ACCORDING TO COUNCIL OFFICERS, providing information to last Thursday’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting, visitors to its information page regarding changes to the borough’s waste collection policies totalled just 155.
The number of Castle Point residents, registered to vote, is 67,284.
It is an interesting comparison that Norman Ladzrie seized upon to support his argument that the Cabinet had not ensured that the majority of residents had been properly consulted over the Borough Council’s new waste policy – but was he right to do so?
As usual, with statistics, there is more to this than meets the eye…
On my personal Blog, I recently announced that I had removed the Canvey Beat’s StatCounter from its homepage because, written in JavaScript, the widget was considerably understating the amount of pulls from the BlogSpot server. Furthermore, a site’s page load counter can be very misleading. For instance: I have recently redesigned my Blogs to make use of the MORE tag, which requires visitors to click on the ‘Read more…’ link to access the full article.
If I were to include a counter now, those page load numbers would create the impression that each Blog, approximately, had double the number of visitors than in fact is the case – because, to read a full story, visitors are now required to make two clicks (to access two separate pages).
Behind the scenes, internet servers do provide Webmasters with pretty accurate visitor statistics and individual ‘hit’ numbers for each page (as provided to members by Council officers); but, depending upon the page’s content, they can be very small indeed. And they, too, can be misleading.
The chances are that, when you load a page in your browser, that page is not pulled from the site’s host server – but from your Internet Service Provider’s cache of documents that it has recently served. The only time that your ISP conducts the time consuming task of retrieving the original document is if it does not have a copy of your request in its cache – or the original document has changed. (Before retrieving the original of an already held copy, ISPs ask the originating server for the timestamp of the document being requested and compare that with the same stamp on the document being held).
So we can say, with some confidence, that the 155 number provided by Council officers is, perhaps considerably, understated.
Unfortunately, whatever the true figure was, it is anybody’s guess.
This seems to have been a week in which the Canvey Beat’s theme has been all about statistics, which began with my observations of this Blog’s straw polls. I now find myself returning to that original subject: namely, the number of residents who are actually interested in community politics – or anything this Blog has to say.
By whatever measure, in percentage terms it is small – and we can gain no comfort from that. The fact is: only a minority of residents are interested in local politics – despite the fact that the subject has the greatest impact upon their lives and, in Castle Point, they are able to influence the way they are governed on an annual basis.
Yes, there has been the Telegraph’s exposure of MPs’ expenses (to which, even I, first thought our constituency was immune) but those days are now behind us. We now have a fresh start with our new MP, Rebecca Harris, who has already shown how effectively her new position can be used to improve and inform residents’ lives – both in local (Thorney Bay Park council tax) and national (Daylight Saving Time) issues. And yet it appears, from this Blog’s own stats, that few are prepared to read past the leading paragraphs of articles regarding our new MP.
On the other hand, articles regarding the Town Council and local politics are hungrily jumped upon.
Bob Spink severely damaged this borough’s Democracy by attacking the Conservatives (his chosen political party) at every opportunity (after they kicked him out). He set resident against resident in an effort to divide this borough into two political camps in which he could muster another majority to return himself to Parliament – or return as the Borough’s elected mayor. But those days are also firmly behind us.
What we are left with is a Bandwagon Bob rump, in the main consisting of inarticulate, self-serving, local politicians who find themselves unable to gain political power using normal democratic means. Instead they resort to grand-standing, accusation, and innuendo for which they prefer not to provide any proof.
If they had their way, they would stifle the very essence of Democracy that exists in this borough by changing the Borough Council’s Constitution, based upon presenting firm evidence for an argument, to one in which allowed the public court to act on individual supposition and hearsay. (And they would be quick to reintroduce evidentiary standards once power had been achieved).
As their personal shenanigans continue, it is little wonder that most residents are turned off by local party politics – and so few wish to be fully informed.
Local Democracy is presented with what seems to be an overwhelming problem: how to turn apathetic residents into enthusiastic, responsible community members, actively engaged in creating a Borough that we can all be proud of. But it is limited in what it can do.
Democracy can consult residents via its Website; ask for feedback via an expensive mail shot; place notices in the local press; use local radio and TV broadcasting; and place posters on its notice boards. But those initiatives only work if residents are prepared to read and listen to what is being communicated.
If the majority choose to place their heads in the sand, only one thing is certain: the minority will hold all the power – and the majority will get what they deserve…
No comments:
Post a Comment