Street cleaning - doesn’t really happen anymore. the it around the Orchard theatre and shopping centre gets a quick once over, as does Lowfield Street, the rest of Dartford doesn’t.

Frankly, the council is working harder and harder to just make the town suck. And that’s why my family and I are planning to move out.

p.s. he insists on putting his face and name to everything associated with the council. Some ego!!

Steve

Just hit the home page and you’ll find it.

If this guy - and I agree he seems to be a decent fellow - really intended this to be a deterrent to all canvassers, did he contact the other parties before setting up the website?

I suspect the truth is this was a bit of electoral innovation that wasn’t properly thought out - but I’m sure we’ll see the web used more and more for direct voter communications.

Maybe if parties are more upfront about it it will avoid the impression that people are being duped - which is the definitely the case here.

I do worry that she’s a little over eager to appear youthful and ‘with it’ on occasion - leading to one embarrassing stunt to far on occasion perhaps - which a woman of her intellect really doesn’t need to do but yes, I think she’s a pretty straight sort of person …. although of course, as we know, Toneee is ‘pretty straight sort of guy.” (source T.Blair himself)

J

I must be the world’s first ‘phisher’ ever to use their real name and address to register their website and attach their photograph, home phone number and email address to the document at the centre of the so-called ‘con’!!!

If there are dirty tricks here, I honestly don’t think they’re ours. I suspect we’re dealing with an over-excited Labour lad who’s doing nothing all day except firing off half-baked news stories.

But I’m happy to let you judge. Here goes…

What we tried to do is reflect the fact that whilst some people like to see political types turn up on their doorstep three times a night and have a good old discussion about politics, there are some who just find it a real pain in the derriere to be disturbed just as they’re sitting down for tea or Eastenders. During the last election, I actually saw THREE separate parties canvassing the same street at once, knocking on the same doors just a couple of minutes apart. Have a pop at me if you like but I’m just trying to make things a bit more dignified for people who may not be as worked up about local elections as we are.

So, we set up a website, entirely openly, that lets people tell us they’d prefer that political canvassers didn’t disturb them. The website looks professional, not because we’ve modeled it on anything, but because I like good looking website. It’s got three pages.
It asks people to register and write three digits on the back page of our (very blue coloured) CONSERVATIVE manifesto which then turns into a DO NOT DISTURB notice which they display in their window. The only reason we ask residents to register and write the 3 digits is solely to stop us confusing genuine requests not to call with manifestos that have just been idly discarded in windows or visible in porches.

We’re not using, storing, processing or manipulating the data in any improper way. It arrives as an email and we make a note of the voting intention. That’s it. As Tim Worstall says, it’s EXACTLY what every party does when their on the doorstep. We don’t send emails, clever little tailored messages, texts or anything. Strange as it may seem, we just leave people alone.

As Hamer quite rightly says, the issue is whether we’ve been open about what we’ve done. Well, here’s the facts (missing from the Standard’s story, natch) …

1) the ONE and ONLY place we promoted the service was on ONE WHOLE PAGE of our 12page Conservative manifesto that - as you might expect from a manifesto - is plastered with Conservative logos. The DO NOT DISTURB notice voters display is actually the back page of our manifesto. I actually think it’s virtually impossible for ANYBODY (except Hazel Blears by the sound of it) to reach a conclusion that it was anything other than a Conservative initiative. We haven’t promoted the website in any way, other than in our huge, bright Tory blue manifesto. Honestly, it just defies belief to say we’ve set out to con anyone.

2) The FRONT PAGE of the website contains just TWO prominent links. One takes you to REGISTER, the other takes you to ‘IMPRINT’. The page it takes you to has no other content but the following words in normal sized type (none of your .5 point, grey on black!) in the middle of the page which says “Promoted by Keith Ferrin on behalf of Dartford Conservative Candidates, all at ….(then the Dartford Tory address)

As for Data Protection, well I’m told we are a registered data keeper in relation to our normal work as a local Conservative Association. We’ve not gathered any information that we don’t already store. Like every other party we have a electoral roll system that stores Voting intentions gathered from canvassiong (doorstep or online)

We took the site down because, quite frankly, if Labour and the other parties aren’t going to take any notice of the request to leave people alone, there aint much point to it.

Now, I know a blog like yours owes no favours to a minor local politician but I do hope there’s a streak of fairness in there!!

We’re just trying to use a basic bit of technology to give voters (who want it) a bit of peace and quiet during a big, closely fought election. We’ve done nothing more than any elector could do by scrawling ‘leave me alone’ on a bit of A5 and putting it in their window. No deceit, no con,just quite a bright idea actually.

Sorry for the long blog

Jeremy Kite

Also, doesn’t it fall foul of the DPA if one gathers personal information via dodgy means?

(Ah, yes. I’ll read the post properly next time)

Someone help me out here. What’s the problem with asking someone how they’re going to vote? Don’t opinion pollsters do that all the time?…