A role model !

The other Thursday  I was present at Chelsea Old Church for the Service of Thanksgiving for the Baroness Ritchie of Brompton better known as Councillor Shireen Ritchie, and in the tabloid press as the former step Mother in law of the Popular singer (as the Daily Telegraph would put it ), Madonna 

Many of the Great and the Good were present including Cabinet Ministers Michael Gove, Maria Miller and the "millionaire private plane owning" Party Chairman Grant Shapps as well as several dozen MPs and peers. Sadly Shireen's husband John was not well enough to attend and step son, film director Guy was otherwise engaged.

Shireen was first elected to Kensington and Chelsea Council in 1998 and during her local Government career made children and young people's issues her speciality. In his excellent address Sir Merrick Cockell mentioned that she insisted on being updated on the progress of each individual child in the care of the Council a commendable action , but all I can say is the Royal Borough must have far less children in care than Barnet !

Shireen exemplified the sort of local Councillor fast disappearing across London passionate about her Ward, prepared to do the hard work, afraid of nobody and an expert in a particular field . She was not afraid of controversy and her service on the voluntary side of the Conservative Party included being responsible for Parliamentary candidates and Cameron's much derided "A-list". A number of the beneficiaries of that system occupied the pews last week !  However the recent resignation of the lightweight Louise Mensch as MP for Corby has reinforced that on this particular topic Shireen was wrong. Her final illness prevented her from making the most of her well deserved elevation to the House of Lords in 2010 . 

The presence of Michael Gove, in my view the most reforming and sensible Education Secretary since Margaret Thatcher, proved the respect in which Shireen was held by Central Government due to her role on the Local Government Association when it came to advising on Children's issues.  She was clearly listened to

However in the last few weeks a number of leading Councillors have made speeches at Party Conferences and elsewhere which Michael Gove would be sensible to ignore. The growth in the number of Academies has left some power hungry local Councillors and many jobs worth Local Government Officers suddenly realising that there influence in Education is fast disappearing down the swanny.  The Academy programme has resulted in a fundamental shift in power away from the traditional restraints of the Local Education Authority, most Secondary Schools and an increasing number of Primaries are now enjoying freedoms they have never experienced before. Additionally failing schools are being removed forcibly from LEA control and re-established as new schools with a frsh start.

 

The traditionally fraught issue of schools admissions which drives so many parents to distraction both at secondary level and, with the shortage of school places increasingly at primary level is mainly a result of the failure of Local Authorities to properly plan and the solution is not to force parents to send children to unpopular schools or schools the other side of the Borough but to allow successful schools to expand as their Heads and Governors see fit . For this to happen there needs to be flexibility on the planning front as many schools sit in the green belt.

 

A centralised schools admission system which often leads parents with false hope or cons them into thinking there is genuine choice has had its' day and a more honest and open system run by schools themselves and not by an LEA whose officers are often more interested in social gerrymandering than good education is needed. The suggestion from the Mayor of London that he should have a strategic role in Schools, in a sort of "son of ILEA" format is a recipe for disaster. Is there any parent in London who wants some distant official at City Hall dictating which school their child should attend or worse still thinks Boris Johnson or Ken Livingstone could run Education in the 33 Boroughs with hundreds of schools?.

 

In the NHS the Government reforms were based on "leaving it to the professionals " and the same thinking is beginning to apply to Education . The move to have fewer Politicians involved in Education is welcome because sadly not all have the expertises and dedication of the late Councillor Baroness Ritchie .

Get a life!

As the quality of journalism of local newspapers declines and their readership falls through the floor in recent years a new phenomenon has appeared with the rise of the internet ; the local blogger.

It is now a rare occurrence for any professional journalist to be sitting in the gallery of a Council meeting and their place has been taken by the amateur and often obsessive “blogger”

Up and down the country individuals who have a particular axe to grind or have failed to be actually be elected to their local Council sit for hours listening to tedious committee meetings and then composing blogs which often have little relationship to the proceedings they have just witnessed.

The problem with bloggers in local government is that unlike the local press who still have to abide by the rules of the soon to be defunct Press Complaints Commission (although many local journalists openly flout it)

In Barnet we are particularly blessed with bloggers with a number writing several times a day about Barnet Council matters (is the Council really that interesting?). A number have taken to doing it anonymously by adopting silly names which in my view is rather on a par with sending poison pen letters or as Mike Freer put it “the one handed bloggers”. The signs of obsessive behaviour are clear to see, one blogger has viewed this blog over 200 times in less than a week. More worryingly as they become more and more obsessive their conspiracy theories become wilder and wilder and their grasp of reality becomes more tenuous. I did have a very good laugh earlier in the year when one blogger suggested that those of us involved in the organising of the borough’s celebration of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee were part of some sort of “Masonic” conspiracy, for the record I am not a freemason. I do have to admit that there are several blog stories that have appeared that I know to be complete fiction from start to finish because I deliberately fed a pack of lies to either a Council officer or indeed a Councillor whom I suspected of leaking to the bloggers and sure enough the stories appeared.

Their attempts to personalise local politics (where to some extent the local newspapers have followed suit) has lead them to begin to indulge in bizarre activities. Councillors and senior professional officers of the Council have been followed, a black van has been reported suspiciously parked outside Councillors homes, officers of the Council have had their private residences photographed, and one female Council officer had her mobile phone number published, my 88 year old Mother was attacked in the street and one Council officer had to take their house off the market after inappropriate enquiries from bloggers.  Additionally there have been repeated acts of criminal damage on Conservative Party premises in the borough. Many Councillors of all parties no longer disclose their private addresses in order to protect their families.  In short bloggers rather than attempt to keep the wider community informed and involved, something all Councillors would welcome, have attempted to instigate a regime of intimidation just because they happen to politically disagree with the current Council administration. This is not unique to Barnet with the distinguished Leader of Kensington and Chelsea Council Sir Merrick Cockell amongst others regularly being regularly the victim of appalling personal abuse.

Additionally as a lazy way of filling their blog they submit dozens and dozens of Freedom of Information requests on spurious matter which they then reveal as shocking exclusives on their blogs. Of course this is also a tactic employed by the Taxpayers Alliance which regularly reveals “shock horror” that Local Government spends money! In Barnet the hundreds of thousands of pounds spent dealing with FOI requests could have kept Friern Barnet Library open. Just a thought!

I am not worried about blogs that genuinely debate matters of political interest and indeed there are several that cover Barnet affairs from a socialist point of view with which I fundamentally disagree but I enjoy reading. Furthermore the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles’ idea about recruiting “armchair auditors“ is a positive move to enhance the power of the Internet and make local government more accountable. In Barnet some bloggers who think they act as the servant of the voters have actually developed bigger egos than us Councillors; the difference is they don’t have a democratic mandate to back it up and get highly offended if anyone criticises them. They can dish it out but they cannot take it.

One gets the feeling that some bloggers have fixated on Barnet Council and its’ officers and members in preference to obsessing over David Beckham or Simon Cowell.

My message to some bloggers, “Get a Life!“