East Sussex schools need YOU!

Do you have the skills, experience and commitment to make a difference for a local school? If so, East Sussex County Council wants to hear from you.

The search has begun for new school governors who can bring professional skills and expertise to help schools be the very best.

Cllr Nick Bennett, the County Council's Lead Member for Learning and school Effectiveness said: “There are big challenges but also big rewards for school governors. Theirs has always been an important role but I don't think it has ever been more vital.”

With schools having more options on their governance arrangements, with the prospect of more freedom, and with Ofsted placing a much greater emphasis on the effectiveness of school governing bodies, the importance of getting the right people was crucial, Cllr Bennett added.

School governors play an increasingly important role ensuring the effectiveness of a school. They are responsible for recruitment of head teachers, ensuring the effective management of a school, and challenging the leadership team to ensure the best possible standards are achieved.

They work in close partnership with the school's headteacher and senior management team to deliver the best possible education to support their pupils to fulfill their potential.

Cllr Bennett said: “School governors come from all walks of life and they are volunteers. You don't have to be a parent, know about education or be a particular type of person. All you need, really, is to be 18 and have a real desire to make a difference – and that's the reward, a real sense that you are making a contribution and helping children.”

There can be as many as 2,500 volunteer governors at schools across the county. But schools always have vacancies and so the County Council is looking for people with a range of skills and expertise that could make a real contribution.

“It's a really great volunteering opportunity and it gives anyone interested the chance to apply their skills and experience within a new environment. We're particularly looking for people who have skills or experience in areas such as finance, health and safety, marketing and communications, personnel issues, and special educational needs.” Cllr Bennett added.

To help with the recruitment, the County Council has teamed up with a national charity called School Governors' One-Stop Shop (SGOSS). It helps schools that are looking for new governors, and it helps potential governors who want to help a school.

Schools in East Sussex that are looking for governors have been encouraged to sign up with SGOSS to help them with their recruitment, and anyone interested in becoming a school governor is also being encouraged to get in touch – either with the SGOSS or with the County Council's Governor Services team.

Anyone who wants more information should visit
SGOSS at http://www.sgoss.org.uk/ or call 020 7288 9533
Governor Services at sis.governorservices@eastsussex.gov.uk

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When did 'unkempt' become a racial insult?

By Richard Littlejohn, Daily Mail

A former Government Education Minister has been subjected to a humiliating six-month ‘racism’ investigation after describing a constituent as ‘unkempt’.

Tim Loughton, Conservative MP for East Worthing and Shoreham-by-Sea, was interviewed under caution by detectives for 90 minutes.

Officers also questioned Mr Loughton’s staff and trawled through his archives for ‘evidence’. They were acting on a complaint from a well-known local nutter, who claimed that the MP insulted his ethnic heritage.

Kieran Francis, who says that he is a Romany gypsy on his mother’s side, accused Mr Loughton of being ‘disrespectful’ and calling him ‘dirty’.

This deeply sinister chain of events began when Mr Loughton became involved in a dispute over Mr Francis being evicted from his allotment by the local council.

Other allotment-holders complained that he was using human excrement on his compost heap, a charge he denies. Mr Francis then got into an altercation with an official from the allotment department.

Mr Francis emailed Mr Loughton, to protest about his treatment at the hands of the council, which identified him as a ‘difficult resident’. He took particular exception to one document which described him as ‘unkempt’.

This wasn’t the first time the MP had heard from Mr Francis, who has regularly contacted his office with a series of complaints about the council, the NHS, the benefits agency, the courts and even the police.

He says Mr Francis had subjected his staff to taunts and bad language, occasionally reducing them to tears.

Finally, Mr Loughton snapped. He wrote back saying that he agreed with the council’s description of Mr Francis as ‘unkempt’ given that the dictionary defines the word as ‘untrimmed, dishevelled and rough’.

Looking at the picture of Mr Francis in the Mail on Sunday, ‘unkempt’ would appear to be a reasonable opinion of his appearance. He has a beard and long, straggly hair, which appears to have been tied back in a ponytail. He is dressed in a crumpled leather jacket, cargo pants and sneakers and one of those daft, Soviet-style caps which used to be popular with folk singers in the Sixties.

For good measure, Mr Loughton added this complaint was yet ‘another example of the whingeing, self-serving, poisonous b******s that seem to have become your trademark’.

