Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Who is screwing up Britain?

Iain Dale has started a debate on whether to write a book on the 100 people screwing up Britain. His idea is based on Bernard Goldberg's 'The 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America' book.

There are many suggestion’s with Iain Dale nominating Tracey Emin? Peter Mandelson? Trisha Goddard? Polly Toynbee? Will Self? Jack McConnell? Lord Falconer? As always Matt Dean has a few interesting suggestions of his own!!

Equally on the conservativehome blog they have The 100 People Who Are Trying To Put Britain Back Together Again. Both have some very interesting nominations
Big Screen for the weekend.

Southampton is to get a big screen curtsey of the BBC for the Common to watch the England v Portugal game at the weekend. Should be a good afternoon out on the common.

Meanwhile local Labour MP Alan Whitehead has been given free tickets to the World Cup, curtsey of McDonald's. Although he did not get them directly his colleague and fellow Labour MP, Clive Betts in his capacity as Chairman of the Parliamentary Football Club got the tickets.

This is not Mr Betts first brush with controversy. People may recall Mr Betts was suspended from the House of Commons in July 2003 for his part in a bogus immigration application by his Brazilian male escort and lover that he then went onto employ as his parliamentary assistant.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Lib Dem flip flop'son education.

Obviously my ward is heavily affected by the decisions made by Cllr Ann Milton and her Learning Futures Programme for secondary education in Southampton.

What has been to everyone’s amazement is the gross incompetence of the Administration in the handling of this.

It was announced that Grove Park was to be closed even though this was not in the original consultation with parents. (A tip to those behind Learning Futures – no one objected to Grove Park’s closure during the consultation as it was not in the original proposals!)

Woolston parents where then led to believe that their school was to be kept open on the current site.

Finally Cllr Milton performed a U Turn, saying Woolston school was to close and was to merge with Grove Park.

How can parents, teachers and pupils be expected to learn and plan for the future when the Administration flip flops around like this?

There is a similar mess with Millbrook and Oaklands.

The whole thing has been handled badly from the very beginning. The Liberals need to draw a line in the sand and say that they will start the whole process again fairly.

This picking off certain schools will only increase the number of children who leave the city to be educated in Hampshire and force teachers to look outside the city for stable employment.

What Gordon knew before he raided the pension funds?

Gordon Brown has been ordered to reveal the secret forecasts he was given about the impact of his pensions "grab" in 1997. This should be interesting reading and will tell us if he knew of the projected losses to the pension funds and whether he knew of the implications that his actions were going to cause to the nation’s pension funds. We now know the mess that he has left the pensions in and how this is going to affect many future generations. Time for Gordo to come clean!

Monday, June 19, 2006

I took about an hour to set up my blog which is free. David Miliband's blog costs £40k a year to run, according to Iain Dale’s Blog (very good blog, slightly envious). We the tax payer pay two members of his staff to spend about 40% of their time writing it for him. Good use of staff in the DEFRA department? They might wish to spend some of the time sorting out the mess that Margaret Beckett left it in!

Saturday, June 17, 2006

Welcome to my Blog!

I am a local Councillor in Southampton, representing wonderful residents of Sholing!