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Demolition work |
West End | News | Pimlico School | Westminster Council | Steve Farnsworth | City Hall | NUT
WESTMINSTER Council has been accused of “dancing on the grave” of Pimlico School after a piece of stone taken from the school’s building site was presented to Steve Farnsworth as a leaving present.
The council’s departing director of schools – who recommended the school be shut and replaced with an academy despite a wave of protest – was presented with the “trophy” at a leaving bash, thrown by his faithful colleagues in the education department on Friday night.
Suspicions were aroused on Thursday morning following the arrival at the school of a taxi driver who told teachers he had been despatched from City Hall to collect the “Pimlico stone”.
A council spokesman said the “small memento” was an “appropriate” reminder of Mr Farnsworth’s “achievements”. But parents and teachers say they are being treated with contempt.
Westminster NUT secretary Padraic Finn said: “Westminster City Council’s idea of a jolly jape was to present Steve Farnsworth with a piece of rubble from Pimlico School, in recognition of his role in bringing the comprehensive to its knees and replacing it with an academy run by the Tory Party donor, John Nash.
“It is absolutely outrageous. It is not just taking the proverbial, but showing up Westminster Council for the crass contempt in which the burghers of this rotten borough hold everyone outside their charmed circle.” It amounted to “dancing on the grave” of Pimlico School, he said.
Parent Alyson Moore said: “It is petty, twisted and disgraceful.”
English teacher Bridget Chapman added: “He is taking away a scalp from Pimlico School. It is a metaphor for the destruction of our liberal ethos.”
Labour group leader Paul Dimoldenberg said: “It is typical of Westminster’s cavalier attitude towards Pimlico School that they can make a joke out of the demolition of the school.”
A spokesman for Westminster City Council confirmed: “It was felt appropriate that he receive a small memento from Pimlico as a light-hearted gesture of our appreciation of his contribution to education in Westminster.”
Mr Farnsworth was unavailable for comment. |
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