The vultures are circling; the press is the enemy within. I will not regurgitate the allegations about the News of the World or the rumours surrounding other newspapers, this has been recycled for the last 72 hours; nor will articulate the political fallout – both David Cameron and Ed Miliband hired former News International employees (both have allegations about them). And Labour and Tories were both guests at a recent dinner party, hosted by Murdoch.

Instead, I wish to raise one point. The press in general. Limited reports are suggesting ordinary journalists are witnessing hostility from the public. Andrew Gilligan noted a wave of e-mails, criticising his work and abilities as a journalists, something he has never witnessed. According to Mr Gilligan he is not the only journalist to experience this.

McCarthyism-esque inquiries will damage our reputation as a democracy – a free press is fundamental to holding the government to account. Regulation on their abilities to conduct investigation journalism would be a disaster for Britain. Yes, the hacking scandal was immoral, but it was a failure of the criminal justice system. It was the Metropolitan Police which warned against a public inquiry and turned a blind eye to criminality at a variety of news papers.

Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. You might find the press irritating. But as Edmund Burke elegantly pointed out, the press are the fourth estate and the true guardians of liberty.

I have been attending counts at elections since 1964.

Normally candidates get to bed just as the sun's rays are bursting over the eastern horizon, lulled by the dawn chorus. Not this time.

At 9am, the last result was finally declared after two recounts, after 11 hours of most local government counters twiddling their thumbs. 

The count was held up until 6am by some civil servant wanting to validate the AV referendum figures for the region. Every polling station was supposed to sit still and wait - and wait - and ......

It was the most ridiculous delay of the democratic process I have ever experienced.

What was even more ridicidulous was that the ward counts had taken place (otherwise we would probably still have been in Medway Park tonight!). Eventually Neil Davies, the Returning Officer and Chief executive of Medway Council, announced he had been given permission to tell the candidates the results - but not the people who had counted... and not the media (representing the general public, the voters if you prefer, 3waiting there to pass on the news to the world at large).

Ofcourse immediately he had given out the "confidential informal announcement" those sworn to secrecy told the rest of us.

Ridiculous? You bet.

***

Politicians are gathering in their private hideholes this weekend, trying to fathom out what happened to their campaigns in Medway.

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats had expected a kicking from the electorate. Instead, there was the shock of increased personal votes and an increase in members among the Tories - and virtual annihilation for the LibDems.

Labour, by comparison, finally got Adam Price back in the chamber after years in isolation.

Rodney Chambers, leader of the Conservative Group and currently Leader of the Council, became increasingly cock-a-hoop during the night.

By comparison, Geoff Juby's bright yellow jacket and tie covered in playing card images began to look sicker and sicker as he walked from table to table.

One or two people were vitriolic. No more so than in Watling Ward where Tory and LibDem ladies will be side by side.for the next four years.

The comment that "I want to work with her…" never sounded less truthful.

***

It was a damned close run thing in Allhallows where the old brigade narrowly lost out to those seeking a more open parish council.

The results were declared with three of the Old Brigade (led by the current chairman, Yvonne Forrest) and five of the "Change Brigade".

One of those to lose hisplace was Peter Apostel, the quiet voice of reason on the council, who had tried to bring sense and sensibility to the often ludicrous behaviour in the village hall. Dibley? - eat your heart out.

It meant the likely end of Cross Park Association influence. Three of the association's committee left the council.

It also promises to be an interesting few months for the clerk, for the borough council's legal officers and for the new chairman.

For example, how will the chairman unite the council?

Is there a fly with a video camera who could oversee the discussions with the clerk?

And will the promised training to be given by the borough council actually result in all in the parish council to attend?

That has been the biggest problem at Allhallows: a failure to know what the rules are under which the parish council, its members and paid officers, operate.

***

Well, the votes are in and counted. Kent has voted, it seems the turnout is up, and there has been a few changes. Predictably, the Liberal Democrat vote has capitulated in places (most notably Canterbury) and Labour has made gains.

Gravesham is a council Labour are championing this morning with a spectacular win, with Ed Miliband claiming ('the result proves' theory) his party 'are on the come back'. Alas, though; Dartford, Shepway and Medway have seen Labour fail to make any real gains; seats that were on the Labour target list. Conservatives have either maintained control or increased their representation. Thanet has fallen to No Overall Control (NOC), which is disappointing after Harriet Harmen and others visited this week. Labour failed to make, well, easy gains that they were expected to achieve.

