Julia Batt

Well…. my predictions, it turns out, were hopelessly optimistic….

The Conservatives won Bridge, Fant and Coxheath, although they did lose Barming. Maidstone, for the first time since 1983 is no longer a hung council. The sad thing is, I just can’t put my finger on why….

I feel that Fant ward was won by the Tories purely because the vote was split between Labour, Lib Dem & Green. The Tories only got elected ‘through the middle’.

However, Bridge and Coxheath…. WHY?

• National swing?
• Inaccurate and misleading Tory literature?
• Not enough work by the Lib Dems?

I don’t know is the honest answer - I can’t believe for one moment though that it was due to lack of work by the Lib Dem team (although granted I’m biased). Whilst there can be no doubt that there were dubious claims made in local Tory literature, I still don’t believe that this was the reason, but at the same time I don’t believe that people voted Conservative to make a point about national politics.

I wish I had more experience in these things! I’m going to bed just a few hours before the school run, feeling desperately depressed by the evening.
David Pickett (who has worked so hard for Bridge ward in this past year) and Fran Smith (who has campaigned all her adult life for a better environment in Fant) - I’m sorry. I suspect the majority of your wards will be too.

After so many weeks busy on the campaign trail, today, at last, saw the arrival of polling day.

After a day spent “Telling”, “Knocking-up”, leaflet delivering and running around like a loon, I’m just showered and changed ready to go off to the count. For once I’m early and so I thought I might as well put together my predictions for tonights results. Maidstone is one of the key seats for the Tories. The Leader of the Council, Fran Wilson (Lib Dem) often says “Maidstone is an island of yellow, in a Kentish sea of blue”. The Tories are clearly vying for this borough to finally become a Tory council after many many years as a hung one.

Anyway - here’s the low down:

To take overall control the Conservatives need a gain of one seat. If my predictions are correct, overall the Conservatives face a one seat loss, meaning providing the coalition holds, the Conservatives will not take control of the Council.

Things to bear in mind when reading this:

1. I’m a glass is half full, not half empty kind of girl; and
2. I’ve really only been involved in four of the above wards and don’t know all the in’s and out’s of the others.

Right - time for the off - I’ll post the real results in the morning!

And so it begins - with an impending election, the Conservatives have chosen to not tell the truth in their literature in the hopes of winning a few illgotten votes….

The Conservatives are claiming that the Liberal Democrats wilfully refused to support a fully costed scheme which would have preserved tokens for the disabled and vulnerable.

This is untrue. The Conservatives proposed a rushed scheme which was not fully costed and opened up the Council to huge financial risks.  They did not even say who would be covered by their proposals. 

The government has significantly under-funded the new national bus pass scheme.  It has allocated just £444,000 to Maidstone for a scheme which is likely to cost the taxpayer close on £2 million by the end of the first year.  The Council will almost certainly need to go back to the government for top-up funding but it has been made clear that this will not be available to any Council continuing to provide ‘additional’ concessions such as Maidstone’s existing token scheme. Without such extra funding, huge increases to the Council Tax could not be avoided.

 All parties on the Council were working together to seek a solution which would provide the benefits of the Token Scheme without running this kind of risk.  The Conservatives then broke ranks and decided to bring forward their own rushed and ill- thought-out proposals.

The Liberal Democrats have continued to work with others to find a system that will enable the Council to fund outside Agencies to help those vulnerable people who have been disadvantaged by the new bus pass scheme.

This will take time.  However, the first grant under this heading (£6000) has already been awarded to Age Concern to enable them to continue to provide free transport to and from their Day Centres for those who need it.

I have just sent off the following email to Garden Organic:

Hi there,

 

I received a letter in the post this morning reminding me that my membership is expiring.

 

I became a member specifically because of the beautiful gardens at Yalding that I visited all to infrequently with my family. I was disappointed to learn, through the press, rather than through yourselves of the closure of this area. Whilst I understand your ever increasing costs, and the difficulty you must be faced with, I think the manner in which this was handled was totally unacceptable.

 

Again, reported in the local press have been stories that many people gave donations recently for projects in Yalding – what is happening to this money? Will these people be refunded?

 

I have made the decision that as someone that rarely travels outside of the area, there is no longer any justification for retaining my membership.

 

I wish you well with your enterprise and hope that you can resolve your financial difficulties.

 

Julia Batt

I fully support the work of Garden Organic - the national charity that encourages organic growing, but I seriously can’t justify £36 a year for what for me, really equates to four magazines a year. They do offer lots of other perks for members, but I just don’t use them. As I said in my letter, the real reason I was a member was purely for Yalding organic gardens - if you never had the oppurtunity to go, you’ve missed out on a really beautiful and calm place.

My favourite part (and the kids for that matter) was the ‘war garden’ which showed how people maximised the use of a small area to grow their own food, when rationing was such a huge difficulty. I wonder how we’d all cope if we were rationed these days? Not too well I suspect!

Late yesterday afternoon, all Councillors from Maidstone Borough were invited to attend a photoshoot today to recreate a photo that had been found in 1946 of the opening of Maidstone Police Station.

Unfortunately, the late notice meant that only a few Councillor’s could attend, but I’m very glad to say I was one of them.

 This is a copy of the picture taken on 27th March 1908. The subjects include the Mayor of the time, Borough Councillors and senior Police officers. (Please click on the picture to see an enlarged version).

As can be seen by the photo, there were of course no women involved with the local Council, or indeed in positions of seniority in the Police. This made it all the nicer for me to be included in todays recreation. Although so few of us could make the photo, it still shows how times have changed. The Mayor sat in the centre of the photo, with his wife the Mayoress beside him, and I am there as a female Councillor too! - Plus, none of todays Councillors had top hats on!!!

I’m really looking forward to seeing the photo’s taken today, and just hope I’m not doing my normal cheesey grin, or blinking at the wrong time!

I’ll post the new along with the old when I get a copy!

I just left my friends house where we were discussing the state of the country today (as you do), and something was said that really resonated with me and I felt was worth blogging.

We were talking about the amount of red-tape and over regulation that exists today in this country for just about every aspect of our lives. This is something I’ve been reading about in an amusing, yet worrying book entitled “How to Label a Goat” by Ross Clark. (I highly recommend by the way!)

Anyway, my friend  said:

“The trouble with the law today is it’s like a house with central heating. The Govt. have added more and more pipes to an existing adequate system, that simply allows for more leaks, more creaking and it’s harder for the heat to get around.”

Pretty good analogy isn’t it!