Thanet District Council is statistically not a democratically elected council according to even a little basic reckoning.

My opinion of the current set up of the council is that it is incorrect in that it not only fosters ill will towards local government and a cynical distrust of councillors but because, in my opinion, it simply does not work. It serves only to bring the entire process into disrepute putting local councils on a par with head lice, dustbin day and tax returns in the minds of many. Also it has not been ellected democratically.

That is if you assume that democratic election represents the will of the majority. 30% of the population turned out to vote. More conservatives won places than any other group. Assuming that there were Labour, conservative and all others that means just and that no more than 11% of the population voted for our current council.

13,750 want the council as it is while 111,250 people did not ask for this council. If you go on to assume that not all people who voted conservative wanted Sandy Ezekiel as "leader" of the council then the numbers drop even faster. On average a council seat is controlled by just 250 people.. Impact a single round table, guild, masonic lodge, church, cult or some tiny demographic and the seat is as good as yours.

Most parties can easily hope to raise 200 to 300 members in around half or more of the wards in Thanet and probably have done so a long time ago. The result is only the hotly contest wards are even worth worrying about.

But that's the problem - just 13,000 people out of 125,000 in Thanet are calling the shots. So in any true meaning of democracy Thanet District Council was not democratically elected. Worse still only the most powerful "gang" among those who were elected got to choose the "leader" of the council and only the most influential group therein got any real say in the selection process.

So I say to you:

Thanet has no actual democracy!

Read on to find out what can be done about it.

Given that most seats on the council are always returned for the same party each year all you need is control of a party and the election process is a sham to keep the people from saying anything. The truth is that without any conspiracy theory what-so-ever the true power in Thanet can be decided long before the election by the small network of buddies at the centre of a knot of power.

The method of selecting a central knot of power to "run things" betrays the electorate and allows the parties to keep silent about who and where until well after it is too late and the votes have been cast. This is because not even councillors know who will be in power and most ward councillors do not make their opinion on the subject part of their election campaign (if they even bother having one).

Yet this is only one of a number of possible ways to run a council the full list of options available are:

1. A directly elected mayor and a cabinet appointed by that mayor.
2. A council leader appointed by the cabinet with a cabinet appointed by the council.
3. A council leader appointed by the cabinet with a cabinet appointed by the leader (what we currently have).
4. A directly elected mayor with an officer appointed by the council (council manager).

There has been some talk of a directly elected mayor of Thanet and what it might (or might not) do for us. Cllr David Green makes mention of this in a blog post titled Elected Mayor for Thanet. In this post he says That Britain has the local election lowest turnout figures by far in the European Union and as such, local government is suffering a crisis of legitimacy.

Michael Child (of Michael's Bookshop, Ramsgate) comments on that post I noticed something about option 2... (3 in our list) ...the one we have at the moment, that still has me chuckling, the special one we have in Thanet. Council leader appointed by the cabinet with a cabinet appointed the council leader. I would say that this just about sums up our problems.

Why I favour Option One

The following rational is based on my comment on David Green's post.

I am in favour in principle of electing a mayor who would then select a cabinet for the following reasons.

1. The current system is broken - it draws disrespect from the public to all levels of local government as I have already stated. This is not a reasonable state of affairs and serves only to make Thanet District a good topics for Private Eye's Rotten Boroughs column equating Thanet with corruption in the mind of the British people.

2. The direct election of a "leader" or figure head would make it clear to the voter who we are voting for. Let's be honest unless I vote in a "swing seat" my votes is an empty gesture. Currently a, say, Dane Valley voter might vote for Mr Smith and so Mr Jones, it turns out, is leader and Smith has no say. Even this is not transparent if Labour were elected a majority tomorrow who would be "leader"? No one knows.

As a voter the pot-luck supper approach to who makes decisions affecting my future is not my idea of motivation to vote.

3. New laws are already coming in to place that will require the council to make significant improvements in the voter turn out. The council has a reputation for mediocrity and frankly falling inches short of technical (if not actual) failure. With the local budget situation caused by what looks like very much some fairly short sighted spending and some outright wishful thinking by our council this selfsame council can not afford to mount a massive and expensive media campaign. A directly elect mayor could improve turn out at a stroke.

4. It gives the independent person a fair crack at the whip. If Mr Bob Bobson feels change is needed he can currently stand as an independent where upon election he can largely do nothing at all. Were he in a Mayor and cabinet set-up he could run for the position of mayor where he not only could make a stand but a difference too.

5. Who you vote for in your ward is largely irrelevant. In Dane Valley from one election to the next I never see the same labour councillors. If councillors come out of no where to make no difference whatsoever before they shuffle off whence they came it is no wonder the average person cannot be bothered to vote. He or she will rightly see the whole thing as a cynical paper stamping ceremony for the main parties. A vote for a mayor is a direct action and every vote counts.

6. Every party must state what it hopes to do and make some promises that it can be held to. Rather than slithering in and out on the tides of national political opinion local parties will have to stand for something aside from just re-election. Mayors doubly so. His or her every action would have to consider the popular will of 125,000 people not just 250 that control that seat through (probably mindlessly party-political) coordinated voting.

7. If the leader of the council acts like a prat, swears at people, insults, bullies, lies, defrauds, defames, pushes, shoves and gives himself preferential treatment while appearing to profit in business from doing so he or she will answer directly to the voter and the party will not be able to shield him. In other words Sandy Ezekiel would have been out on his ear ages ago - no other man (aside from, say, Mr Godden) is so universally hated in Thanet. People in Thanet are largely indifferent to councillors in my experience assuming them all to just be a modern irritation to be vaguely despised like blood tests, taxes or herpes. To be actually hated - that takes some doing.

8. The very, very, very worst that can happen is that there is little or no change. No change is as bad as it can possibly get and we are there already. Meaning that whatever else happens it will be a darn site better than the frankly laughable process we currently have that has made TDC a by-word for poor workmanship, red tape, and a "go **** yourself" attitude towards voters.

The only way is up.