Westgate-on-Sea election special

I have incorporated the Westgate bits from the book I publish “Margate and Westgate With Birchington 1903-04”  in order to try and make this post a bit more interesting than the average local political post, the link to the page to buy the book is http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/margate_and_westgate_with_birchington_1903_04.htm

The following is a statement of the persons nominated for election as a District Councillor for Westgate-on-Sea

*Decision of the Returning Officer that the nomination is invalid or other reason why a person nominated no longer stands nominated.

Name of Candidate	Home Address	Description (if any)	Reason why no longer nominated*
ASHBEE Ash	20 Canute Road, Birchington, Kent, CT7 9QJ	Independent
ELENOR Jeffrey	30 Ramsgate Road, Margate, Kent, CT9 5RU	UK Independence Party
FURNESS Bill	25 Cross Road, Birchington­on-Sea, CT7 9HN	Liberal Democrat
HIBBERT Jodie Sharon	65 Grosvenor Place, Margate, CT9 1UX	The Labour Party Candidate
MASKELL James Kelvin	32 Hawley Sq, Margate, Kent, CT9 1PH	The Conservative Party Candidate
MENDELSOHN Claire	38 Royal Road, Ramsgate, Kent, CT11 9LE	Independent

 Extracting the table of persons nominated from the council’s pdf file, so I could publish it above was a computing test that I don’t recommend trying.

I am aiming to come up with some politically impartial post there, but having already been slated as a Labour supporter today, see http://thanetpress.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/britains-no1-coming-to-broadstairs.html I guess it’s going to be an uphill struggle.

 Here are the Westgate-on-Sea Ward results for the election in May 2011.

           

 Thomas George King            Independent    853            17%            Elected

 Simon Moores            The Conservative Party Candidate            793            16%            Elected

 Brian Goodwin            The Conservative Party Candidate            751            15%            Elected

 Richard Chapman            The Conservative Party Candidate            675            14%            Not elected

 David Michael Bull      The Labour Party Candidate            555            11%            Not elected

 Lynda Diane Robinson            The Labour Party Candidate            528            11%            Not elected

 Meg Harvey            The Labour Party Candidate            444            9%            Not elected

 Rosamund Mary Parker            UK Independence Party    283            6%            Not elected

 One way or another it looks as though this is going to be a pretty close run thing, with the most like result being either the Labour candidate or the Conservative candidate getting elected. I will ramble on about this once I see that this rather complicated post of tables and images looks ok published, the bookshop is pretty quiet today due to the weather so I should get time.

Both the Labour and Conservative candidates are young people and I would say the young people of Thanet are very under represented when it comes to councillors.

I guess we all know James Maskell as a sensible local blogger http://villeviews.blogspot.co.uk/ who goes to considerable efforts to record council meetings.

I also guess a lot of us have met Jodie Hibbert, who I first met when she was getting signatures for the Save Dreamland campaign here in Ramsgate.   

Assuming that a large proportion of the electorate would vote for a hat stand if it was Labour or Conservative this leaves the actual decision down to the floating voters like me. Usually voting in Thanet seems to be more about keeping one party out than getting the party with the best ideas in.

Interesting in this case where I would think either Jodie or James would make good councillors, certainly much better than some of the existing councillors, some of which fall into the bracket of being both so offensive and so stupid that I would consider them to be unemployable.