Politics, Politicians and Little Local Difficulties.

It seems that two of our popular Thanet Blogs are in a state of cryogenic suspension at least temporally I hope. Both Eastcliff Richard and Dave Green have stopped blogging, both for very different reasons it seems. Poor old Eastcliff Richard has had enough of banging his head against a wall and worn himself out and it seems that Dave Green is suffering a little local difficulty again about something that apparently appeared on his Blog. While I don’t know the gory details of Dave’s problems I do know that the Tories monitor Blog sites both here and nationally for writings that they deem to be political and worthy of complaint to something laughingly called The Standards Board for England. My own view is that this thing was set up to emasculate local Councillors and prevent them from criticising opposing Parties policies in public. While I agree and accept that some behaviour is unacceptable fair criticism and pointing out faults is a perfectly right and proper way to go about things especially if you feel that something is wrong.
It seems to me that a set of double standards is being operated here by the local Tories, there is a concerted and concentrated effort to discredit one particular Labour Councillor at the slightest opportunity yet when the boot is on the other foot and they feel they have in some way been slighted they rush like goody two shoes to report the offender to teacher. They then frequently have the gall to accuse us (Labour) of being political and making mischief.
I also accept that many of the Tories on TDC have never had a political thought in their heads and some even deny that decisions are made for political reasons (so why they then joined a political party is beyond me) the Leadership at TDC are most certainly politically motivated. You only have to read the political bile that spews forth from the Leaders column in the local rag fortnightly to understand that, although I suspect that most of it is written by one PC 49 Roger Gale MP. Incidentally you may also wonder why so much of that column is dedicated to national matters when it is local stuff that Thanet folks want to read in a local paper, I strongly suspect that it is to divert attention away from the ever growing list of failing of TDC to properly serve the people of Thanet and to hide the Thanet Tories own shortcomings.
A quick look at something called The Forward Plan reveals that in the coming months they will be considering and adopting yet another raft of politically slanted policies and strategies most of which have no relevance to and are of even less interest to 99% of the people of Thanet. It does of course give them the chance to say when someone rings up about something “ oh we have a policy/strategy for that” the fact that they have no-one to do bugger all about your problem is conveniently overlooked!