Later today I’m off to Edinburgh for a few days.
It’ll be a lot of fun but things might be quiet on the blogging front until I get back.
Hope you all had an enjoyable Christmas!
Archive for December, 2007
This week’s Advertiser has printed Cllr John Warmisham’s response to the stupid signs on the Ash Grove playing fields:
“The playing fields are private property and the signs have been erected to clearly indicate this”
No, John. Those playing fields are public property and the Council is entrusted with maintaining them on behalf of local residents. Playing fields and urban open spaces are valuable local amenities and senior Councillors should know better than to play dog-in-the-manger with them. Of course, under the terms of the Walkden High School PFI contract, a private firm will fence off those fields in the years to come and charge a small fortune for “community use”. The same will happen at Harrop Fold when those facilities are finished next autumn.
“During the previous consultation the community expressed concerns about anti-social behaviour on the land including the ues of motorbikes and dog fouling on the fields”
This is of course absolutely true, but what are you going to do about it John? I’m sure the kids on motorbikes are quivering at the thought of those signs. All that the signs have achieved is to make a group of residents who have already been badly let down by Councillors Warmisham and Merry have even less trust in the Council.
This might not be the best time of year to encourage reader participation, but here goes anyway…
As many of you will be aware, the leaders of the three Council groups on Salford City Council each pen a column for the Salford Advertiser every third week. I know that my group leader and Leader of the Opposition, Cllr Karen Garrido, receives excellent feedback from her articles, and you can read all Karen’s contributions on the Salford Conservatives website.
Karen ended her last column of 2007 with a wish-list for Salford in 2008:
The other day I was asked if I was going to make a New Year’s resolution. I said “yes”. I am not saying what it is but I would like to share with you some of my wishes for the City in 2008:
- Affordable Council Tax
- Encourage good schools – not close them
- No congestion charge and improved bus services
- Affordable housing for families – not apartments
- More youth facilities
- Less crime
- Community facilities in those parts of the City which have none
My final wish is that more Conservative Councillors get elected in May to achieve these wishes. On behalf of the Conservatives on Salford City Council may I wish you all a very Happy Christmas and a healthy and peaceful New Year.
So I have a question for all the good readers of this blog. If you live in Salford, what would you like to see from Salford City Council in 2008? If you live elsewhere feel free to comment both on Salford and on your own local area. Finally, what would you like to see from the Government in 2008?
I’ll publish my own wishlist on New Year’s Eve – something to vaguely look forward to I hope!
I wish all the readers of this website, local residents in Walkden and across Salford - and indeed everyone else for that matter – a very Merry Christmas. I hope you all have a very enjoyable day.
I will try to keep this blog updated over the festive period but blogging may well be light until after New Year.
I’ve just noticed the report on the recent OFSTED report on St George’s High School from Kevin Duffy of Channel M News. Well worth a look…
There have been a couple of good press articles on St George’s over the last day or two that are worth reading – firstly in the Bolton Evening News and secondly on the front page of this week’s Advertiser.
Salford’s Labour administration are – for reasons entirely beyond my comprehension – still committed to the closure of St George’s RC High School here in Walkden. It is a popular, successful and extremely oversubscribed school that is highly valued by the local community.
At the end of November, St George’s underwent an OFSTED inspection. Rather than analyse it page-by-page or post selected extracts, here is the first page entitled “overall effectiveness” (which is effectively a summary of the rest of the report), in full and unedited. The emphasis is mine rather than that of the inspectorate.
This is a good school with a number of outstanding features. Achievement and standards are good. Students make good progress from Year 7 to 11 and outstanding progress in mathematics. Over a sustained period examination results demonstrate year-on-year improvement. Staff have established a strong aspirational culture where success is celebrated. The school acknowledges underperformance in a small minority of departments and has robust strategies in place to promote improvement.
Personal well-being and development are outstanding. The school provides an environment where students are safe and able to advance their self-confidence and motivation. Behaviour is exemplary. Students enjoy school. Teaching is good with some outstanding aspects. However, there is some inconsistency in the quality of marking and detailed feedback to students. An improving curriculum is now linking into a wide range of external partnerships and opportunities for students. Progress to further education is good. The school offers outstanding care, guidance and support. A culture of responsibility and engagement enriches staff and students alike.
The self-evaluation demonstrates that management understands the school’s strengths and areas for improvement. The school has effectively tackled the issues raised at the last inspection. There is excellent leadership from the headteacher and his senior management team particularly in driving the strong improvement agenda. Much middle management is outstanding and they effectively tackle underachievement through robust action plans and evaluations. Governance is very good and committed to maintaining and developing high standards and very close links with the local community. There are exemplary links between the school and its community as well as strong support from parents. The school acknowledges the need to provide adequate supervision of students when they are engaged in experiments in the refurbished science laboratory. Because of measured and sustained improvement over the last four years inspectors judged that the school has outstanding capacity to improve.
Does that sound to you like a school that the Council should be closing down?
I’d like to place on record my own congratulations to the staff and pupils at St George’s who have done a fantastic job under a lot of pressure and scrutiny. Well done.
Yesterday I commented on the Government’s latest data-loss debacle. Today David Jones MP has a must-read post on the same issue. Here’s the important bit:
It must also be asked why confidential British data were being stored in a foreign jurisdiction, where different data protection laws prevail, and beyond the reach of the British courts. Last year, I tabled a series of Parliamentary questions on the storage of online computer data to a number of Whitehall departments. All denied that any data were stored in foreign jurisdictions. I must dust off the answers, to see whether any of them may have been less than totally frank.
Quite.
There’s a big advert for Oyster cards in today’s Manchester Evening News. I’m sure the MEN advertising department will be delighted, but I’m not sure that the good taxpayers of London would share their delight if they knew how Mayor Ken was spending his marketing budget.
I actually have an Oyster (although it actually cost me money the first time I used it) but I’ve never met anyone who could benefit from having one that isn’t aware of the cards already. Seems to me like more pointless spending, but then with Ken Livingstone that is hardly a surprise!
1978 was a long time ago
One of my pet hates from my University days was the small number of senior politics “academics” who were seemingly only interested in using their position as a platform for their own (usually warped) views. While I was a student at York, Alex Callinicos was the worst offender, although there were others. He no longer works at York, and I must say I am considerably more likely to donate to the alumni fund now that they aren’t wasting money on his wages.
A second problem that lurks within politics academia has risen above ground again – that of political guesswork masquarading as “research”. Professor Tony Travers, an “urban politics expert”, has just released a new “study”, and unfortunately the Manchester Evening News seems to have swallowed it. Let’s have a detailed look:
Continue reading ‘1978 was a long time ago’