There was no sign of contrition on the part of Cllr Jane Chitty when she was told she had been rude and aggressive to a council member of staff last night.

Mrs Chitty spoke for 40 minutes justifying the 30-second outburst.

Not once did she say she was sorry, or that she regretted her outburst.

What happened left the employee, Labour political officer Laura Steward, in tears, and an education manager shocked by the behaviour.

It was an extraordinary incident that happened in an extraordinary location.

It was also extraordinary how long it took the council to investigate the allegations, dumping one lethargic investigator and briefing another who never interviewed Miss Steward or the witness.

Mrs Chitty is no shrinking violet. She is boisterous, an in your face councillor, and practices a no-holds-barred attitude to political opponents.

She forgot that she is an elected representative of the community. For half a minute - possibly less - she had blown her lid. The diminutive officer had to stand there and take it.

Yet throughout her defence, Mrs Chitty blamed a string of incidents that surrounded the debate on school closures - an emotive issue that did more to split the council than any other plan in Medway's 14-year history.

After the hearing, she continued to protest justification for her actions.

This was the second of three investigations into her behaviour that the standards committee is undertaking. It's One - All at the moment.

THE amount of vitriol spilled in Gillingham by its Liberal Democrat councillors (past and present) has taken on tsunami proprtions.

As a West Countryman I might have substituted the word bore - a tidal wave that sweeps up some rivers against the natural flow. But it would have been misunderstood.

There is nothing boring about the vehemence and the anger which has been let loose in the row about their former deputy leader and parliamentary candidate, Andy Stamp.

It has hit personal levels such as I have never known in the 20 years I have worked in Gillingham's political arena.

Stamp is a sensitive man with a strong sense of moral right.

He reported his two ward colleagues to the Standards Board after one of them - Cathy Sutton - was forced to leave her home and sought help.

They are still under investigation by the council's standards committee.

Since he resigned from the group and later the party, and stands as an Independent, Cllr Stamp has raised the stakes by going public on his complaints.

The party has now sprung to his defence, accusing him of a poor result in the general election (it was their best result since Bob Sayer stood in 1997).

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The campaign to win city status for Medway has taken to the streets (literally) with the appearance of Arriva's dark blue and white doubledecker.

It has been poiunding the roads between Chatham, Rochester and Strood since it entered service.

What a pity it hasn't been on the 132 route. It serves Gillingham and Rainham, two of the towns which seem to have been overlooked in much of the regeneration benefits.

They also accused him of sulking because he didn't get the group leadership (he didn't, but by then the rank and file were already taking sides).

It is an election year. In 91 days we shall all be waiting to hear who has won what.

I strongly suspect the electorate will respond to the row in a way that will do nothing to benefit the LibDems - just as the electorate appears to want to blame that party for all the woes of the financial mess.

The Honourable Member for Thanet North, Roger Gale, has given a stark warning that the youngest MPs might depart from a career in politics due to the new expenses system causing "exceptional difficulties.”

Recent reports have given us bizarre insights into new MP's sleeping in their Westminster office, too scared to file a claim for a hotel room. “There are young members in Kent who are having exceptional difficulties and cashflow problems, partly because they’ve had to pay thousands of pounds for their offices and Ipsa is very slow at paying them back.“ said Gale and went on to complain that MPs had to take huge page cuts (from previous careers) to become an elected representative. Charlie Elphicke , newly elected MP for Dover, agrees with the assessment and fundamentally believes the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) is too extreme. Almost punishing Members of Parliament. Some readers might even think that is justified.

Of course, the complaints are legitimate and worthy of serious consideration but MP's need to understand the anger felt by voters. The grotesque greed was so widespread that Parliament was becoming a kleptocratic state within its own right. I cannot foresee the IPSA become altered again – it would be highly unpopular and political suicide for the government to consider it. And I cannot see the public having any desire to pay Members of Parliament even more.

Roger Gale might be wise to live with the birth pains and the allow the new foundations to strengthen. Especially in this new age of austerity. Complaining about expenses and your entitlements might not be a voting winning.

SEASONED viewers of Medway councillors are used to the Tory bruiser, Alan Jarrett, battering opponents with verbal cudgels.

It's what the party faithful expect - and the twinkle-eyed Tory is quick to dish it out, and prepared to laugh when it comes back at him.

This week those under attack from his razor wit and battering ram verbosity were not the usual cannon fodder. They were Conservative ministers.

He accused them of doing exactly the same that he had attacked Labour's ministers for doing. The had hidden bad news as they slashed council budgets.

However, that was the least of their sins in the eye of the Deputy Leader of the Conservative administration. He is endeavouring to serve 260,000 residents and more than 8,000 staff without any of the powers conferred at Bethsaida.

For a Government which had talked about openness, he accused his party's top people of "not having the courage to be up front and say times are hard."

