|
St Nicholas Village Referendum Results
Presented as election results.
| |
YES |
NO |
Invalid |
| |
% |
count |
% |
count |
% |
count |
| Q1. |
Do you
agree/support the village doing a poll/referendum of issues that concern the
residents of the village? |
92.4 |
73 |
6.33 |
5 |
1.26 |
1 |
| Q2. |
Do
you agree that the authorities should ask the most affected people before
agreeing to support concessions to companies, which could adversely, affect
the general public? |
87.34 |
69 |
12.6 |
10 |
|
|
| Q3. |
Do
you agree that Thanet District Council Cabinet should have asked the people
under the flight path of Manston Airport before agreeing to permit incoming
flights between the hours of 23:00 (11pm) and 01:00 (1am) contrary to existing
planning agreements? |
87.3% |
63 |
8.86 |
7 |
3.8 |
3 |
| Total electorate
|
588
|
Turnout
|
79 (13.43%)
|
Taken at face value it would confirm the
council, and government, opinion that the public are apathetic.
However, I am still not convinced, what
is important to one group of people is of minor concern to others.
One invalid ballot ticket for Q3 had the
comment 'loaded question refuse to answer', that comment presented the problem
that I puzzled over when considering how to present each question.
Every/any question is 'loaded', i.e.
'when are you taking the dog for a walk' can be perceived/meant as 'take the
dog ....' or 'are you taking the dog', the real meaning could be 'get out of
my way and take the dog with you'.
Other interesting factors.
a. the spectrum of the voters -
1. older generations
more predominant i.e. very few under 25 (which confirms government opinion of 'grey-power').
2.
class/income/job/education was broadly represented.
b. some of the comments made
1. generally
supportive of the airport for various reasons whilst acknowledging the chances
of it succeeding being very remote, again for various reasons.
2. night flights not
approved of even when it did not bother them, there is a principle involved
i.e. as one person put it 'can a transport company get a dispensation to do 60
in a 30 mph area because the company may go broke or they have deadlines to
meet?'.
3. disapproval of the
way Thanet District Council has handled the situation, or as one expressed it
- 'if it is within the 106 agreement as claimed, why was it discussed at
cabinet and why an extraordinary council meeting?'.
4. continuing confusion over why a flight at midnight is
not a night-flight.
Indicative, but not conclusive, however, if it had been
an 'election' we would have -
a. referendums on issues that concern the residents,
b. the authorities would have to let the people make the decision.
To quote a political opinion 'the non-voters choose not to vote so they should
not complain about the result'. Meanwhile, I am still
looking for the lowest common denominator. Another
interesting aspect of this exercise was comparing it with the election process.
Even if it had been a 100% turnout, the result of the ballot station could have
been faxed or emailed to a central station 30 minutes after the close of voting,
and the paying-punters (voters) would be able to check the whole process.
So why do the authorities -
1. take all night to produce the results?
2. hide the count from the people who vote?
3. need more money to do things that they do not need to do?
No one learns how to drive by just talking about it, and this
project is no different, each step is part of a steep learning curve. Finally,
my grateful thanks to all the people who helped with the check-in, counting, and
validation processes. | 