| |
School’s statement suggests Dobbo’s sleight-of-hand
IS there a glimmer of light for the parents who have been campaigning for more than a year for a school to be built in south Camden – a campaign supported by this newspaper?
A statement by the Department for Children, Schools and Families issued this week (see page 27) suggests that a new school in the south is now slipping onto an agenda that would be favourably considered by the Whitehall powers-that-be.
So far, the council has steam-rollered ahead with its proposal to build a school in Swiss Cottage, aided and abetted by London University. Opposition from parents in the south – as well as Holborn MP Frank Dobson – has, on the surface, been put to one side.
But it can be assumed that Mr Dobson, a former cabinet minister, using his vast experience and contacts, has been beavering away behind the scenes.
Mr Dobson, it should be remembered, always presented a formidable opponent to the architects of the Swiss Cottage proposal. He was never parachuted into the borough to start his parliamentary career. In the 1970s he was the Labour leader of the council. His children attended the local secondary school in Somers Town. To him, education isn’t simply a side issue.
In addition, the campaigners for a south Camden school have fought a canny fight, and their application for a judicial review has still to run its course.
Bearing all that mind, the argument for a second new school in Camden may be winning support in Whitehall.
After all, education, along with health, remains at the heart of New Labour’s proclaimed reforms. A hard-headed, blunt dismissal by central government of the overtures of the campaigning parents could appear to make poor politics for Gordon Brown’s new administration struggling to assert itself after a shaky start.
Another case of the council’s indifference
SHOULD we be surprised that a council, whose staff are accused of “stealing from the dead,” should move a tenant – a deaf woman – into another property and then, without her knowledge, sell off her old home? (See page 1).
The apparent theft of goods belonging to tenants who died or moved on – well-documented by this newspaper in the past year – is but the other side of the same coin of arrogance and indifference displayed by some officials towards the citizens of this borough.
|
 |
|
| |