He said later: ‘I’d had enough of this guy. I felt the council had acted legitimately and I uniquely decided to use some of his own style of language to reinforce my point.’

After sending the email, Mr Loughton was contacted by a Detective Inspector from Sussex Police who wanted to speak to him in connection with allegations of a ‘criminal nature’.

He was put into a custody suite at Worthing nick and told he was being investigated under the Malicious Communications Act.

Mr Loughton was shown a document which read: ‘Mr Francis states that he is of Romany Gypsy origin and feels that references made to him are of a racist nature and that the email contains personal insults of a grossly offensive nature.’

The MP said he had no idea what Mr Francis’s ethnic origins may or may not be.

But even if he had, how does calling him ‘unkempt’ amount to ‘racism’ and what has a dispute over an allotment got to do with the Old Bill?

Understandably, Mr Loughton is furious and is demanding an explanation from the Chief Constable.

He may be disappointed. Sussex Police have so far refused to answer any questions about the length or cost of the investigation, which could run to as much as £100,000. He won’t get much joy from the Crown Prosecution Service, either, even though no charges are being preferred.

The CPS said: ‘These were serious allegations and the matter was thoroughly reviewed.’

No, they weren’t. The only ‘serious’ aspect is the outrageous decision of the police to treat a blameless Member of Parliament like a criminal and accuse him of ‘racism’ on the basis of a vexatious and malicious complaint from a serial grievance-monger.

Maybe Sussex police had read about the Met officers who tried to fit up the former Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell recently and fancied a Tory scalp of their own. My guess would be that the Chief Constable thoroughly approves of the investigation, which is in line with the police’s ‘best practice’ on ‘diversity’.

As the unfortunate Mr Loughton correctly surmises: ‘Because of the merest hint of racism and the sensitivity towards travellers, the police go into overdrive.’

If you’re burgled or have your car stolen, you’ll be lucky to get a note for the insurance. But claim that you’re half-Romany and someone’s been rude to you and the police will drop everything to investigate.

All Sussex’s officers will have been indoctrinated about ‘diversity’ on some expensive training course, just like every other copper in Britain.

And the way they ‘celebrate diversity’ is by feeling the collar of anyone who is accused of showing ‘disrespect’ to someone who, however tenuously, defines himself as a member of a ‘vulnerable and persecuted’ minority group.

Some readers may remember Northants Police scouring a Basil Brush video for evidence of ‘racism’ after a complaint from a travellers’ representative.

At the time, it seemed like a joke. No one’s laughing now, certainly not Tim Loughton MP.

The DI who interviewed Mr Loughton will probably get a commendation and be fast-tracked up the promotion ladder.

The new breed of chief police officers are no longer old-fashioned thief-takers. They seem to have landed fully-formed and brainwashed from Planet Plod and are more interested in appeasing their political puppet-masters than serving the people who pay their wages.

They may not police the streets much any more, but they are determined to police our thoughts, our speech and rummage through our online communications.

What were Sussex Police expecting to uncover by trawling through an MP’s emails? It was a fishing expedition to try to build a case. The intent is not to ‘investigate’ it is to intimidate, pure and simple.

The once-proud and admired British police have been hollowed out by the Guardianistas and converted into a vehicle for bringing politically-motivated prosecutions against anyone deemed to have offended against the new social orthodoxy.

Fall foul of them and it can cost your reputation, your liberty and your job.
A Scottish police chaplain has just been sacked because his opposition to gay marriage, expressed on his own private blog, doesn’t conform to Strathclyde Police’s ‘equality and diversity’ policies.

This was despite the Government promising that no one should be forced out of their job for opposing same-sex weddings.

When Andrew Mitchell was hounded from office on the basis of false, but politically damaging, allegations, the question was asked: if the police are prepared to fit up the Chief Whip, who is safe any more?

After Tim Loughton’s ordeal over trumped-up allegations of ‘racism’, the answer has to be: absolutely no one.
Be afraid, be very afraid.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2288126/When-did-unkempt-racial-insult.html#ixzz2MfYmQHWu
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This cap on bankers’ bonuses is like a dead cat – pure distraction

EU autocrats think that by blaming the City of London, they have an entire continent fooled.

