Response to criticism to Lib dem stance against City Status

At the end of January the Medway Liberal Democrats wrote to Nick Clegg regarding Medway Council’s application for City status – the Letter is (here) and the Press statement (here) and other articles on the subject (here)

Councillor Jarrett was quite scathing in Dan Bloom’s article that appeared in the Medway Messenger stating the following;

Cllr. Alan Jarrett (Con) said there was support from most parties and residents claiming, the letter was by “a couple of local activists” who “want to do Medway down.”

After reading the comments in the article, editorial comment and the odd letter in the KM’s letter page I decided to write a response to defend one of the accusations. Tony Jeacock, our Group Chair wrote to defend the accusation that this was a “couple of activists” two weeks prior to that and I've attached that after mine.

Just a quick note on the letter itself. Italicised text was edited out and Bold text was added or reworded text by the Messenger – I’ve left in the original text for comparison.

I am writing in response to Cllr Jarrett’s comments regarding the Liberal Democrat’s letter to Nick Clegg regarding City Status. (Article appeared 27^th January.) FOR MEDWAY

Councillor Jarrett says that the Liberal Democrats are “doing Medway down”  I can assure the Councillor that considering my family’s (edited to MY FAMILY HAS A STRONG) involvement with the towns; My great-great Grandfather is commemorated on the Boer War memorial, my Grandfather built defences here and my Great Uncle worked in the dockyards. I am proud to be from Gillingham and the thought of “doing Medway down” has never entered my mind.

Unlike Councillor Brake’s account, times have changed and in this time of austerity and cuts, including the possibility of Care homes and other front line services facing severe cuts, how can we justify the cost for “potential gains”?

The brass tacks of the matter is that the Council will lose it’s Central Government grant for 2013/4, Council tax may have to rise and there will be a deficit and shortfall resulting in service cuts and pay freezes but they will need to pay out hefty sums for rebranding road signs, uniforms, stationary, this really can’t be another Council overspend.

As a father with a mortgage and Council tax to pay I’d like “Value for my money”. When I see services being cut and my taxes going up and money being wasted I, and many residents don’t see it.  Local Government must do what they have to do before they can do what they want to do and City status is a want rather than a have when spending from the Public purse.

Edited to Read as:

As a father with a mortgage and Council tax to pay, I’d like value for my money. Local councils must do what they have to do before they can do what  they want to do and City status is a want rather than a must-have when spending from the public purse.

(I should state that the letter was not written with the knowledge of the Executive Committee, neither was this article so all criticism should be directed to me alone.)

Tony's response;

Councillor Jarrett, in his response to the Lib Dems opposition to the city-status bid, couldn’t be further from the truth when he suggests the letter was by “a couple of local activists” who “want to do Medway down”. On the contrary, we hold the people of the Medway Towns very much at heart. The decision to take such a stance and submit the said letter to the DPM was as a result of a democratic vote taken by the whole of the Medway Lib Dem executive committee and ordinary voting members in attendance, which whilst not unanimous was nonetheless decisive.

Councillor Jarrett says we have no evidence to support our claims. The fact is, the issue of city-status featured prominently in our local government election campaign on the doorstep last May, further evidenced within our campaign literature. On the doorstep in each of the wards in which we campaigned, we found lamentably little support at all for city status and such that we did find was rather less than robust. The negatives far outweighed the positives, but an even greater majority expressed their total disinterest, which is hardly an endorsement for the local council to proceed when there are far more urgent needs to address.

And where is the evidence that the Tory council secured an overwhelming level of support from the local populace for city status? I would suggest they have become blinded by their own propaganda.

Finally, as a group, we have not said that we should not ever again consider city-status in some form. We simply do not believe it to be appropriate at this time when there are far more important issues at stake, such as saving our residential care homes and day centres caring for our elderly who are no longer able to safely look after themselves, instead of selling them off to the private sector where their future cannot be assured. To refer to our democratically elected course of action as “cynical” is a bit rich coming from a group that goes through the motions of conducting a so-called “consultation” on the proposed closure or sell-off of these establishments, knowing full-well in advance that their decision has already been established.

Tony Jeacock (Chairman) Medway Liberal Democrats

Where is Rehman Chishti MP?

Am seriously worried about Reh?

Last week a fake Twitter account for the Gillingham and Rainham MP Rehman Chishti appeared and began tweeting on all sort of topics. It was annoying for two reasons. One was that I had half written a blog (which is salvaged in this one) which I then had to scrap and eat a certain amount of Humble pie. The other was that within a week it was proved to be false and deleted and I was one of the 100 suckers who had signed up to follow him and had even tweeted to him on policy.

So, to resurrect my original blog post!

The Gillingham and Rainham MP, Rehman Chishti has almost ceased to exist in local memory since his election last year.

I'm not casting aspersions on his work in Parliament AND Medway Councillor where he represents Gillingham and Rainham in Parliament and Rainham Central. He also sits on the Parliamentary Committees for Protection of Freedoms bill, The Draft Defamation Bill and the Joint committee on Human Rights!

However his footprint in Medway is quite small. The Medway Media have often mentioned Tracey Crouch MP for Chatham and Aylesford and Mark Reckless the MP for Rochester and Strood but Rehman has only had one notable mention recently.

