Collective Punishments on Lambeth Citizens
Our long suffering citizens are being lined up for yet more punishment from our masters. First, our secondary schools are being starved of resources, except for a handful of institutions favoured by the 'Blair Babes' running the education service. One angry secondary school headteacher, who I interviewed last Friday, described some of our Council's officers as "incompetent" and told how she'd been hectored by a Labour councillor who told her Lambeth had no need for more faith-based school places, but needed more places for the children of the middle classes. The particular school in question is much favoured by parents from all walks of life especially our black community and has eight applications for every place. It is not likely to get any resources under the so-called Building Schools for the Future programme until 2009. Some of the metrics used here have been changed to protect the innocent from reprisals.
In the Shrek movies, they had a particular name for the 'Blair Babe' fantasists in our Town Hall who think church schools are unpopular - 'the land of far far away'. But in the meantime, our customer friendly Comrades have been lining up collective punishments for those areas in the south of the borough that don't vote Labour at local elections. Gone is the proposed GB pounds 500,000 in Norwood lesiure facilities. Cut is the proposed GB pounds 1.387 million investment at the Vale Street recycling site, a popular facility that badly needs a makeover to keep local people satisfied about its green credentials. Slashed is GB pounds 500,000 of investment in street wardens and cut to GB pounds 100,000 are the budgets for the area committees which are especially well attended in Norwood and Streatham.
Hardly any of these proposed 'deletions' from the budget have any impact on Brixton or Vauxhall, but motorists everywhere are not going to escape unscathed. Not only are there plans for differential charging based on the size of engines, but there are strong indications, leaked to Conservative members by some of our more upstanding officers, that the GB pound 60 parking permit will have its price at least doubled and perhaps put up even more. Our people are told that this will be offset by improvements in the parking service where courtesy and fairness are now the proper way of working. Yet only the other day I received a letter from a woman in Deronda Road who says she lived in Czechoslovakia under Communism. The sight of a marauding pack of traffic wardens (they operate in threes like buses) makes her wonder whether they are coming to get her or a neighbour. It can only be a matter of time before everyone is hammered.
In the Shrek movies, they had a particular name for the 'Blair Babe' fantasists in our Town Hall who think church schools are unpopular - 'the land of far far away'. But in the meantime, our customer friendly Comrades have been lining up collective punishments for those areas in the south of the borough that don't vote Labour at local elections. Gone is the proposed GB pounds 500,000 in Norwood lesiure facilities. Cut is the proposed GB pounds 1.387 million investment at the Vale Street recycling site, a popular facility that badly needs a makeover to keep local people satisfied about its green credentials. Slashed is GB pounds 500,000 of investment in street wardens and cut to GB pounds 100,000 are the budgets for the area committees which are especially well attended in Norwood and Streatham.
Hardly any of these proposed 'deletions' from the budget have any impact on Brixton or Vauxhall, but motorists everywhere are not going to escape unscathed. Not only are there plans for differential charging based on the size of engines, but there are strong indications, leaked to Conservative members by some of our more upstanding officers, that the GB pound 60 parking permit will have its price at least doubled and perhaps put up even more. Our people are told that this will be offset by improvements in the parking service where courtesy and fairness are now the proper way of working. Yet only the other day I received a letter from a woman in Deronda Road who says she lived in Czechoslovakia under Communism. The sight of a marauding pack of traffic wardens (they operate in threes like buses) makes her wonder whether they are coming to get her or a neighbour. It can only be a matter of time before everyone is hammered.
Labels: Area Committees, Education, Leisure, Parking permits, Parking wardens, Play areas, School places, Street wardens
posted by Cllr John Whelan on Monday, November 27, 2006
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