Wednesday 3 June 2009

Remember to vote tomorrow.

With so many of the party faithful of all three major parties so disenchanted with politics at the moment I am reminding people that they have a duty to vote, even if you register protest votes it is better than making no vote at all.

It is only in the last few years that I have had much to do with government and much of this has been the result of my concerns about various local issues mostly to do with public safety.

Frankly I can’t say that I am happy with many aspects of government that I have dealt with at every level and I am hoping that the expenses scandal will produce major reforms.

With the European Parliament, House of Lords, House of Commons, Kent County Council, Thanet District Council and Ramsgate Parish Council, we have a great many levels of government pay for.

For the most part this seems to be a great horde of highly paid people pushing bits of paper around and much of this paper is of dubious worth.

Obviously there must be a point where the scales tip and the private sector can no longer support this extravagance, it seems likely we have passed this point some time ago, I am wondering if there is any way back to a level we can afford.

Watching question time today with £9,000 Kitchen Brown and £5,857.63 Decorating Clegg and £680 Wisteria Cameron I was much more reminded of an unruly classroom than a seat of government, it is clear that we need some sort of different system.

Looking at our MPs most seem to have a set of priorities which is, self, then party, then country and talking to people in the bookshop this week it is also apparent that many MPs have completely lost touch with ordinary people.

Most people’s main concern is that this country is that it is rapidly becoming unpleasant to live in, especially for ordinary working people, we need a real workable plan to deal with antisocial behaviour.

With years of Labour government nationally and Conservative government locally a walk round the commercial hubs of Margate and Cliftonville should be enough to show politicians of both main parties that they need to change their ideas.

With prospective candidates probably hanging around polling stations tomorrow you may wish to ask them where they stand on the main local issues like. Turner Contemporary, Dreamland, Pleasurama, the drinking water aquifer particularly with regard to the way KCC abused Water Resources Act 1991 draining roads into very sensitive parts of the aquifer, China Gateway, airport expansion, the contraction of our town centres, Westwood Cross, museums, Thanet Gateway, KCCIT, Kent TV, Icelandic investment, policing, schools, tourism, antisocial behaviour, etc.

I am wondering if for instance, here in Ramsgate, a candidate that wants us to be at the end of a runway of a rapidly expanding airport with inadequate environmental controls, is going to attract a lot of votes.

2 comments:

  1. Dave and Liz Green are good local councilors that continue to work very hard, for very little, on our behalf. It would be a shame to lose them. Protest if you will but don't throw out the baby with the bath water - now more than ever we need to keep a clear head.

    Eddie.

    ReplyDelete
  2. quote from Liz

    "I do support the airport up to the size envisaged in the Local Plan. I would be more than amazed if the passenger growth extended to 10,000,000 and do not believe this is feasible."

    Why support the plan that says 10,000,000 passengers if you do not beleive it to be feasible?

    I agree they are good local councillors, but Liz has to make her mind up on what she supports.

    ReplyDelete

Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.