Smarten up

Tories to back dress codes for teachers

Michael Gove, the Conservatives’ education spokesman, has said that his party will back those schools which introduce a dress code for their staff.

I have a long memory (which sometimes is reliable and at other times is not) but when I was a pupil at South Shields Grammar School for Boys the teaching staff wore gowns and coloured capes, depending upon their degrees, it hardly seemed to bother them or the pupils. We had a certain amount of respect for them and we had a uniform of our own, and William Egner, the headmaster, even introduced short gowns for those sixth formers who were elected as prefects.

The staff at my children’s school in South Shields all appear to be well presented in a formal business like attire and I have yet to hear of any other school in South Tyneside where the teaching staff are allowed to wear denim or leather! So it comes as a little surprise to learn that sloppy dress codes are entertained in certain other educational establishments within the UK. My own view is that the teaching delivery and presentation is probably far more important than the £49 ASDA suit.

• I wonder if it ought to be the role of politicians to determine or favour dress codes for staff, whatever the profession?
• Whether parents would be overly upset if teacher wore jeans and a t-shirt?
• Should it not be the role of school governors and local authorities to determine the policy in these areas and then ensure that it is followed?
• If we agree that schoolchildren should wear a uniform, should it not be then commensurate for staff to dress in an appropriate business fashion?

What are your views?

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Snooping on local communities

Hazel Blears’ guidance to authorities like South Tyneside

Via the excellent Spyblog

Hazel Blears, the chipmunk faced NuLabour minister has introduced a guidance paper for local councils, such as our own, which is nothing less than a snooper’s charter! She wishes to set up “tension monitoring” groups so citizens can provide a conduit to government departments and let them know about the major problems being faced on our estates and the sort of data that Blears wants to collate includes;

• quantitative data (e.g. police crime statistics and intelligence reports)
• qualitative community intelligence from neighbourhood wardens, community workers, casework by local councillors and feedback from local community meetings and organisations
• racially or religiously motivated offences or incidents
• details of new arrivals, refugees and asylum seekers, and Gypsy and Traveller communities in the local area
• gang and turf conflicts
• neighbour disputes

Heaven only knows why the government should be told about neighbour disputes over footballs landing in gardens, poorly maintained fences, and loud televisions. What else would these “tension groups” monitor?

• surveys of community views on reassurance, cohesion and safety matters
• state of local economic activity (decline or improvement)
• financial and social investment in the area
• demand for housing and condition of the local housing stock
• plans for renewal and the sustainability of planned or actual improvements
• political extremism

Political extremism? Who the hell is going to decide what that constitutes? My neighbour complaining about a new hotel and setting up a protest group to collect signatures on a petition perhaps, or how about me learning that a bloke in the pub has joined the BNP? Should I tell the local council’s monitoring group about this obviously extremist, misguided, but quite legal activity? Would it be extremist to disagree with just about anything that South Tyneside Council decided to do? Is it right that the local police should involve themselves in the collation of information about people’s political motivations and beliefs?

She also wants to monitor the media in misguided efforts to assess community tensions - so you’d better be prepared to stay “on message”. What on earth does this say about freedom of thought and expression?

Spyblog provides an example of the insidious “tension monitoring form” and notes;

there is no mechanism for error correction or appeal, and no sanctions against abuse of power by officials, who will be trying to use the exemptions under the Data Protection Act and the Freedom of Information Act to keep this all secret from the public.

The guidance paper even includes advice on how to circumvent the Freedom of Information Act and the Data Protection Act.

The creepy words “horizon scanning” linked to Civil Contingencies Act 2004 Emergency Planning also sneak into this document - exactly the same language as is used by MI5 the Security Service and the Metropolitan Police Counter-terrorism Command, when they talk of data warehousing and the “Rich Picture” to identify “threats”.

There are times that I despair about the measures that NuLabour are prepared to consider to reduce, erode, and destroy long held and defended civil liberties in this country, and this piece of paper is yet another example of feckless unthinking politicians creating the conditions that would prove ideal for a corrupt government planning to build a police state!

