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Parents teach Tories a lesson in school places crisis
PARENTS in Belsize Park appear determined that a primary school be built in the area.
And they are making their point with imaginative campaigning.
If the Lib Dem-Tory coalition feel that given time the parents will go away, they are likely to be manifestly disappointed.
There is little doubt that the Belsize Park area is bereft of primary schools.
This is not a parochial question. Young parents – and Belsize Park is becoming home to a growing number – desperately feel the need for a school.
Lib Dem councillors appear to be in sympathy with the parents. Councillor Alexis Rowell clearly enunciates their case. The stumbling block apparently are the Tories.
But as next year’s local elections gets closer, will the Tories continue to face down the parents?
• WE sympathise with council security men who have been issued with reinforced caps for protection against gang attacks on the Gospel Oak estate.
The nature of violent attacks several weeks ago made this almost inevitable.
To a point, the council has clearly acted prudently.
We trust, however, that a great deal of thought is being equally given as to the cause of these attacks.
Is it possible they are a sign of the times?
Endemic unemployment among youngsters, cultural poverty, lack of youth facilities – aren’t these contributory factors?
• WHY does Prime Minister Gordon Brown continue to immerse himself in spin at a time when he’s fighting for his political life?
This is surely the moment for the PM to simply speak his mind – and reveal his real thoughts, unadorned by spin and spurious argument and bluster.
When a press conference with the PM was called at the last moment on Tuesday in Islington (see page 3) we expected him to have the guts to face our reporters on his own.
He shouldn’t have needed a back-up of his party’s spin doctors.
If he continues to play the prescribed political game he is doomed.
Politics has changed – hopefully – irreversibly since the exposure of how MPs have bought and sold London properties with taxpayers’ money.
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