Ed Miliband is touring the county and marching through the towns like a victorious Caesar, but it is covering up a modest night for Labour. And that is being kind. The infamous '+1,000 councillors easy' claim has proved to be false. The anti-cut message is not adequate due to Tory gains across the council. Cameron is the true winner in Kent.

More worrying, the Liberal Democrat vote did not move to Labour – it shows signs of the Tories benefiting. Canterbury, for example, has seen the Tories increase their councillors to over 30 with Labour (again) have no genuine presence on the council. Only 3 councillors.

Kent is still blue, and strongly blue, with a few spots of red and yellow.

note: Liberal Democrat leader at Canterbury City Council had this to say on twitter;

@ AlexCanterbury It was like sending your batsmen to the crease only for them to find their bats had been broken by the team captain #libdems

Anyone staying up for the election count this week will need plenty of caffeine and high energy food. This looks like being a record breaker for the time it takes the counters to sort out who won what and when.

The doors shut at 10pm (by which time some of the polling station staff will be approaching 18 hours non-stop on the job).

Certainly by the time they hand over all the paperwork, the boxes and their secret contents, they will be ready for bed.

Meanwhile, the late shift will be getting settled for a very long night.

I am forecasting a 7am finish by the time the counting of the borough votes will have been completed. That may be optimistic.

This is because the Electoral Commission is insisting that officers have to verify how many people voted in the referendum by 2am. Only once they have accepted that has been done can the voting begin.

Voters will have at least two forms: the grey one will record our views on the referendum while a fetching lilac colour has been chosen for recording borough votes.

They will all be shoved into the same box.

Those places on the peninsula where there is a village ballot for parish councils will have a long wait - and white papers on which to record the council candidates they support. The delay is because counting the handful of votes will not begin before 4pm on Friday evening.

That's also the time when the way the 189,843 residents of Medway vote on whether to keep First Past the Post - or go for alternative votes.

Imagine if all 190,000 people voted (well, that minues 157).

Fortunately for those waiting up, swigging Red Cow, Coffee or whatever other fluid is available to keep their eyes open, more than 100,000 of them are liable to stay away from the 118 polling stations and 445 volunteers waiting to greet them in school rooms, pubs, caravans and assorted other electoral registration points.

From about 5.30am on Friday we plan to have early results up on the web, and to keep updating as they become available.

Then as the counters crawl away for bed (or we reporters head for the news room keyboards, video editing and soundtrack edit machinery) we at least can smirk - and the counters cannot. This is because they will have to start counting the referendum votes at 4pm - and also find time to declare the results in the parish council elections.

Me? I shall be in the Land of Nod, probably croaking a hoarse lament to the early swifts and swallows over Medway.

***

The Liberal Democrats are beginning to panic.

They appealed for help in Gillingham North from supporters as far away as London last weekend.

There is a golden opportunity to hear what the front runners have to say about the election issues tonight.

There is also a pretty good chance that the minor parties, the CCTV banners and the Get Rid of Everyone brigade will get a look-in, throwing in questions to try to unsettle the big boys.

I am talking about the Medway Messenger's hustings which are being held at 7pm tonight in the Pilkington Building at the Universities At Medway campus.

On the top table - ready to field the quizzers - will be the group leaders of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat groups, Rodney Chambers, Paul Godwin and Geoff Juby, together with the Green candidate, Trish Marchant.

Holding the chairman's gavel will be fellow blogger, Paul Francis, Political Editor of the KM Group and the only reporter to be Kent Journalist of the Year on three occasions.

We have already had some excellent questions, but the real excitement will come from the questions on the night.

So come along - ask your questions - or just listen as the sparks fly.

***

One of my colleagues discovered that not every candidate is necessarily enthusiastic about winning.

I do not intend to give the self-appointed foul-mouthed individual publicity, but suffice it to say he didn't care whether or not he won a seat, and if the electorate is foolish enough to put him in a position of responsible power he was unlikely to attend council meetings.

So, Mr Prospective Candidate, why bother participating in the first case?

***

The saga of the parishes continues unabated.

Allhallows has called an emergency meeting tomorrow night in a bid to fix the lease on the Brimp before the election next week while High Halstow joined the list of parishes which have avoided an election.

***

New buses are coming to Medway.

Five completely unique singledeckers have been ordered for the 116 route between Hempstead, Rainham and Chatham.

This is becoming the Arriva service to serve the new higher and further educational establishments in Gillingham and Chatham Maritime.

A temporary principal has been appointed at the troubled Bishop of Rochester Academy.

