Roger Gambba-Jones

I came across another minor, but worrying, annoying, frustrating - I'm not sure which, probably a mixture of all - example of the PC disease whilst reading a newspaper item about education. 

Two maths questions, supposedly designed to challenge the maths skills of our secondary school children, were included.  Quite apart from the extraordinary simplicity of one question, which involved needing to buy 35 items sold in batches of 8 the question asked, (using a calculator) how many batches would Siad need to buy?

Quite apart from needing to use a calculator to work out how 8's there are in 35, the use of a non-English name, in not just in the first question but the other one ass well, is what rattled my cage. 

Yes, I know that people will immediately say this is all about our multi-cultural society and is done to demonstrate our commitment to equality and diversity, but I afraid all it demonstrates to me is the hold the politically correct brigade have over everything 'public' that happens in the country.  Yes. it is of course the government's role to take the lead in keeping the country in one piece and making sure that 60 million people, from 123+ different nationalities live in some sort of harmony, is crucial to achieving that goal.  However, force feeding it to us in the way they do, just winds people up  - well it winds me up!     

I wonder how many of our European cousins bend over backwards in this way?   Apparently, the French require you to pay for any translation services required and the Spanish expect you to bring along a Spanish speaker if you don't speak the lingo.  Meanwhile, in this country we spend millions of the taxpayer's pounds on translation services for police suspects and for benefit claimants, I wonder which country has got it right?  Please don't bother sending me a postcard with your answer on, my question was rhetorical - I already know the answer!

The newly elected mayor of Doncaster, Peter Davies, whilst not flavour of the month with some in his home town, appears to have struck a chord with the wider public.

His stand against political correctness and in particular the cost of translation services, whilst upsetting the Political Correction Police (PCP) has been a clarion call to the silent majority.

He will however need to steer a steady course between being outspoken and being branded a racist.  The PCP only need the slightest of excuses to wave the racist flag as a means of scaring off those who would otherwise offer their support.

The other stick the government likes to use to punish non-conformists is the local government funding system.   Restricting the flow of government controlled cash in to Doncaster, in order to punish the mayor for not playing the game by their rules, could ultimately see him driven from office for all the wrong reasons.

If you don't believe me, just read any one of the mountain of audit reports that have been produced by the inspection system this government loves so much. 

Equality and diversity is a great catch all and a perfect cover for the PC brigade to promote their version of the world as they wish it to be.  The CPA inspectors are of course only the mouth pieces for the ministers who hide away in the bowels of Whitehall and issue these PC dictates to every public body within their reach. 

Until the PCP are culled and consigned to history as yet another failed piece of central government interference, they remain a danger to those who would seek to bring some good old fashioned common sense to the way the taxpayer's money is spent.

Crickey (as Billy Bunter used to say - remember him?) it's another non-published (so far) letter to the press!

As a local politician I have become used to suffering the displeasure of others when I say something they don't agree with - it goes with the territory.

However, I have just been accused, in a letter to the Chairman of South Holland District Council, of calling our Police Community Support Officers ‘plastics'.  These remarks were supposedly made during a presentation at the recent Spalding BIDS meeting - a meeting neither I, nor my accuser attended! 

The reason I'm seeking to publicising this matter in this way, is because the person who made this unfounded accusation, is in a senior position in his organisation and will undoubtedly have voiced his opinions to others, especially as he was acting on second hand information.

I am therefore seeking the assistance of this newspaper to clear my name with anybody who may have had the contents of this letter and in particular this slanderous allegation repeated to them. 

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to make it clear that I fully support the community work of our PCSO's. I have however expressed my concerns about the way they are sometimes deployed.  I would always seek to see them working with and in their communities at all times and not being used to direct traffic or guard the entrance to a crime scene.

The text below has been submitted to the local newpaper in letter form in order to correct some of the mis-information recently published and also repeatedby other letter writers.  The local paper has yet to publish it and on the assumption that, for reasons best known to themselves, they are choosing not to, I'm publishing it here. 

Some readers (of the newspaper) have been justifiably concerned about the possible loss of 25 jobs at the ‘new' Wimpey restaurant in market Place Spalding.  However, the claim that these jobs are under threat because of the planning department's refusal of its new signage is at best, disingenuous.

As most readers will recall, the new Wimpey will be in the same place as the old one. A full planning permission, once implemented, stays with the land or property in perpetuity. 

Therefore, the new owner could, without any involvement of the SHDC planning department, have opened the new restaurant, complete with the previously approved Wimpey sign and started employing these 25 people on the day he or she leased the premises.

Even if the new owner wanted a different Wimpey sign, there was still nothing stopping them from opening for business immediately and then discussing their signage requirements with SHDC in the meantime.

Incidentally, unlike the Wimpey sign, the bank sign was acceptable because it was an update of that company's standard sign, as seen in most high streets.  Unlike a city such as Chester, SHDC doesn't have a policy requiring non-standard (more discrete) shop signage in conservation areas. 