Would South Tyneside councillor Joanne Bell care to offer an assurance that this ridiculous guidance will be effectively ignored by our local council, our communities will be stronger and  safer without it.

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Gordon “Chubby” Brown

Funny impersonation of Gordon Brown in this video from Bremner, Bird, and Fortune.

“I’ve got a lousy tax policy to finish with”

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Alan Johnson’s email address

Odd search result

You occasionally see some odd search terms that resulted in the enquirer landing on your website, one such searcher was looking for “Alan Johnson Health Minister’s email address” and ended up in the Corner Shop here in South Shields - I kid you not!

Here, have a look for yourself.

Honestly, I don’t store any government classified email addresses, besides as a former postman he probably prefers a well written letter (just ask South Tyneside Cllr. Rob Dix!)

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An extra £120

What could I do with it?

Thinking of the average person in South Shields, just what could we all do with the £120 bribe being offered later this year by Brown and Darling?

• Save it for a rainy day, council taxes might just go up again next year!
• Use it to pay for the increased price of petrol (it might cover 24 tank fulls.)
• Put it towards the expected 30% increase in gas bills seeing as the government is doing little to secure energy supplies.
• Put it towards the costs of repairing aunty Mabel’s council toppled headstone.
• Use it to pay the extra tax on the family car.
• Allow it to be swallowed up by the mortgage increases.
• Put it towards the increase in council house rents.
• Buy 66 school meals at next year’s price.

Feel free to add any other suggestions.

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Darling fails the lower paid

Low earners at £7,500 pa remain £32.40 worse off

Via Iain Dale’s Diary

Accountants Grant Thornton issued this press release yesterday:

Basic rate taxpayers benefit by £120 while low income earners on £7,455 remain £32.40 worse off. Leading business and financial adviser, Grant Thornton, says the Chancellor’s announcement to raise personal allowances to offset losses to low income earners by the abolition of the 10p rate will still leave some low income earners worse off, while benefiting all basic rate taxpayers under 65 to the tune of £120.

Francesca Lagerberg, head of Grant Thornton’s national tax office, says although it is pleasing to see the government, having blundered on this decision from the outset, moving quickly to clean up the mess created for low income earners. However, she is concerned that raising personal allowances by £600 (to £6,035) is not targeting all those affected.

“While the Chancellor’s plan offers a solution to the political problem it does not offer full compensation to those worst hit by the abolition of the 10p rate, as there are still some who will spend the 2008/09 tax year worse off,” she says. “Furthermore, and rubbing further salt into the wound of those low income earners who have not been helped by today’s announcement, is the fact that a large number of middle income earners will benefit from the raising of the personal allowance by £120 as well*.”

“The Chancellor has delivered an essentially unfunded early Christmas present to a large number of UK workers, but failed to undo its mistake for around 1.1 million low income households.” Lagerberg says many UK workers will be up-beat about the announcement expecting an additional and unplanned boost to their income, but those earning £7,455 will still be £32.40 in arrears come the end of the 2008/09 tax year.

A “one off” payment, secured through a loan, meant to solve a political problem for the Labour Party, which the people of South Shields and elsewhere will have to pay back sometime in the future. Here’s the gamble, if Labour’s fortunes climb out of the gutters the next Chancellor (for surely Darling will be replaced at the earliest possible opportunity by Miliband) will have a year to sort out the mess, if Labour’s fortunes continue to ebb away down the drains then “Call me Dave” Cameron and “Boy George” Osborne will be saddled with a £2.7bn debt that they didn’t need!

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Brown’s bribe

One off “tax concession” borrowed to win Crewe and Nantwich

Has anyone ever attempted to bribe the British people in the way that Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown did yesterday? Whilst we were sitting in South Shields Town Hall for the meeting of South Tyneside Council others were getting their calculators out to analyse the effects of this U turn over the 10p tax rate, and commentators determined just how big was the sticking plaster being used to patch over the gaping wound in Labour’s body.