To understand what has happened in Europe in the last week, we must borrow from the rich and fruity vocabulary of Australian political analysis. Let us suppose you are losing an argument. The facts are overwhelmingly against you, and the more people focus on the reality the worse it is for you and your case. Your best bet in these circumstances is to perform a manoeuvre that a great campaigner describes as “throwing a dead cat on the table, mate”.

That is because there is one thing that is absolutely certain about throwing a dead cat on the dining room table – and I don’t mean that people will be outraged, alarmed, disgusted. That is true, but irrelevant. The key point, says my Australian friend, is that everyone will shout “Jeez, mate, there’s a dead cat on the table!”; in other words they will be talking about the dead cat, the thing you want them to talk about, and they will not be talking about the issue that has been causing you so much grief.

That is exactly what Brussels has done with this recent gambit to cap bankers’ bonuses. Look around Europe and you can see the continuing catastrophe of the single currency, an ideological project that most Europarliamentarians and most of the EU establishment continues to support with vengeful fervour.

In Portugal over the weekend, 200,000 people gathered outside the finance ministry to protest against the biggest tax hikes and the biggest cuts to public services in living memory. Young Portuguese are growing up to face a life on the dole. In Brussels the cold autocrats have no answer to Portuguese pain. They cannot solve the problem. They are the problem. So what can they do? They chuck a dead cat on the table, and blame the bankers in London.

In Spain, unemployment has now hit 26 per cent – that is one in four Spaniards who must live with the humiliation of feeling economically unwanted. The Spanish economy has been contracting steadily for seven successive quarters, and Spaniards are now regularly seen rifling through rubbish bins in search of food or bits of metal to sell. There has been nothing like it since the 1930s.

Can Europe do anything to help the Spanish, as a generation is maimed on the Procrustean bed of the euro? Of course they can’t. They can’t admit that the whole concept of the single currency was flawed, or that it was always cruel and mad to expect the Mediterranean countries to share an exchange rate with Germany. That would be too much of a surrender. So they find a convenient distraction, like Stalin blaming the Kulaks for his crazed totalitarian policies, and they bash the bankers in London.

Look at Greece, a country that should be holy to us all as the birthplace of European and Western culture, the home of freedom and democracy, where Phoebus rose and Delos sprung. It is utterly barbaric that Greece should continue to be subject to such treatment, but on it goes. Last week they announced that major drug companies are no longer supplying Greek pharmacy chains with the kind of preparations that most civilised countries take for granted. Pills that deal with arthritis, hepatitis C, hypertension, cholesterol, heart attack – they are all being withheld until the Greek government pays its bills.

The country is being starved of antibiotics, for heaven’s sake. The Red Cross has cut its supply of donated blood, because it hasn’t been paid on time. What is Brussels supposed to tell the Greeks, in their agony? That they must keep taking the medicine? They haven’t got enough blooming medicine to treat everyday diseases. No wonder semi-fascist parties are on the rise in Athens. So what do the MEPs do, when they behold the pain – the physical suffering – being endured by innocent Greeks? They chuck a dead cat on the table, and have a pop at the bankers in London.

Look at Italy, where the biggest winner in last week’s chaotic elections appears to be a stand-up comedian who has lost no time in pointing out that the country’s debt is an unsustainable 127 per cent of GDP (and up from 110 per cent when Mario Monti took over), and that they may have to junk the euro and go back to the lira. In fact, says Beppe Grillo, it may be time to have a referendum on Italian membership of the euro.

A referendum! The very word is one, as we all know, that causes the Eurocrats to choke on their Douwe Egberts and spray the room with fragments of hysterical Speculoos biscuit. Mon dieu, dio mio, Gott in Himmel, they cry. Anything but democracy! What can they say when this idiot savant continues to blurt the truth about the euro and Italy’s inability to deal with its debt? There is nothing to say – nothing to do but to cause a diversion, bash financial services in London, and thank the lord for the 101 uses of a dead cat.