Cllr Jarrett - a one-time constituency chairman - said: "They are hiding it in a totally disingenuous way.

"Next year we have to publish every expenditure over £500. It is part of the oppenness they expect from us."

He said the government was forcing councillors to get rid of their most valuable asset - staff who delivered high quality services and went the extra mile for the community.

David Cameron's local government programme is in disarray. Today it takes away, tomorrow it throws something back in, the next day it says it is reconsidering its previous decision and will let people know sometime in January what they will get - or may be not get....

How anyone can plan a accurate £650 million budget when the chief source of funds can't make up its mind is one thing. To have to plan the whole lot in a matter of days - and yet remain democratic - is beyond me.

The treasury and the chief executive's team will be burning the midnight oil from now until February 24 as they try to pull together a working budget that will continue to provide services.

The trouble is the threat that some of those services will disappear is becoming more and more a possibility in the next few years.

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Meanwhile if you want to see a council in disarray pop out to Allhallows.

Councillors there have decided they need to spend around £74,000 in the coming year - compared with £35,000 two years ago.

They had planned to give up a few hours after Christmas to try to find a more acceptable spending level. Now the finance committee chairman has decided to put it back to Monday January 10 - which just happens to be the date the previous committee chairman is unable to make. Of course, that is a coincidence... it has nothing to do with representing the minority faction, experience or anything like that.

The trouble is they then have a full council meeting on January 12 at which the members are expected to rule on the budget. It doesn't leave any time for the public (or absent members) to consider and comment constructively on the detail.

Parish councils have a duty to ensure that their agendas and all relevant documents are available to members and the public a minimum of three days before the meeting.

Allhallows parish council does not welcome members of the public questioning its decisions. That was very evident at their last meeting.

I am still trying to get the papers for that meeting, but the clerk "only works five hours a week", I was told. Fine. That doesn't excuse the council from making available (as a matter of course) all relevant documents three days before the meeting that are to be discussed in the public section. It gives them no excuse for ignoring lawful requests.

I have written twice to the council requesting the documentation for that meeting and for the next meetings. To date they have not responded.

Small wonder Medway's monitoring officer has received four separate complaints about the operations of Allhallows council.

Someone muttered "Is this the Vicar of Dibley coming true?"

No. This is for real.

There may be more salacious items on the agenda of tomorrow night's council meeting, but city status is certain to attract a lot of attention.

The council has been criticised for the presumptive way it claimed to represent the City of Medway.

That is likely to haunt the administration when its Leader once again calls for unanimous support for the bid on Thursday night.

The full council backed the 2000 and 2002 bids.

It is expected to get similar support this week. Labour councillors have already said they will back the bid. But they have reservations.

They will raise those before they vote to back the bid. Their concerns are that the council decided to call Medway a city before anyone had authorised it.

The Conservative administration’s communications and finance guru, Alan Jarrett, was quoted locally as saying: "We can call ourselves what we like." He's said the same to me.

That statement might yet impact on the final decision in the depths of Whitehall and at Buckingham Palace.

Again, it might not.

Cllr Jarrett may be right that we are a city: we are certainly bigger than Portsmouth, Southampton, Newcastle…. In fact bigger than all but 20 conurbations in the UK - but it doesn't win over objectors.

I have talked with quite a few of them, and respect their right to oppose the bid. I make no secret of my support for it. What I do disagree with is the argument that it is costing a fortune to bid for city status.

The council is a business spending two-thirds of a billion pounds a year. The budget for the city bid is £25,000 - a drop in the ocean. Or more precisely it is less than is spent every 20 minutes on collecting rubbish, looking after the elderly, caring for children, catching dangerous drivers, raising the education of children in our schools, keeping our streets clear of snow and all the other things the council does for the Five Towns, morning, noon and night.

I know - 25 grand is more than the average Medway resident earns in a year, but if it puts a few thousand pounds in our pockets by attracting successful employers, improving the value of our homes and providing us with brighter areas to shop and relax than Chatham High Street it'll be cash well worth spending.

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Further to yesterday's observations about parish councils, none of the eight members of that particular parish council faced election last year. Three stood but faced no opposition, the other five were co-opted on to the council from the local community.

Four of the eight also live next to the park where the youth facility is proposed .... providing there is enough cash to build it if the other one is sold.

The council has also met monthly since June - but the minutes of its meetings do not appear on the council website.

None of this is unusual. The point is whether it leads to democracy - or away from it.

THERE's nothing like democracy.

Countries across the world have admired the British way of doing things and where they have a genuine degree of democratic leadership have endeavoured to adopt the British way of running itself.

We all know the problems of government: look at the chaos, the repeated allegations of corrupt practice whoever has been in power, the failure to sort problems to the satisfaction of everyone.

