votes

Elsewhere in Parliament
Kelly Tolhurst asked a meaningless question about Syria, and asked about job losses at the Chatham HMRC site, while Rehman Chishti banged on yet again about what to call Islamic State. Meanwhile, Tracey Crouch ended up answering a lot of questions about the Big Lottery Fund.

Medway Council

OFSTED report
An Ofsted report into Children’s Services in Medway has ranked them as ‘requires improvement’. Medway Council post an article on this with the title ‘Ofsted report confirms Medway’s children’s services are improving‘. Impressive chutzpah.

Airport action
There’s an apparent “jobs boost” for Medway as Rochester Airport has been granted Enterprise Zone status. At least it kind of has. Along with half the other places in Kent.

Traffic fines
Some FOI digging has revealed that Medway Council has raised almost £1 million in traffic fines since 2013, a number all the more staggering given they only have 5 active cameras.

Political Parties

Medway Conservatives
Missing, because why do they need to actively do anything given the state of the Labour Party?

Medway Labour
The party responded to the Autumn Statement. You’ll be shocked to discover they weren’t happy about it. They’re also a bit grumpy about the Ofsted thing.
The Medway Labour away team also took a trip up to sunny Oldham this week to campaign for this coming week’s by-election.

Medway UKIP
Not specifically Medway related, but UKIP have now selected a candidate for next year’s Police & Crime Commissioner elections.

Medway Liberal Democrats
The party held their AGM this week, and apparently had a record turn out. They even needed extra chairs and plates. Bless.

Medway Green Party
The Green took the bold step of coming out in support of Chatham’s new distillery, and made a pretty good joke about a new council office that would make it even harder for the public to ask questions.

Medway TUSC
Medway TUSC reemerged this week to get a bit annoyed that they weren’t invited to a Young Person’s Question Time. As you do.

Other News

Rochester Town Council
The campaign for a Rochester Town Council held their ‘Making It Happen’ meeting this week. Jennings went along and live tweeted it, and left believing that it’s now more likely than not to happen.

Rehman About Town
This week, Gillingham and Rainham MP Rehman Chishti has managed to have his photo taken with a microphone, the Ambassador of Bahrain, the High Commissioner of Pakistan, the Chairman of Senate of Pakistan, some constituents in Parliament, Big Ben on BBC News, Big Ben on ITV News, some guide dogs at Dobbies, the local Conservatives ladies lunch, Medway Clinical Commissioning Group, the Managing Director of Southeastern, several pensioners advising him on how to bomb Syria, the Hempstead Christmas tree lighting, and some Gurdwara celebrations. He seems to take more pictures of himself every week.