It’s a cunning manoeuvre, of course. It reminds everyone of the undoubted role of arrogant financiers in helping to cause the crash. It focuses public attention on a group that has few defenders, and away from the catastrophic “austerity” policies pursued by the Troika of the Eurobank, the EU commission and the IMF. It causes a predictable hoo-ha. Some people will say that a bonus cap will cost jobs in London. Others will say that the bankers had it coming. Some will point out that financial services contributed £63 billion in tax revenues to the UK last year. Others will say, what the hell, we have been too dependent on finance for too long. Some will say that banking is indispensable to a global economy, and we will simply lose talent to cities outside the EU – Zurich, New York, Singapore. Let them go, the others will snarl, and there rises a general jabber of rage: kick them out! Tax their homes! Take their bonuses away!

And all the while the political classes will be distracted from the real problem – the continuing misery caused by the euro. That is the beauty of the dead cat manoeuvre. But as any campaign strategist will tell you, it won’t work for long.

East Sussex County Council signs up to help inspire young people

A national campaign that seeks to help young people with their future careers is being supported by East Sussex County Council.

The Council has joined the ‘Inspiring the Future' campaign, which means staff from the authority can register with the scheme and volunteer to go into schools to talk to pupils about their jobs.
Early volunteers to the scheme include Chief Executive Becky Shaw, Children's Services Assistant Director Liz Rugg and Business Admin apprentice George Carpenter from Hailsham Children's Centre.

The aim of the initiative is to help students to make informed decisions about their futures and have an insight into the world of work, particular employers and different employment sectors.

The Council is now promoting the scheme to its staff including those who have progressed through the organisation via different routes such as apprenticeships, volunteering and promotion.

County Council Chief Executive Becky Shaw said: “I'm delighted that we've signed up to this initiative and I would urge other local employers to do the same. It's just a minimum of two hours a year of staff time and in doing so you'll be supporting East Sussex schools by providing an insight in to the world of work.

“Businesses can register through www.inspiringfutures.org.uk and we would also encourage all schools in East Sussex to sign up to the website and make links with local companies”.

Business admin apprentice George Carpenter said: “Being an apprentice has been amazing; the team around me has been very supportive and enabled me to develop my skills as well as become more confident. It would be great to share this with school students close to my age, as I feel they can relate to me and also benefit from the apprenticeship programme.”

Classic Boris Johnson as he condemns EU limit on bank bonuses

By James Kirkup, Deputy Political Editor, Daily Telegraph

Boris Johnson has launched a classical attack on the European Union over its plans to cap bankers’ bonuses, invoking the memory of the Roman emperor Diocletian.

 

Rules to limit the rewards would drive well-paid financiers out of the City and harm the economy, Mr Johnson said, insisting that the plans were doomed to failure.

“This is possibly the most deluded measure to come from Europe since Diocletian tried to fix the price of groceries across the Roman Empire,” Mr Johnson said.

The last Roman ruler to persecute Christians, Diocletian brought stability to the empire after the chaotic third century. In 301AD, he passed his edict on prices, an unsuccessful attempt to stop inflation by imposing maximum prices on common goods.

The mayor’s comments put pressure on David Cameron to water down the new EU bonus rules, agreed provisionally in Brussels this week.

Under them, annual bonuses will not be allowed to exceed a banker’s salary, starting next year. Bonuses of twice annual salary will be allowed if shareholders approve them.

Most contentiously the rules are proposed to apply to the staff of European banks who work outside the EU, in financial centres including New York and Singapore.

Supporters of the cap say it will discourage bankers from pursuing the sort of high-risk deals that helped cause the financial crisis. Opponents point out that hedge funds, private equity companies and other financial firms are unaffected.

Mr Johnson said the rules would only harm Europe.

“Brussels cannot control the global market for banking talent. Brussels cannot set pay for bankers around the world,” he said.

“The most this measure can hope to achieve is a boost for Zurich and Singapore and New York at the expense of a struggling EU.” Mr Johnson added: “People will wonder why we stay in the EU if it persists in such transparently self-defeating policies.”

Britain had attempted to block the rules, but was outvoted. Ministers can now only argue about how the cap should be applied.

Mr Cameron said on Thursday that Britain would push for more flexibility in the cap.

Lib-Dems cling on in Eastleigh but Clegg not out of the woods yet - and 'sorry' doesn't really cut it this time!

Daily Express 'David Cameron fails to back Nick Clegg in Lord Rennard sex row'

 

At least five women accusers have reportedly gone to police with “plenty more” said to be speaking to an internal party inquiry.

