Editor's Blog: The one about the election, the council leader and the reverse ferret
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The last full week of the election campaign began with a bang –
for Kent at least. Driving to work yesterday I was momentarily
thrown by Kent County Council leader Paul Carter being thrust into
the national political limelight on Radio 4. The top item at 7am
was his comments that Tory education policy allowing parents to set
up their own schools if they felt failed by the state schools would
take money away from local education authorities. The Conservatives
accused the BBC of spinning the comments to suggest disharmony in
Tory ranks and it led to a wonderfully spiky exchange between
their would-be education secretary Michael Gove and John Humphrys.
Mr Gove mentioned that he has spoken to Cllr Carter already
that morning (an early wake-up call for our leader, then).
A recording of that conversation would have been most interesting.
Whatever was said the story sparked fevered activity to draw Cllr
Carter’s view into the party position on the subject. Newspapers
call it ‘reverse
ferret’ strategy. Anyway, the Kent leader’s position
on the issue wasn’t a surprise to us as we’ve known about his
concerns and
reported on them.
There’s an interesting side issue
going on locally which strangely has nothing to do with party
politics. It’s about some of the idiosyncracies of our
parliamentary constituency boundaries. It’s been suggested that it
is so confusing that even candidates have been canvassing in the
wrong areas. Certainly Faversham and Mid Kent Tory Hugh Robertson
has accused Maidstone and the Weald Lib Dem Peter Carroll of
operating in his territory.
We’ve now had two letters from Mr Robertson
trying to explain the boundaries of his constituency and there does
seem to be a degree of ignorance in general about where the lines
fall. The boundary commission does have a thankless task in
dividing the county up into its 16 constituencies but it is
unfortunate that great swathes of urban Maidstone aren’t actually
in the Maidstone constituency but within one that starts with the
word ‘Faversham’. However sympathetic you might be with the
Commission’s task, that will grate on people, who are
understandably allied to Maidstone and proud to live here.
Don’t forget
our Maidstone election hustings at the Royal Albion pub on
Wednesday at 6.30pm
Tuesday, April 27 2010
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