Newington by-election and a ramble.

Here are the results ramble to follow

DECLARATION OF RESULT OF POLL 

District of Thanet

Election of a District Councillor for

Newington

on Thursday 21 January 2016

I, Madeline Homer, being the Returning Officer at the above election, do hereby give notice that the number of votes recorded for each Candidate at the said election is as follows:

Name of Candidate	Description (if any)	Number of Votes*
BIRCHALL, Grahame George	Independent	10
CONSTANTINE, Karen Mary	The Labour Party Candidate	288	Elected
DARK, Adam Nigel	The Conservative Party	156
DRIVER, Ian	The Green Party	20
HODDER, Alan Mark	Independent	49
SMITHSON, Duncan	UKIP	229
WILLIAMS, Jordan Luke	Liberal Democrats Party	12

Vacant Seats: 1

Electorate: 3563

Ballot Papers Issued: 767

Turnout: 21.5

And I do hereby declare that Karen Mary Constantine is duly elected.

District of Thanet

Election of a Parish Councillor for

Ramsgate - Newington

on Thursday 21 January 2016 

I, Madeline Homer, being the Returning Officer at the above election, do hereby give notice that the number of votes recorded for each Candidate at the said election is as follows:

Name of Candidate	Description (if any)	Number of Votes*
DARK, Adam Nigel	The Conservative Party		159
JEFFERSON, Andrew Philip	The Green Party		25
KENNEDY, Susan	Labour Party Candidate		294 Elected
PRITCHARD, Robert J	Democratic Independent		40
SMITHSON, Duncan	UKIP		225
WILLIAMS, Jordan Luke	Liberal Democrats Party		11

Vacant Seats: 1

Electorate: 3563

Ballot Papers Issued: 763

Turnout: 21.3%

First my congratulations to Karen Constantine who got elected as a TDC councillor and Susan Kennedy who got elected as a Ramsgate Town councillor, both Labour.

Back in the day Newington was a safe Labour seat, with Labour getting about two thirds of the vote and the Conservatives getting about a third, then along came UKIP and at the last election UKIP got in beating Labour into second place.   

My own take on this is that had they done more for the Ramsgate area the may well have got in again.

Here in Ramsgate we have predominantly UKIP councillors at TDC, KCC and RTC but the bonkers Ramsgate issues that date from the Labour and Conservative administrations don’t seem to have been touched on by UKIP since they got in.

This is evident to all of us living in the Ramsgate area, just over the road from me TDC are building a largish social housing development in what was a large shop in an otherwise fully let and trading shopping parade.

Now apart from the obvious damage to the part of Ramsgate shopping centre adjacent to the only large car park that most shoppers will use, this development has flats with the bedroom windows facing onto the pavement in an area where TDC has licensed takeaways to be open until 4am.

Obviously the only tenants that will put up with this are likely to be problem tenants and with problem tenants living on the ground floor the whole development is likely to turn into a problem.

Having discussed this with UKIP candidates before the election they agreed with me that this was a totally bonkers approach and just the type of thing that UKIP would address. They could have dealt with it as the building belongs to TDC, but no they just ignored the problem. 

The really strange thing here is that Ramsgate has been the deciding factor in a lot of elections recently, Thanet South is a strongly contested seat, taking Ramsgate is a major factor in taking TDC and yet most of the resources seem to go into Margate.

The Manston issue didn’t seem to go the way a lot of Manston campaigners wanted, with the group that broke away from the UKIP group, “Democratic Independent Group” ostensibly because UKIP decided to reject RiverOak as an indemnity partner and not to proceed with the cpo to build an airfreight hub, only getting 49 votes.  

Oh well I suppose one of these days the local politicians are going to wake up to the fact that if you want to get voted in in Ramsgate you have to give Ramsgate a fair crack of the whip.

Here in my bookshop the Martians have landed, see http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/the-martian-arrives-in-bookshop.html