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.

It never made sense that the councillor who consistently topped the polls with the electors should be ousted by her own party's voters,  but Jane Chitty was removed from the Conservatives' May electoral list by a form of proportional representation - the transferable vote.

It was a curious process from the beginning. It also cost Ken and Janice Bamber their positions, and led to Les Wicks being moved from one ward to another.

Well, Cllr Wicks - the education portfolio holder - apparently said up with that I shall not put, and recently resigned.

He's keeping his cards close to his chest but it would appear that we haven't seen the last of the debonair oldstager and former Cliffe/Cliffe Woods parish councillor.

Meanwhile, his departure created a fresh vacancy in Strood North.

Cllr Chitty - another of Council Leader Rodney Chambers' inner coterie - swept aside her opponents in the new round of voting, and last weekend was selected to stand in the ward she has represented for many years. On the way she apparently topped the poll at each stage of the transferable voting.

Meanwhile the Bambers have been waging their own form of warfare.

Janice is another of Cllr Chambers' cabinet, and has been unwell in recent times. I understand she is waiting for surgery so her days as a councillor may really be limited.

Ken, however, has secured a vacancy as one of the three Conservative Strood South candidates on the voting forms in May.

He's one of the tough guys in the administration. He has wielded the whip with considerable aplomb over the past decade and kept the rank and file under control. It's been so effective that whenever councillors are asked if they have been subjected to whipping they stay silent.

If he gets elected, if the Conservatives hold the majority, and if Cllr Chambers is re-elected as Leader (a position which for the first time will be for a four year appointment) it will be fascinating to see what happens thereafter.

With the Liberals in disarray thanks to ex-member Andy Stamp (incidentally a rerun of many issues that led Cllr Ian Burt and the late Doris Weller to resign from the party many years ago), will we see the Labour group make a resounding bid for power?

I am doubtful, yet it is curious that there are so many rifts among those who have regained national power just a few months ago.

***

It promises to be a boisterous, noisy and possibly unpleasant evening of blood letting on the peninsula tonight.

Allhallows parish council is meeting with plans to discuss the future of the youth club - and in particular where it meets - behind closed doors.

Villagers are up in arms about the plan by the completely unelected, self-perpetuating, oligarchical parish councillors who have re-appointed themselves every four years since the early Nineties.

It promises to be a fun evening!

***

A clearer picture of how Medway Council will close the £23.5 million gap in its budget plans will become clearer this week.

Make sure you get the Medway Messenger on Friday for headlines.

I am sure housewife and councillor (at least until she is forced to step down in May) Janice Bamber would never considering lifting her rugs to brush dirt underneath them.

But she is currently demonstrating an element of sneaking regard for those who do.

At the heart of the problem is Medway's performance indicators.

As the government says this sum of money and that pot of gold will not be available to achieve the targets the council agreed last year, Mrs Bamber is quickly lifting the carpet and sweeping them underneath.

They are being withdrawn as indicators.

She insists it has nothing to do with the failure (enforced or otherwise) to achieve targets. It's that everyone knows they won't be achieved.

As she has been sacked by her Tory constituency electors from standing for them in May it is difficult to see what benefit such actions personally would offer her.

Glyn Griffiths, Labour's Rottweiler-in-chief and financial whizzkid, has pointed out that it is worth keeping them in, so that everyone can judge the impact of government spending cuts - and presumably chuck the blame whichever way the individual politicians perceive it should be lobbed.

It seems reasonable to me to know where the axe has fallen and to ask why.

We voted for this government.

We knew there would be hard times ahead.

We knew this was the very bullets we would have to bite.

OK - if the target has been achieved already it may not be worth keeping in.

Then again, this administration (along with every other one which is judged on its performances) might be delighted to have a few successes at the end of the year to show their opponents that despite everything, there had been some good results during the year.

There is plenty of talk from government ministers about the need for localism. It is a phrase that is going to become increasingly part of the vocabulary in the next few years.

Kent's leaders are talking about creating a local economic partnership (a Cameron alternative to saying localism) consisting of Kent and Medway.

Elsewhere councils are looking at creating partnerships that equate to courses for horses.

One such involves the Thames Gateway councils.

Another is along the A21 from Hastings to Tonbridge. It includes councils with little or no interest in county boundaries.

Several councils are exploring the idea of being in partnership with other authorities facing sporting challenges, for example, but teaming up with different councils to provide, say, housing support services.

Medway, Swale and Gravesham already provide a combined building control department.

There's a Multi Area Agreement over transport and other services. Dartford is added to the Medway/Swale/Gravesham mix.

Some council leaders are looking elsewhere than to KCC for their futures.

Which might reflect why Medway would look extremely carefully before considering a tie-up with KCC. After all, one of the prime reasons for arguing that there should be a unitary authority free of KCC influence was because of the way that Kent dictated to the other authorities, and cash that should have been spent in the Medway Towns on tackling their many problems was milked away to rural areas.

There is a Big Seven that includes Medway, Kent, and Brighton and Hove.

They've successfully teamed up to control costs - something KCC powered through some years ago when it started Kent Top Temps, then diversified into buses, stationary, furniture and gardening.

But these days Kent County Council is only of interest to districts, boroughs and unitaries for what it can offer - not what it controls.

***

Tough times call for tough measures.

There was a time when a bean feast for councillors included caviar, champagne and chauffeur-driven cars.

Not now.

You'll be lucky to get a slice of cake and a squash these days.

I hear that tomorrow the new play area at Capstone Farm country park will be launched by Cllr Howard Doe with a .... cup of tea.

It's tough being a Cabinet member in a recession.