 

Party leader and Deputy PM Mr Clegg has struggled to stamp his authority on the issue which erupted ahead of yesterday’s Eastleigh by-election, seen as a crucial Tory-Lib Dem contest.

 

Mr Cameron was asked at a conference in Latvia if he had “confidence” in how Mr Clegg had dealt­ with the accusations, which former chief executive Lord ­Rennard strongly denies.

 

The Prime Minister replied: “Obviously these are serious issues and serious matters and they need to be taken seriously. The Liberal Democrats have set up two inquiries into this issue.

 

“I think you have to let those inquiries take place and make sure they get to the bottom of these very important ­allegations.”

 

Mr Cameron’s failure to spell out his backing for the Deputy Prime Minister underlines the danger to Mr Clegg’s party leadership if he cannot resolve the crisis.

 

Oxford University lecturer Alison Smith has contacted a confidential police hotline over Lord Rennard.

 

She claimed yesterday: “I’m not alone. I’d say I’m one of five women who want to give evidence to the police.”

 

She added that “plenty more” women were speaking to the Lib Dems’ own inquiry.

 

Meanwhile former Lib Dem activist Ms Smith warned Labour and the Conservatives to “brace themselves” for complaints, saying she had been contacted by “people in other political parties” making sex pest claims.

 

 

Daily Mail says 'Hypocrisy, lies and a failure of leadership'

 

If the bookmakers were right, by the time you read this the Liberal Democrats will have won the Eastleigh by-election.

But that will not hide the fact that this has been a truly lamentable week for the party’s leader.

From the moment Channel 4 revealed that complaints of sex harassment by young female activists against party chief executive Lord Rennard had been systematically covered up, Nick Clegg’s frantic dissembling about his involvement has been deeply unedifying.

First he told Channel 4 he knew nothing. Then, with exquisitely weasel words, he issued a statement saying he’d heard ‘unspecific and indirect’ rumours.

Subsequently, he admitted knowing of the allegations against Lord Rennard and even ordering an investigation into them – though, incredibly, he didn’t ask what that investigation had uncovered.

Then on Wednesday, after one of his former MPs revealed she told Mr Clegg all about Lord Rennard four years ago, he confessed that the allegations were a factor in the peer’s 2009 resignation and he knew all about them at the time.

So within a week, he went from knowing nothing to knowing virtually everything.

To put it bluntly, Mr Clegg lied and lied again to the British people.

Not that this was clever, calculated mendacity. Indeed the most depressing aspect of this whole affair is the sheer incompetence with which Mr Clegg has handled things – an incompetence matched only by his hypocrisy.

Remember he promised in those TV debates a new kind of politics – open, transparent, honest, morally upright, committed to women’s rights. Now we know the truth.

Regardless of how the LibDems have done in Eastleigh, this sorry saga has raised profound questions about Mr Clegg’s suitability to lead his party and – far more importantly – to be Deputy Prime Minister of this country.

 

I agree with Dan Hannan - the nation needs the Conservatives and UKIP to work together

I've long said that the Conservatives and UKIP should find a way of working together to ensure that not only do we see a strong centre right Government returned in Britain but that many former Conservatives should 'come home'.

 

Since 2010 we have been saddled with the Curse of Clegg and his increasingly colourful clan who ae really now beginnning to show their true colours for any of us not able to see it before. They should not take comfort from retaining Eastleigh yesterday with such a dramatic fall in support, even if clinging to the seat seemed inconceivable with the trust and sleeze revelations that have been exposed in the weeks leading up to polling day.

 

As I and an increasing number of others have said before, those of us with the same beliefs, currently residing in the Conservative and UKIP parties, need to find a way of working together to deliver for Britain and prevent Clegg's Nasty Crew or the Gordon Brown's clones Silliband & Balls from coming back 2015 to send us over the edge.

 

South East MEP, Dan Hannan has this to say on why the Conservatives and UKIP need each other and need to find a way of working together in all of our interests:

 

 

In 1993, Canada’s Conservatives were wiped out. The governing party lost all but two of its 156 MPs and began a lengthy spell in opposition. Defeat on such a scale doesn’t happen for just one reason, of course, but the Tories’ single biggest disadvantage is easily identified: the Right-wing vote was split.