Our council doesn't escape.

We've had fraud and peccadiloes, politicial manouevering and investigations.

There are few parish councils, but where they exist they have their problems.

A few years ago there was one that insisted in meeting in a private house.

There are pocket dictators. I remember attending one parish council meeting in Kent a few years ago where the lady chairman ordered me to stop taking notes and to leave: like a lot of parish councils they have become self-perpetuating oligarchies. I didn't to her intense disgust and her threat to "call the police."

Four years ago there were very few parish elections in Medway. Parish councillors were returned unopposed, or were co-opted from the local community.

The trouble is that sometimes such councillors forget that they are there to serve the community, and that they have to do so under clearly established rules.

I am sure that around the county you will still find farmers who had run the countryside, naturally stepped in to become parish chairmen. Feudalism certainly lives on in Gloucestershire where I learned my trade.... That was the way of parish councils.

The last government introduced new rules that sought to impose democracy on the more recalcitrant parishes.

Tomorrow night, Medway Council's Standards Committee will look at the way one of our parish councils on the Hoo Peninsula represents its public.

There have been at least four complaints lodged with the Standarsd Committee against its councillors by members of the public as a row has blown up over a rundown mobile unit in the middle of nowhere.

It was identified about nine months ago as the ideal place for local youngsters to go. It was done up with the help of a lot of volunteers - including the youths who had been misbehaving in the local streets - and backed by the parish council.

Then someone with lots of money came along and offered to buy the land on which it stood.

There's the crunch. Councils have a duty to realise their assets. They also have a duty to serve the community.

In this particular case the chairman - one of the many people in parishes who are unelected by the electorate - backed the sale. The public is against it because the kids are safe and off the streets.

The chairman favours building something to replace it on the local park.

No one is sure whether there will be enough money to replace the revitalised caravan.

The residents living round the park are not going to favour loads of kids screaming, shouting, laughing and growing up to the heavy beat of modern music that the teenagers currently enjoy.

It now looks as though some of the irate residents will stand in May to force an election.

By then, however, the land could have been sold.

What it shows is that no matter how small your community - or indeed how large - if you don't take an interest in the democratic process you could live to regret it.

Power to the people who vote - or get a chance to vote.

There have been some harsh lessons for Cllr Nick Brice to learn.

One would appear to be that if you resort to prostitutes, don't get caught.

Another is that if you are going to get away with it, don't object to those who consider your behaviour is beyond the norm.

Cllr Brice was once a member of the Children's Committee. He (along with the other 54 councillors) therefore has a duty to protect and care for children - some of whom prostitute themselves.

A year ago he was caught by the police with a prostitute in his car. He accepted a police caution, paid £200 to attend a police-run kerb-crawlers convention in Medway, the council and his employers (the hooker hopped into his company car) were told, he lost his job months before he was to retire, he was reported to the Standards Committee and - after half a century's membership - he was thrown out of the Conservative Party.

This week he told the committee he had done his homework very carefully (a trait for which he was noted as audit committee chairman).

He had done wrong, but he had not got a conviction, and therefore whatever anyone thought, he couldn't be disciplined by the Standards committee.

With regret, they said, they agreed.

But in a cleverly worded statement the committee - two independent members and (by rote) a Labour councillor - damned him.

In 164 words they regretted failing to find he breached the code of conduct.

His behaviour was - and I paraphrase what they said - totally unacceptable. He should resign from the council having brought himself and it into disrepute. He acted improperly and without integrity, breached the principles of public life, lacked judgement, and should be banned from representing the council or sitting on any committee for whatever reason.

"We think the law should be altered to cover actions such as this when carried out by a councillor in any capacity," said Tony Dance, the independent chairman.

"We will be writing to the Secretary of State to bring this to his attention."

I fail to understand how that equates with Cllr Brice's comments after the meeting that the committee had vindicated him.

Certain stories can be so execrable that it literally boils your blood. Nothing is more grotesque than the abuse of taxpayers money – especially wasting or using it for ridiculous reasons. Kent County Council has once again returned to spectacular form.

Near £200,000 spent on private health care for 250 senior members of staff.

Surely is this not an abuse of our money and why cannot theses employees pay for medical care themselves? I'm pretty certain these positions have high salaries. After all, the National Health Service has been operating for over 60 years and based on the principle of free universal care too all. Regardless of income.

Some animals are more equal it seems.

May be this is ignorance on my behalf or a difference in opinion but public bodies should not be using tax payers to finance luxuries, such as health care or lucrative trips abroad. The message being sent to voters is horrifying – we must suffer cuts in our health services, but senior council staff can be shipped to private health care. And due to national austerity, hard working families would be unable to afford the premiums for themselves but face financing the perks and benefits of local officials through taxation.

After these violations, Kent might need a little tea party.