£2.7bn borrowed from the markets to drive a small £120 payback to 22 million people despite the fact that only 5.3million were initially affected by the loss of the 10p tax rate. We now see that those earning between £18,500 and £40,000 pa will also benefit from the gamble as the Chancellor and the Prime Minister play roulette with the economy. It was all so easy to raise the thresholds with personal allowances, but it would have been a far more genuine gesture if it had been achieved at the expense of government spending elsewhere, perhaps a massive reduction in the amount of government press officers, political aides, spin doctors, and consultants might have made a better headline, especially as these are the people who seem to be pulling Brown’s strings.

So let’s hear no more from Brown, Darling, Balls and the others about Tory proposals for unfunded tax cuts, yesterday’s unfunded cut illustrated just how desperate Brown is to gain favour, yet the voters will see through this ruse, we know that eventually we will have to pay for this loan through cuts in services or through higher taxes. The Labour Party do not have a good record for saving our money, so expect your wallet to take another bashing at the next budget. We know a bribe when we see one, in fact we’ve read the script for this awful film, and it doesn’t have a happy ending!

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The Annual Meeting (part 2)

Spending big, now easier

Back to the meeting in South Shields Town Hall.

Amongst the changes proposed to South Tyneside Council’s Constitution was a financial measure which will make the spending of large sums, in a hurry, that much easier by Chief Officers acting in conjunction with lead members or a decision by Cabinet, and I’m glad that Independent Cllr. Ahmed Khan picked this up. Cabinet can now approve the spending of up to £1m (previously £500,000) without the prior approval of the full council. New council Leader Iain Malcolm explained that this was much to do with inflation.

Crikey I knew that inflation is starting to get worrying in the Brown era, but I didn’t realise it was that bad under New Labour!

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The Annual Meeting

South Tyneside Council - some observations.

I was at the Annual Meeting of South Tyneside Council this afternoon in South Shields Town Hall, and was left feeling somewhat confused by the strategy adopted by the Branley led Independent Alliance councillors. For a group who continue to espouse greater public involvement with our borough council I thought they made poor use of their greater numbers and to some extent managed to alienate (rather than enthuse) the members of the public who were present.

I am confused - is the insistence on calling for named votes a political strategy with some sort of reasoned aim? Considering that the opposition is still heavily outnumbered by Labour would it not be more reasonable to accept a show of hands? What is the point of making everyone sit through almost an hour of named votes when we are all acutely aware of what the outcome will be? Bored to tears by now.

Similarly, one has to ask, what was the point of attempting to get the majority group to accept a whole new set of Independent councillors as chair or vice chair of committees, you know in advance what the response will be. It was a futile exercise which promoted nothing at all.

The biggest howler was Cllr. Branley’s attempt to get local blogger Peter Shaw (yes he who talks to himself, and answers back) voted on to the Standards Committee, once again after so many years serving as a member of the Council she displayed ineptitude beyond belief with her apparent ignorance of the rules and procedures for appointing lay members in this case. She promptly withdrew her nomination after this glaring error was pointed out.

Expect to see and hear recriminations from some quarters over the Independents general lack of support this afternoon.

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South Tyneside Onview

Let’s go green and scrap it!

Having been alerted to the activities and emergent popularity of Boris johnson and his latest moves to both save money and improve London’s environment, I thought perhaps we ought to be doing the same sort of things in South Tyneside.

“There was little commitment of resources from Ken Livingstone to reverse the trend of decline in the number of street trees. I am taking immediate action to reverse this short-sighted decision. In the last few years a third of boroughs have seen a decline in the number of street trees. Many London streets, particularly in deprived areas, have no street trees at all. I believe that as many areas as possible should enjoy the many advantages that street trees bring. So today I have taken the decision to cut unnecessary funding of the Mayor’s personal publicity budget to plant 10,000 street trees by the end of my first term. Trees improve the street environment in which Londoners live and work so I will do all I can to save the trees we have and campaign for more trees to protect London’s open spaces.”

I wonder how many trees we could plant in South Shields or Jarrow with the money that could be saved by scrapping South Tyneside’s Onview magazine?

Considering that we have a reasonably good council website and a cooperative local newspaper to disseminate information, surely it’s worth a thought?

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