Tuesday 12 June 2012

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.    


10 comments:

  1. Jodie or James are the ones who'd get my vote (and for all you youthphobes, the fact that they're both under 30 has nothing to do with it).

    ReplyDelete
  2. So it seems there is no-one who lives in Westgate who is willing to stand. "Local" politics my a**e

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  3. Apparently not but it's all still Thanet. How many councillors live in the ward they represent?

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  4. Roger Gale (MP for North Thanet) doesn't even live in Thanet, but I don't think that makes much difference. At least it's fairly safe to assume that those from Margate and Birchington are familiar with Westgate-on-Sea.

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  5. Ignoring the politics and looking at the local history - what was a "Model Dockyard"????

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    Replies
    1. Where is the reference to the model dockyard?

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  6. In the photo ads on the last page: "Tarner's Model Dockyard" Established 1887.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have tried Dr. Dawn Crouch the Westgate historian and although she was aware of the advert and had tried to find out, she hadn’t managed to find any other reference to it. She did confirm that both the garden and house are small, so for the moment I have drawn a blank.

      Delete
  7. Looks like the independent vote will come out on top but neither candidate will get in.

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    Replies
    1. On what do you base that conclusion?

      Delete

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.