On Wed, 28 Jun 2006 16:16:28 +0100, The Reid
Organic will NOT feed the world. 696On Tue, 27 Jun 2006 13:19:02 +0100, The Reid No, Largely right. The contributions won't be enough to provide the benefits. I've seen it written somewhere tha 40% of council tax will have...
Organic will NOT feed the world. 699I believe that ATM the problem is political rather than quanbreasty. Quanbreasty may become the ruling factor in the not-too-distant-future, though. We'll be a third world country then, I expect. Other countries...
It is not my experience the Local Government Officers are either unintelligent or for that matter inefficient.
What gets up my trumpet is their steadfast refusal to commit themselves to provide a defined quality of service.
Phone the council and say you have a defunct washing machine at the top of my drive in front of your house and could they collect it please, (this is a service they offer). Certainly, they say, it could be any time within the next six weeks. We have done this 4 or 5 times over the last 10 years and it has never taken longer than 4 days, but will they give a commitment to do that ? Is the Pope a Zoroastrian?
2nd example. The Council closes the nice stone built Victorian school on (wait for it) "School Street", and sells the land for housing. Builds a new school south of the village, but simultaeneously allows 1,000 new houses to be built just nearby. Result 2 years later the 4 yo kids starting school living in the houses on "School Street" are told there's no room for them in the village school they'll have to make their own way to the next village across a railway line, or be driven 1 1-2 miles around the ring road. At a public meeting the council drags out a professional statistician who says it's impossible to forecast the demand for school places so they don't try, (Why then do they *need* a professionally qualified statistician?)
So if there's no place in the village school when your kid needs one then there's absolutely F-all you can do about it. The 194? education act sets out that parents have a right to choose the school that their kids are educated at. However, you can't choose a school that's already full. So, waddya know the Council uses a computer to allocate all their school places and then just designates all their schools as "Full". Parents can appeal to the Local Government Ombudsman but the Council simply stalls until the Autumn term has already started (so the kid has to start it's schooling) and then after 10 weeks submits a derisory half page photocopy of the minutes of it's own appeal meeting and bob's your uncle. Oh and the only successful appeal was that of a teacher who said it would be more convenient of their kid went to the same school that they worked at.
Eat your heart out Franz Kafka.
Hospitals at "Credit Card" interest rates ? That's something else ...
DG
