Things are changing so rapidly in government that everyone was caught out by yesterday's announcement that the South East Plan had been scrapped.
The plan's objectives were sensible: to prmovide a long term direction to creating jobs, businesses and homes.
But it became tied up in reports, and inspectors, and hearings and rehearings, and things called core strategies.
Medway had hoped to get its part of the South East Plan through very quickly. But in Whitehall there were repeated changes to the ground rules, and in the midst of it were councils trying to work to one set of rules and inspectors working to others.
Medway's was the most fraught in the region.
The inspector was only interested in one aspect of the local plan - by then renamed the Local Development Framework. That was jobs - and the provision of land to meet the needs of businesses as communities and populations grew across the Medway Towns.
Eventually it was withdrawn at the last minute: the council faced it being rejected anyway.
Last night it was to be discussed at the regeneration scrutiny committee but it was withdrawn, to be rewritten again. It followed the morning's announcement that the over-arching plan - the South East Plan - had been scrapped by the government.
Now the team will sit down, without any clear guidance from MPs, Ministers or Mandarins, and try to come up with a set of rules that should earmark areas for development, areas for protection and other key issues.
The developers must be loving it. The chaos and lack of guidance is so enormous. If they don't get out the coach and horses to drive straight through Medway's plans I shall be astonished.
The Conservative administration must now be worried about the Medway Magna scheme to develop the Capstone Valley, and turn adjacent farmland into warehousing alongside the motorway.
They have been collecting numerous petitions against the plan which, until now has been on a fluttering back burner.
Meanwhile the planning team under Brian McCutcheon, facing cutbacks to save money, may have to be retained.
And the plan? Unlikely to be discussed before September.
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Medway, sadly, has far too few things to inspire the community.
Why, even its many heroes - that cities across Britain would kill to claim - are ignored or completely forgotten.
If we can call Charles Dickens ours, we can surely claim Francis Drake: as a small boy he was brought here by his father. It was where he learned to sail.
Kitchener is ours. So, too, is his hero, Gordon of Khartoum.
Stephen Borough, the first great arctic explorer who set out to find the North East Passage to China in the 1550s, is ours: he's even buried here.
The next generation created William Adams, the man who opened up Japan, and developed the British ability to create great heroes from failing (he was supposed to discover the way to China going the opposite way to Borough)
The first RAF VC holder was Gillingham-born James McCudden...
The list of heroes truly is enormous.
If we ignore our present, our future is dim and dull. Our past should not be like that - but for many it is.
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