A three-day week might be great for some but it presents challenges for us journalists. News doesn't stop and we are still producing the same number papers and pages, web updates and radio bulletins as any 'normal' week. It's an incredible busy time with politics to the fore, a certain marriage, and the climax of the football season with Gillingham giving us fans the usual palpitations.

Gravesend has become an election battleground with Ed Miliband, Baroness Warsi and Ken Livingstone on the stump, as Labour bid to wrest control of Gravesham from the Tories. We're expecting a heavyweight visit today.

In Medway tonight we're gathering the three party group leaders on the council as well as a Green Party candidate to ask the simple question: Who should run Medway? Also joining them on the panel is Professor Tim Luckhurst of the Centre for Journalism at Kent University, which is hosting the hustings meeting. Chaired by our political editor Paul Francis, it takes place at the Pilkington Building at the University's Medway campus in Chatham.

While we'll be concentrating on local issues, the little matter of AV might come up. There's a view that there is widespread ignorance of the system and how it works. Our reporters are putting this to the test today in a major exercise to establish how Medway is likely to vote and do they understand what AV is about.

It's Olympic deadline day for ticket orders tonight and we're asking people have they applied and if so, what have you bid for. Have you taken a punt on being one of the lucky few to watch Usain Bolt defend his 100m title or have you chosen a less mainstream competition like synchronised swimming? It will be interesting to see if the folk of North Kent really take advantage of being on the doorstep of the 2012 games.

Like I said, there's a lot going on ...

THE next stage of the run up to May 5's local elections has just come to an end with the closure of nominations.

Candidates had until midday today to get their nominations in - along with lists of supporters who can vouch for their standing in the community.

The Conservatives were boasting last week that all their candidates in the 22 wards had been cleared of any blemishes (at least their nomination papers were correctly completed).

Labour was less lucky, and still searching for official supporters to complete nomination papers at the weekend.

Papers were handed in this morning - just before the deadline.

Staff were already trying to sort out papers belonging to several of the smaller parties.

Electoral officers are currently checking the entries, but all three major parties are said to have candidates in virtually every ward, there are plenty of independents in the offing and it looks as though the parish councils are about to get a wake-up call with at least two polticial parties - Conservative and Liberal Democrats - putting in nominations on the west bank of the Medway.

***

If the parishes do have an election, it will be the first in Medway since there was a stand-off in High Halstow in 2003, and only the second since the beginning of the 1990s.

The row at Allhallows (which has spilled on to this blog site and the Medway Messenger's web pages) seems to have sparked renewed interest in the principle of democracy. The practice of the same should follow later.

***

One of the names in the borough council hat is that of Dan McDonald, the chief executive of the Medway CItizens Advice bureau.

Mr McDonald had a good airing yesterday on The Politics Programme on BBC-1 sparking a few angry comments from the Liberal Democrats.

Mr McDonald is an interesting character.

He has variously been a Labour Party member and a Lib Dem (he was press officer for their most successful candidate in the 2010 Gneeral Election.

These days Dan is with the Andy Stamp independent group.

Interesting to read recently that when he worked for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister in North Devon as a housing manager he was known as Rory.

***

I understand one of the Lib Dem candidates is a fellow with the name Jasmin. The Bosnian barrister pronounces it Yasmin in case there was any doubt.

***

On a more mundane level, I hear Derrick Singleton, the former housing chief who was moved sideways, has now left the council. The sound of the door clanging shut was (I undestand) delberately silenced.

***

Among the many who will not be standing for election next month are the two MPs who have also been councillors, Reh (call me Rehman) Chishti and Mark Reckless. They are going to concentrate their efforts in Westminster.

***

A regular correspondent has taken me to task for having the temerity to suggest that most parish councillors are unelected.

If you don't face the election ballot, and get more votes than someone else, that is not an election. It is a sham, shames the community , and is certainly not a democratic process.

If, as then happens, the rest of the council is selected from "volunteers" that is even more disgraceful. Interviews were held at one peninsula parish council to decide who fitted in with the rest of the council - and who should be excluded. It saved an election. It did nothing for democratic rights.

Elections? - stand up and be counted!

While Kent County Council seems fairly convinced that paying £165,000 for the services of a transformation project manager for less than a year was worth it, I rather doubt taxpayers' will see it that way. (I suspect one or two council employees might also find it rather hard to swallow).

But you could argue - as KCC has - that contracting Jeff Hawkins for a six-figure sum has been value for money because he has helped the authority come up with a leaner structure that will help save more than four times that sum every year.

