Good News, Progress and Blog Spots.

First the good news, as I mentioned in a previous blog Newington Community Primary School where I have the privilege of being the Chair of the Governing body has been awarded an OFSTED rating of GOOD with some outstanding features. This is due to the hard work of all the staff from the school caretakers, dinner ladies etc right up to the Headteacher, but the people who contributed most are the pupils. They have shown that by being given good teaching, strong but fair discipline and providing decent facilities any school can overcome previous difficulties. I am immensely proud to be associated with this school and it is a real poke in the eye for many people who constantly write Newington off as a desolate place ridden with ‘feral children’ and ‘giro munching wasters’ to quote one particularly unpleasant individual.

You can see the full report here.


I continue to wrestle with ‘The System’ without much success, I am particularly pissed off with insurance companies at the moment. As I have written before I have payment protection insurance supposedly to cover unexpected sickness or unemployment. These people want all sorts of information from me that has been provided usually by return of post and despite my speedy return of the information I find that nearly two months into the process payments are still coming out of my ever diminishing bank account. I have this morning phoned these providers and having struggled through the morass of people reading from flow charts finally got through to decision makers and err, erm, err let off steam at them. They have been given seven days to refund the payments that they insured me against having to make or I am going to the FSA, the Banking and Insurance Ombudsman and anyone else I can think of. I have all the glossy leaflets they send when you make a claim making all the promises about ‘peace of mind’ ‘speedy resolution of your claim’ ‘keeping you fully informed at all stages’ etc, etc, blah, blah, blah, it all seems to be empty rhetoric and false promises.
No doubt there will be those who will think they are politicians in training. !!!!


A quick tour of the Blog’s reveals that ECR is off being an international jet-setter living the high life in Canada, well actually he is probably working the clapperboard on some obscure travel show for an even more obscure cable TV company !
Dave Green is still keeping his head down for some reason.

Elsewhere good ole Smeghead is becoming more and more desperate in trying to drum up support for his futile attempt to close Manston Airport, interestingly on a door knocking exercise in Newington Ward last weekend one of the questions we asked folks on the doorstep was if they had any issues with the Airport. There are no prizes for guessing that there was general support for it!

Bertie Biggles keeps up the pressure on TDC this time with an item about the long awaited Standards Committee hearing into the alleged goings on at a certain Wool Shop in Margate. Well yes there were letters sent out including to the Press who haven’t used them for whatever reason. The whole process has taken an inordinately long time for some reason. I have long thought that complaints about Members should be dealt with by a neighbouring Authority to ensure that there is no leaning on Members of Standards Committee to come to the 'right decision'.
Not that I am suggesting that this may happen in this case!!!
I am not going to comment further on this for fear of being accused of prejudicing the outcome.

His next item concerns a Cabinet Member and her apparent invisibility in her Ward, hopefully her Satnav will be working next week as she is due in Newington for a meeting about the demolition and rebuild of The Centre.


Tony Flaig, who I had the pleasure of meeting a couple of weeks ago comments on the appearance of bee’s who seem to be able to get to work without having to rely on the train services in the South East that ground to a halt after a very frosty night. Not much change there then. I worked on what was then called British Railways for 20 years leaving in 1984 and despite the advances in technology in many areas it seems that the problems caused by a bit of frost is still beyond the wit of boffins to solve.


Mark Nottingham points us in the direction of a BBC programme tonight. Judging by some of the replies to his post a lot of folks don’t understand exactly what an elected Mayor is all about, maybe they should do some research before passing comments.


Michael Child has some interesting stuff on his blog. I find the one about Ramsgate library a bit puzzling though, I can understand locking valuable books away but to hide what are I understand copies seems a bit bizarre. I know Michael has some interesting stuff in his shop, now I have time on my hands I must pop in and browse.