YOU would think that after sweeping to a victory that was against all the odds the Conservatives might have leapt at the chance to fill vacancies on the Cabinet.

Not so.

Rodney Chambers, the Council Leader, is having problems reorganising his lesser heavyweights.

There is at least one vacancy. Janice Bamber was stripped of her council seat when the Tory hierarchy in Peninsula Ward deselected her during the winter.

She hung on until election night (though she was nowhere to be seen).

It should have been a relatively simple task to decide the cabinet - after all, the Leader had had months to decide who he would have (if he held onto the leadership).

The Conservatives say they are planning to unveil their front row next Wednesday when the annual meeting takes place.

What is so secret?

Cllr Chambers is a tightrope walker above Niagara Falls in the middle of a raging storm.

Some of the portfolios are certainly being rejigged.

Could it be that the 10-strong team of Cabinet members is at long last going to be pruned?

Perhaps Mrs Bamber's work is being shared out among the others.

It would help to reduce the number of Yes men (and women) who until now have met every three weeks to nod through every report, idea and proposal set out in the Cabinet papers with barely a flicker of originality.

On the other hand, he may have complicated matters by trying to find a niche for a former Cabinet member.

Wendy Purdy swept back to power in Watling Ward after years in the wilderness. She was reminiscent of a jungle cat cat starved of food until presented with an unlimited supply of rich cream after her victory, and suitably cautious about her ambitions to be reappointed among Rodney's decision-makers.

One thing is certain. There will be no change in the Chancellorship - Alan Jarrett is already at work deciding where further economies can be effected.

They may start by reducing the Cabinet's special payments... then again the porcine airforce would take off.

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.

***

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.

***

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.

One major fact today is that the Medway Messenger is joining the campaign to get City status for Medway.
It is ridiculous that our go-ahead community has not had city status from the start.
It is among the biggest conurbations in the country.
It is spending £6 billion to revive the infrastructure, transform the shopping centre, improve public transport and attract business here.
Oxford is a city and has only two universities.
Medway is not a city and has four universities.
Some would argue that we lost city status for Rochester, but so did Perth - and they are making a bid to regain it.
We should build upon the achievements of our past. History is wonderful, but it cannot be allowed to be everything to the exclusion of the future.
The plans for transforming Lodge Hill and the military areas around Chattenden will preserve key parts of the historic remains.
It will open up traditional views that only troops have seen for more than a century.
It cannot be an expensive campaign. No one would blame anyone who criticised it if it overspent.
This will be a Budget Bid. The council has already started by motivating staff to take on the publicity work in their own time at no extra cost.
It will unite the five towns in a way that was projected with the creation of the unitary authority - but didn't.
It will put us on the map.
It will not destroy the towns' identities.
The five towns have been merging together for decades. That has not killed their individual identities, loyalties and supporters.
Nor should the City of medway.
The City of Medway will be unique. Not Five Towns but One City of five towns and numerous villages.
When it comes to troubled areas, Medway's housing has had more than its fair share of problems.
Everyone thought the problems had been solved - until last week.
That was when four members of staff (three of them long-term housing personnel) were suddenly suspended, and escorted from Gun Wharf.
The first most staff knew that there was another problem was an email advising them that the following day's retirement party had been suspended - because the person who was leaving was among the quartet who had been escorted out.
The full story is in today's Medway Messenger.
It makes sorry reading
 for those who had worked hard to turn around the department
 for those who are under suspicion of a potential fiddle involving homeless people
 for those who respected and looked up to them, and
 for those who trust the council to help them through difficult times.
The private sector housing team has been rocked by the suspicions that have been aroused. While nothing has been proved at this stage, investigations are going on and the police could yet be called in.
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For the first time in three years, biscuits were provided at the start of the start of the Children and Adults scrutiny committee last night.
Behind it was Cllr David Royle, the chairman, who provided the biscuits last time.
Both times it was because he was celebrating his birthday.
Pity this time was that no one realised - because they were all concerned about tackling obesity among the children of Medway.
A malicious rumour has it has it that the real reason the free nibbles were cancelled was because the finance portfolio holder, Cllr Alan Jarrett, was starting to gain a corporation - and his wife demanded they were cancelled so that he couldn't be tempted.
If only all things were so simple.

There were some surprised looks on faces - not least among cabinet members - at the full Medway Council meeting.

Protestors were out in strength to protest about the toilets - or lack of them - in Chatham.

At the centre of their campaigning was the 20p to have a pee revelation from the Pentagon Shopping Centre management.

They have taken over the council's toilets, accepted a regeneration dowry of £200,000 to rebuild and run the toilets, and now plan to charge.

The fee is being introduced by the management in a bid to stop needle-pushing and other anti-social behaviour (including the occasional druggie death).

Meanwhile there could be hope for the desperate, the elderly and nursing mums: Cllr Alan Jarrett told me the toilets in the new bus station should be free.

At least, they were going to be free until the scale of the economic crisis called that into question.

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Cllr Les Wicks did a startlingly good impression of General de Gaulle last night.

The councillor was facing a call - some would say a suggestion - that he should resign over the way the Schools Adjudicator recently ruled against some of his primary school closure and merger plans.

There was a very firm, if anglicised, "Non!" to the call.

Nor was there an apology.

Meanwhile the handful of mums from St John's certainly knew how to make their views known.

Cllr Wicks lives to fight another day.

So do the schools.

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One would think that if you were in power for the first time for 80 years politicians would be queuing up to make a name for themselves.

But Andy Stamp - one-time deputy leader of Medway's Liberal Democrat councillors, defeated general election candidate and popular character in the community - suddenly announced he was no longer recognising his party whip.

He has, instead, joined the Independent councillors.

It's not so much a walk across the chamber, more, a slide across from one table to the adjacent one.

But it is significant, and comes hard on the heels of grouses that he wasn't getting the support he expected during the election campaign.

***

It costs £140 to buy a first class ticket from Rainham to Birmingham by train - and a similar sum to come back.

But if you chose an offpeak train it can cost almost the same just to go to London.

Comparing trains on June 28, a check of the website, Raileasy, shows a return ticket on the HS-1 service to St Pancras at 10.15am costs £17.80. It costs just £1.20 more to carry on by the tube and Virgin Trains to make the return trip Birmingham.... using the same trains.

Something is radically wrong with our rail system.