Indeed on this Blog, which sometimes commentates on the local news and the comings and goings of  Medway's MP's has mentioned Mark Reckless 8 times, Rehman Chishti 7 times and Tracey Crouch 10 times.
Also the other MPs have a Twitter feed. Mark Reckless (@MarkReckless- who coincidentally follows me.)  has a feed that generally tweets news and says that he cannot always respond to individual tweets.
Tracey Crouch's (@Tracey_crouch) is a lot more personal, she tweets updates on her parliamnetary work, daily life and even the U14 girls football team. In fact as a comparison I have tweeted and emailed and received replies from Miss Crouch about a local issue (mainly because I found it difficult to contact Rehman Chishti that contacted Miss Crouch in the first place. I was not expecting a reply and was most grateful that she did respond even though I am not one of her constituents!!!).  A former Libdem Councillor told me that he had no problems dealing with her office and would also receive Emails from her personally.
They found Rehman Chishti's office a little harder, only ever getting interns or no replies. The same must be true for members of the press as I have seen on a few occasions that the local press have been unable to gain a response from him on certain issues including the creation of a false twitter account.

I have also heard that personal appearances have petered out since the election, I obviously can't personally vouch for that though. It is rumoured that he will turn up to a venue for half an hour and then slope off if the crowd is not responsive or indeed hostile. I have noted that in his letter to me regarding Southeastern trains that he appears at Gillingham and Rainham station during peak times to speak to commuters. I travel at peak times and haven't seen him yet...

Could this be down to a heavy workload? As a Councillor and an MP he must find it quite stressful trying to carry out so much work.
Then there is a cross over of interests. The last time I saw him in the press (before this week.) he was proposing to complain in Council about the Boundary Commission which has proposed the moving of Wigmore and Hempstead ( a strong Conservative area) to Tracey Crouch's Chatham and Aylesford constituency. His motivation was clearly because he, like the local Lib Dems, doesn't want to see communities rendered by arbitrary dividing lines. Not of course, by the fact that Gillingham and Rainham would instead cede Luton and Wayfield, a more Labour leading area, which will dent his majority and, as some commentators have suggested, force him to work for his re-election.

Who is to say?

If anything is Rehman suffering in the same way as the Lib Dems in the Coalition - beavering away and achieving things but getting no credit?
Maybe he should cut his workload and drop his Councillor duties, join Twitter or hire a decent press officer. His constituents would at least kno what he's up to and gain confidence from that, and would be more prone to re-elect him if he is being a good constituent MP rather than possibly cull him in an anti-Cuts/Tory swing in 2015.

Libdem Wars - Return of the Independant

In A ward just north of here, in a time... some point last year....

LIBDEM WARS

  EPISODE III

It is a time of turmoil within the Medway Liberal Democrats.The party has split right down the middle as a break away group battles for Independence against the evil COALITION in Westminster.

A young rebel by the name of Andy Stamp has dramatically reported his fellow ward partners for breaches of conduct and reported them to the standards committee.

Now declared innocent he has found himself under attack by the vile forces of the LIBDEMS and now steels himself for a vital defence...

In his letter Andy Stamp has defended his move and said;

I was justified in making my complaint.  .... I felt they had used their position of power to get preferential treatment for housing.

Also that the standards committee believe he did have grounds for his complaint, hence the investigation, but that they could only act on the information given to them by the council and the council felt that

it is normal procedure for councillors to get privileged access when dealing with their own personal issues.

Councillor Stamp was driven to complain on behalf of the residents who he saw on waiting lists for weeks and months and who struggle to get meetings with anyone let alone the assistant to the director of housing in a private office in Gun Wharf. Councillor Stamp also states that the Audit commission found that 33% of people who are in threat of homelessness often have to wait up to six weeks to be rehoused.
Councillor Stamp writes passionately saying that Councillor Sutton bypassed the system and that she should not be allowed to use her rank to circumvent the system.
He then asks three questions;
1.) Was she able to get a meeting straight away with the assistant director of housing in a private office at Gun Wharf to raise her own housing case?
2.) Did Medway council allocate a house for her within a week of the meeting?
3.) Did she recieve a home bond (a deposit and a month's rent) from Medway council?

Que Deborah Upton, an up unto unheard of voice in this debate. She is assistant to the director of housing and was the one to hold the meeting with Councillor Sutton.

I saw Cathy Sutton in my office in my role as monitoring officer. I did not know what the meeting was about beforehand and her housing issues were only part of the issues raised with me. (The rest is of a confidential matter.)
She also says that; Cllr Stamp is aware of this as he has seen all of the information that was released to the Standards committee.

She also goes on to answer the questions for Councillor Stamp;
Medway council did not "allocate" a house to Cllr Sutton. She was advised of several private sector landlords who had suitable property available to rent, and this is the same process that officers follow with clients who are potentially homeless. Cathy Sutton received a Silver homebond from Medway council as she met the council's published criteria.
All clients who meet the criteria are offered a homebond to help them into private rented accommodation, but many choose to wait for social rented property for which there is a substantial waiting list.

So.... From what I can extrapolate no breach has occurred. Cllr Sutton went with Cllr Ruparel to see Ms Upton for several reasons and that Ms Upton followed procedure and did nothing that was out of the ordinary. I understand Cllr Stamp querying this with the Standards board although I think it would have been wiser to deal with it, either internally with in the Liberal Democrat group or spoken to his ward partners rather than make it public at an obviously stressful time for Cllr Sutton. I also think that maybe he should have kept a certain amount of media silence until the outcome of the hearing to show some respect for his former colleagues. That said I do not agree that this should have been rehashed in the "letters to the editor" by an obviously angry Libdem and thus sparking another week of this story with responses but, and I am sure I speak for many on this count, the issue is closed. The committee have read about it, the public have read about it, the solution is clear and it needs to be dropped immediately.

I really hope there is no Episode IV!

For Episode I and II check out;

http://gingerliberal.blogspot.com/2011/07/on-lib-dems-vs-independants.html

http://gingerliberal.blogspot.com/2011/07/medway-libdems-strike-back-again.html