Having said that, I thought it was down to mayors to open things...

***

Seems one of my contacts was wrong.

Cllr Janice Bamber, the portfolio holder for Customer First, is no longer wanted by her ward members after they voted to oust her (and hubby Ken) from their ward seats on the Hoo Peninsula.

Rumour had it she, at least, had found an alternative seat as a candidate for Rainham Central. This time the source was wrong.

Brigita Amey, the Gillingham and Rainham Conservative Association chairman denied the story, saying they have not yet started the selection process for next year's local council election and have not received an expression of interest or any communication from Mrs. Bamber.

Happy to put the record straight, and apologies to readers for getting it wrong.

Frustrated sceptics who claim city status was a gravy train were a little off target this week.

No bottles of champagne were popped at the launch of the summer campaign.

If there was a gravy train (and no such substance was in evidence) it lacked any body.

The spirit was solely in the unveiling. The drinks were confined to tea, coffee and squash.

This is an austerity city bid - by an austere team girding its loins.

But it took them several hours to come up with how much was the bid budget.

We were assured it was being done on a shoestring, that it was a very inexpensive bid, that there were no consultants being recruited ... but "no, we can't give you the precise budget at this moment".

By early afternoon the total spend was advised - £4,673.10.

Never mind what Reading, Milton Keynes or Luton might spend on their bids to be the Queen's favoured community to become her Diamond Jubilee City.

As for losing Rochester city status (not once, but twice) it was a case of "Don't blame us - a previous administration should take the blame".

Surrounded in mystery, it will become legend how Rochester lost its city status in 1998.

Senior councillors from the Shadow Authority discussed Rochester's status at great length in their private meetings.

It was agreed that it was a matter for the new authority and a recommendation from the old City authority.

One proposal that had favour at the time was the creation of a parish council to be called the City of Rochester Town Council. It would keep alive the tradition, nearly 800 years old.

But what followed has never come out.

The final meeting of Rochester City Council took place just before the new council took over responsibility. Erra (the God of Mayhem) seems to have been ruling in the background.

The minutes of that meeting were never published. No one now knows who said what about it (if indeed they bothered to consider it). And if they did, those who were present seem to have conveniently forgotten.

Gillingham councillors didn't care. Rochester was "that lot down the hill", and it was not their place to set up a parish council, or to incur any debts for the city.

And so the City status slipped, inexorably, into the cloying mud of the Medway.

Do we get City status this time?

It is a matter for the Gods of Whitehall, aka the Queen's advisers. But there is a steely determination from the administration (even if the other parties weren't represented at the launch yesterday).

And, though no one would call me cynical, it would be a cheap way for the government to encourage the private sector to take over investing in the Thames Gateway.

A successful bid would give the opportunity for a massive street party in 2012 to go alongside the bicentenaries of the Sappers' arrival and our great author Charles Dickens' birth (in Portsmouth), the Olympians using our numerous expensive training facilities - and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

***

The machinations in the Conservative ranks at Rochester and Strood seem more than coincidental.

Peter Hicks and Chris Buckwell, the king pins in the local party, say it is the ward memberships' wish. It may well be.

But there was a lot of recruiting going on ahead of selections. And numbers of the younger party members have been muttering about "the old guard must change", about "dictatorial" behaviour and about the way the central party has a "different" viewpoint to the local views voiced by some.

Latest big name to face the chop is Jane Chitty, the strategic planning, ex Rochester City mayor, Cabinet member. She has been deselected at Strood North in favour of Les Wicks - the children's portfolio holder who lost the support of Strood Rural members.

Janice Bamber, a long-term Hoo St Werburgh resident (and non-driver as was pointed out to me) seems to have found a place in Rainham Central. But her husband Ken - Whip, Chairman of Business Support and all-round party tough guy - is still looking for a new political home, I understand.

A formal unveiling of the candidates will take place in a month's time. By then this round of manouevering will be over in Rochester & Strood.

It is hard to be in Local Government at the moment.

You face cuts in pay and status - or worse.

If you are in a reasonable job you stand the likelihood your wage will be published on the front pages.

If you earn more than the prime minister, someone has to account to him why you are worth more.

It's tough.

But it is right and proper that the public should know. They directly pay through their council tax and their government taxes. After all, you are paid considerably more than the vast majority of them.

Last Friday the Medway Messenger carried news of the payments made to Medway's leading officers.

In the next week the rest of Britain's councils will be forced to reveal how much the top kids in each authority got paid.

The question is, are they worth it?

There are well over 300 in "hard-done by", "small-spender", "lean and hungry" Medway Council who are paid in excess of £50,000 a year.

In Kent County Council there are three, each of whose total package is in excess of £200,000.

Top of the tree was the now-departed chief executive, Peter Gilroy. He was a few quid short of £300,000. His pensions contributions on their own were £56,223. And having left KCC with a £200,000 payoff he is now working for another local authority...

They do work long hours. They are always on call. And they have to play the game of being independent of the politicians, though that can be ultra difficult.

But are they worth what they are paid?

Should Medway residents fund it?

You must judge for yourself.

Meanwhile hundreds of lower paid jobs are being threatened by economies. The truth will be divulged next week. My money is supporting no massive cuts until next year.

But this year's will hurt many: watch for the way the council offloads services to the private sector.

***

Cllr Les Wicks (Con) seemed reasonably laid back about being deselected by his ward members.

He had covered the risk that his cheeks would be blushing by putting his name forward for several other wards - just in case.

Cllrs Ken (the Conservative Whip) and Janice (portfolio holder for customer first) Bamber are definitely out next May: they kept faith with their ward.

The Grey Suits in the ward did not reciprocate.