The related question that needs asking is why, if we follow the argument that has often been advanced by KCC in relation to executive pay levels, the authority felt it was 'unable to find a full time dedicated programme manager with the skills and experience needed for delivering this scale of programme.'

How KCC is paying £165,000 for a shake-up manager>>>

I'm sure Jeff Hawkins is a perfectly capable and skilled adviser. But was there no-one at County Hall capable of steering through this programme, complex though it might be? Surely these kind of changes are exactly what we pay our most highly paid public sector executives to oversee?

Incidentally, it's worth noting that councillors were not involved in signing off the appointment and did not need to be, a situation that has since led to some changes relating to the recruitment of such contractors. 

It's also worth pointing out that you would have had some trouble locating the information regarding the costs of securing Mr Hawkins' services among the hundreds of invoices of more than £500 published monthly by KCC as he is employed by Kent Top Temps - and there are literally hundreds of invoices submitted by Kent Top Temps to KCC each month.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Meanwhile, the rather unseemly row over whether county councillors should forego their free lunches on days when there are full council meetings at County Hall rumbles on.

I'm always surprised - perhaps I shouldn't be - that politicians appear congenitally incapable of understanding that although the sums involved are relatively trivial, it is this kind of thing that really irritates voters. MPs were exactly the same when confronted with exposure of some of their more modest but nevertheless eye-catching claims in the expenses scandal.

Anyway, it sounds like efforts are being made to bring down the costs although I haven't spoken to anyone yet outside KCC who thinks that the right thing to do would be to continue with the lunches but have councillors pay for them. If, as it seems, they already receive as part of their basic allowance a sum to cover subsisdence, why are we meeting the costs on full council days?

Still, at least it looks like our democratically-elected representatives are to agree to a pay cut. A plan to cut their allowances by 2% is being drawn up, meaning county councillors will see their basic yearly allowance of £13,000 reduced by about £260.

Which is something - although perhaps the prospect of a pay cut explains why they are being so intransigent about their free lunches.

The row among the LibDems in Gillingham North is rather reminscent of the Mount Helen explosion a few years ago - slowly growing and then suddenly blowing its lid.

The politicians haven't got to the big bang - yet - but it could be about to happen.

Briefly, three Lib Dems were elected to serve in 2007. It surprised many, and hurt the Labour group who were convinced they would win.

Among their successes was Andy Stamp, a young, enthusiastic and optimistic politician they quickly groomed for higher office. He soon became deputy leader of the party's council group. After being blooded against the deputy leader of the Conservatives he quickly learned to stand on his own feet.

Then things started to go wrong within the group.

One of his colleagues, Cllr Cathy Sutton, had formed a relationship with a member of another party - a situation always open to suspicion.

Stamp was selected as the Lib Dems candidate for the Gillingham and Rainham constituency.

The constituency party covers two seats. The other is Rochester and Strood where the Group Leader, Cllr Geoff Juby, was the candidate (again).

The way this particular constituency party works is in keeping with the party name - democratically. Members could chose who they supported. Some helped Juby, some aided Stamp, and some worked for both. Others nodded sagely and stayed at home. The constituency chairman, a tough bird, hardened on Gillingham politics, is Alan Jefferies. His personal time was given to Cllr Juby's campaign.

Cllr Stamp considered he had a better chance of winning.

Neither did win, but there had been rows over where the election funds to support the campaigns should go. It led to regional investigations into any unfairness. They were pretty informal from what I understand happened, and they eventually rejected Cllr Stamp's allegations.

Meanwhile Cllr Sutton's friendship had broken up. She felt she urgently needed to find a new home.

The third member of the ward triumvirate, Cllr Maureen Ruparel, became involved. The two women went to see the council's housing chief, and were advised of a number of private landlords. Cllr Sutton moved out a few days later.

Cllr Stamp was unhappy at the process, and complained to the Standards Committee of Medway. It grinds through the processes exceedingly slowly. It has still not decided whether the two councillors should have taken a different course of action.

Unfortunately for the councillor, he had also lost the deputy leader's job, after putting all his effort into the race for the Leader's position. He resigned the group whip shortly afterwards, and then decided to resign from the party. In turn, it considers he is suspended - and therefore subject to disciplinary action.

May will soon be here: an election is looming.

The Lib Dems have not yet announced their team.

It would not include Cllr Stamp: he has formed an independent grouping seeking election. All three are ex-LibDems (a second is believed still to be a Lib Dem member).

You'd think that would be enough. Think again. Silently watching this scenario are the Labour candidates. Their grins are wider than the Cheshire Cat.