 

The Progressive Conservatives, the established party of Diefenbaker and Mulroney, had been challenged by a younger movement, the Reform Party. Led by Preston Manning, one of the greatest conservative leaders of our age, Reform spilled out from the western prairies, demanding radical decentralisation, tax cuts, a crackdown on crime and an end to multiculturalism. For the next ten years, Progressive Conservative and Reform candidates fought each other in most ridings (as Canadian constituencies are called), with calamitous consequences. The Liberals were left almost unchallenged in the House of Commons. For several years, the Official Opposition was the Bloc Québécois, whose 13.5 per cent of the national vote was enough to give it the second-largest number of parliamentary seats.

 

Only at the end of 2003 did the two Rightist parties accept the electoral arithmetic and merge. Since then, they have enjoyed a more or less unbroken rise. Their leader, the excellent Stephen Harper, became prime minister in 2006, and won an absolute majority in 2011. The new, merged party – today’s Conservative Party – reaches parts of the electorate that the old Progressive Conservatives couldn’t. Canada’s Tories, like Britain’s, had been disadvantaged by being seen as a party for the better off. Reform brought a very different constituency into the fold: rural voters, blue-collar workers, ethnic minorities.

 

You can probably guess where I’m going with this argument. The latest YouGov poll has my party on 32 per cent, and UKIP on 9 per cent. Together, that’s a Conservative government; separately, it’s a Labour government. It’s true, of course, that not every UKIP voter is a former Tory. Then again, the relevant question is not ‘how did they vote before?’ but ‘if UKIP didn’t exist, how would they vote today?’ It seems not unreasonable to assume that the majority would support the most convincingly Eurosceptic party on offer.

 

So let’s ask the question. Are there any circumstances in which UKIP and the Conservatives might combine? UKIP leaders keep saying that they’d gladly fold themselves into the Conservative Party if it became our policy to leave the EU, but such an eventuality seems unlikely, at least in the short term. It’s true that most Conservative voters would withdraw from the EU tomorrow. So would most party members. And so, I suspect, would most Tory MPs in a secret ballot. That, though, is not party policy.

 

Fair enough. David Cameron made his views perfectly clear when he sought the leadership, and was elected with a thumping mandate. He made two commitments to Eurosceptics before he became leader: first, that he would allow individual Conservatives, provided they were not frontbenchers, to campaign against EU membership; second, that he would withdraw his MEPs from the federalist EPP. He has delivered on both commitments. Leaving the EU was never part of the picture.

 

Could there, then, be a Conservative-UKIP alliance while the Tories remain in favour of EU membership? Yes. Full independence is unlikely to be party policy; but an In/Out referendum might well be. And such a referendum ought to be enough. UKIP’s raison d’être is secession. Sure, it has other policies: tax cuts, selection in schools and so forth. But it exists, essentially, to restore British sovereignty. A referendum would take that issue off the agenda whichever way it went. Either Britain would vote to leave, at which point UKIP supporters could award themselves medals and retire with honour; or – which is, alas, a possibility – the country would vote to stay in, in which case UKIP (and I) would have to admit defeat and do something else with our lives. Either way, the door would be open to a Canadian-style merger and a commensurate rise in support. That’s not why the Conservatives should offer a referendum, of course; they should offer one because it’s the right thing to do. In this case, though, doing the right thing would carry a tangible electoral benefit.

 

There will, of course, be opponents on both sides. There always are. Twenty-three years after the Liberal-SDP merger, there is still an irreconcilable Liberal Party, which holds 25 council seats, and even a tiny SDP, with four councillors in East Yorkshire. Some UKIP supporters will resent the idea of losing their identity just when things seem to be taking off. Some Tories – especially the remaining Europhiles – will baulk at the idea of admitting so many ‘populists’. There may even be a few who are foolish enough to think that they can recapture the UKIP vote by making strongly anti-Brussels noises in the run-up to the next election. (Trust me, my friends, that one won’t wash.)

 

At present, the anti-Brussels vote is fragmented, with the result that a Eurosceptic nation keeps returning Euro-enthusiast majorities. Every activist who leaves the Conservatives for UKIP makes the Tories less Eurosceptic without taking his energies to an alternative party of government. That is neither in the Conservative Party’s interests nor, indeed, in the interests of anyone who wants an independent Britain. All of which, in any case, ought really to be beside the point. Holding a referendum is right in principle.