Well, That Was Fun!

Got back a little while ago from two meetings of the full Medway Council. Yes, that's correct: two meetings!

First was a special meeting to decide whether to grant Honorary Freedom of the Borough of Medway to the Corps of Royal Engineers. That went very well, and was I believe agreed unanimously. I shall check when the record of the meeting is published.

This was followed by the customary "ordinary" Council meeting, with its usual mix of decision-making, petitions presented, questions asked and answered, and the inevitable political knockabout.

The interesting thing is that, although the Opposition Groups still have a lot of vitriol and a huge amount of negativity, in reality they have very little real material and have to contrive what they present in such a way as to apparently support their claims.

Unfortunately for them, our side is very well informed and have our facts at the ready -- especially me, as I have a wealth of information on my portable computer, so can summon just about anything I might need at a moment's notice. I have on several occasions dealt with unanticipated subject matter that opposition members have sneaked into the debate by some subterfuge. Being able to quote from official documents that are in the public domain (so anyone could easily check the veracity of what I state in the Council Chamber) is one of my favourite techniques. I always mention my source, also that it is public information, and indeed did so this very evening.

This particular occurrence concerned the severe (and deliberate) underfunding of our council, especially in the context of how much is going towards propping up wasteful Labour councils -- and Livingstone's increasing billions of overspend on the Olympics (another billion revealed just this week) for another example of a Labour-run Authority's drain on public funds. I was able to quote some genuine (and very interesting!) statistics and facts, such as: how many Directors does a council like ours need for its corporate services functions? We've never had more than one, yet a Labour council that isn't a million miles away and is quite similar in population and duties to ours has three, each costing around £150,000.

It is no wonder that with a fiddled system like the one in this country, there isn't enough money to go round, and the two "fiddle factors" were mentioned this evening.

The Labour group's latest wheeze to explain the huge discrepancy between us and a typical Labour-run council is that "there is no deprivation in Medway", and funding is being targeted towards deprived areas in the country. Their Deputy Leader even quoted from council publications to attempt to "prove" that there is no deprivation in Medway.

I was the first member of Medway Council to point out that there are no fewer than 29 deprived neighbourhoods in Medway, and this arrived at using the Government's own criteria in their Multiple Index of Deprivation. One of my colleagues reminded the meeting of this fact tonight.

Most significantly of all, the majority of these neighbourhoods are in wards with Labour councillors! Chatham Central, Luton and Wayfield, Twydall, and even Rochester East, all have such areas. I wonder how their residents will take the news that the reason they aren't getting the funding for their communities' needs is because their own councillors are making no effort on their behalf, claiming that "there is no deprivation in Medway".

Talk about shooting oneself in the foot! It is little wonder that the Labour presence on Medway Council has been dwindling over the past ten years...