Richard Allen

Cameron's arrogance on this subject is fantastic news for us. His refusal to flinch is doing major damage to his already fragile support on the tory right. A lot of tory activists I know are at breaking point over this and if Cameron continues to alienate the right we could see lot's more defections.

Petrina

No doubt the fact that Cameron attended "Slough Grammar " gives him the right to bad mouth Grammar Schools .
But seriously folks what IS so good about Labour`s Academies ?

harryaldridge

Beats me. I can see the point of academies focused on particular skills, for example the retailing academy set up by phillip green. But basically they seem like a way to boost the ego of the rich at the taxpayers expense. They exist because the government refuses to open up wider routes to allow new providers to innovate. A voucehr system would open up the market for education provision at all levels and not require millions of taxpayer subsidy.

eublues

It was a way of creating more labour-supporting rich peers, I thought.

gawain

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6459255.stm

Discussing fortnightly bin collection a month or so ago

" I think it's absolutely disgusting. In Sutton they introduced fortnightly collections in 1999 and there was a petition with 22,000 signatures against it.

It wasn't a particularly hot summer but there were comments about maggots and bluebottles everywhere. They went back to weekly collections in 2001.

Fortnightly collections would be an absolute disaster. The bins themselves aren't actually big enough to hold two weeks of rubbish. We had problems with maggots in the dustbin and we had to disinfect it everyday.

I object to it on health and hygiene grounds. There weren't many people who said to me that they were happy with fortnightly collections.

It doesn't encourage recycling. It's got the opposite effect. People get cheesed off. After 10 days they were actually putting all their rubbish together instead of recycling some of it.

It did encourage fly-tipping and people were just dumping their rubbish. It's a fallacy to say it helps recycling.

I believe the vast majority of the public are against it".


The announcement appears on the Guardian new blog
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/arc...ogosphere.html Scroll to the bottom

ROBERT FLAVELL

So is Councillor Pickles going to do any better than Malcolm Davies did in Dudley in the May elections when it comes for him to stand for re-election?

It is not the defections that are important, it is winning that seat in an election.....

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\'\'Give me a Ping and one Ping only\'\' - Sean Connery, Red October

mkpdavies

All new councilors should be pulled together into a team, focused on passing on experience and advice to the rest of the party.

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http://brits4ronpaul.blogspot.com/
http://wokinglibertarians.blogspot.com/
http://lpuk.org

My ignore list

Labour, Blue Labour, Lib Dems

Independent UKIP

This story has also reached the Independent, Times & Evening Standard - at least in their online versions. I haven't looked at the printed editions.

Regarding the Dudley situation if UKIP in Sutton can go from having 2 candidates in 2006 with a handful of votes to a full slate of candidates, 4 wards where UKIP is 2nd and receiving more votes than one of the big 3 parties in 2010 I will be satisfied with that progress though also a bit disappointed that Mr Pickles loses his seat (if he stands again). For reference there were no UKIP candidates in Dudley in the local elections of 1999-2005 and 7 in 2006.

eublues

For info, this was in the Times print version.

ROBERT FLAVELL

Independent UKIP,

The hard reality is that coming second is no substitute for coming FIRST, especially with FPTP elections.

It is winning that gives credibility and that gets media attention, not the Bruce Forsyth type approach of ''didn't they do well'' in coming second or third.

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\'\'Give me a Ping and one Ping only\'\' - Sean Connery, Red October