Refusal of that sign would no doubt of been appealed and that appeal would probably have been upheld, thereby wasting taxpayer's money - also something some readers have expressed their concerns about.

Due to engineer work, a flick test of the flood sirens at the sites below will be carried out on the afternoon of Thursday 2 July 2009:

1. Shoebridge Engineering Ltd, Cradge Bank, Spalding
2. Monks House County Primary School, Pennygate, Spalding
3. Customs House, Sutton Bridge

After this date if the sirens are sounded it will indicate that there is the possibility of flooding and the public should listen to local radio for further information and advice.

The people of Iran, for whatever reasons, have shown great bravery in expressing their outrage at the results of their recent presidential election. 

Even if the winner did get the most votes, there is a clearly a belief that he did not do so by a 50% margin and that in fiddling the figures to make it look like a landslide victory he has damaged his democratic legitimacy.

Closer to home and because of the continued arrogance of our MPs, perhaps the people of England should be taking to the streets like those brave soles in Iran.

Despite every dirty fiddle and 'flipping' secret being exposed in black and white by the Daily Telegraph, these greedy and self serving individuals have allowed heavily censored records to be published on the premise that the blacked out details were not relevant.

If it were not such a serious issue, it would almost be your classic Whitehall farce. 

However, the fact that these individuals continue to defend their position, by claiming that they have acted within the rules, the rules they wrote, should be a cause of great concern to every person in this country - whatever their political persuasion.

No matter what individual MPs say and no matter what expenses claims they have or have not made, the fact remains that every single one of them supported the expenses system - if only by their inaction.  This makes their characters suspect and therefore their right to be our elected representatives, void.  Recall them all to Parliament now (at their own expense) dissolve it (preferably in acid) and let's have an election.  

Not being capable of saying sorry when you've got it wrong is one thing.  Doggedly defending the indefensible, against a veritable tsunami of public outrage, is something else altogether.

The senior civil servants who run the expenses office must also be called in to question, as most right minded people should have become increasingly outraged by the ever increasing catalogue of abuses of this disgraceful system.  Echoes of ‘I was only following orders' me thinks.  Even if the whistleblower got paid for the information he or she leaked to the Telegraph, they deserve a medal! 

Evil triumphs when good men do nothing - how true these words are in this case.

Gordon Brown should receive an award for being the most innovative pick pocket of the new millennium.  He has actually invented yet another way of taking £6 a year out of pockets of those most easily targeted (those of us with a landline) and making it sound like he's doing us a favour.

Apparently by 2012 he wants us all to have high speed broadband - whether we want it or not!  Some underling appears to have convinced that a majority of ordinary people consider the Internet to be as important to them as running water!!!!!!!!!!!

Quite apart from the fact that this is complete and utter cobblers, if my water ran at the equivalent of 2Mbps, Anglian Water would be getting a major whinge from me!

If you Google Internet speeds around the world, you could end up at a BBC website with info from 2007, so not exactly up to the minute, but that makes it even more striking.  Back in 2007 more than a few of our nearest and dearest European neighbours were providing speeds far in excessive of a pathetic 2Mbps.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7098992.stm

Digital capital of the world - wake up Gordon, you could only be more out of date if you were claiming that this country's got the best banks in the world!!!!

Anyway, IF this new piece of spin by a government in a permanent spin all of its own, were ever to see the light of day, they should at least act quickly to grasp the opportunity presented by the current paralysis in the house building industry.

There are thousands of residential building site around the country waiting for the banks to release their greedy grasp on the thing that makes the world go around - money.  There is also no doubt many thousands of residential planning applications waiting in the wings for the same reason.  Would it not make sense to introduce a bit of planning law that required all houses to have a fibre optic connection to a neighbourhood connection point, that could eventually be plugged in to by a provider?

Not only would this reduce the number of £6's (adjusted for inflation no doubt) that Gordon needs to pick my pocket for, it would also reduce significantly the cost and disruption caused by cable companies digging up the roads, footpaths and front gardens of these yet to be built houses.  Finally, it will also reduce the huge number of sub-standard patch up jobs that the utility companys are so good at and that end up costing local taxpayers a small fortune when the local council ends up doing the job properly.   

I'm not a great lover of the inspect it, measure it, mark it, score it, culture that has become such a part of government in this country, especially when a previous head of OFSTED recently went on the record as saying that the school inspection process is a complete waste of time and money.

Add to this the tragic events in Haringey when their Childrens Services inspection was assessed as good, whilst one of the children they were supposed to protecting was being abused in a way that eventually lead to his death.

All that said, South Holland District Council has just been awarded an Excellent score under the external inspection system known as CPA, Comprehensive Performance Assessment. 

As an insider, I can confirm that whilst not everything we do is perfect by any means, the effort we put in to trying to make it so, is second to none.  We are a small council, with very limited uncommitted money to spend and an ever increasing amount of commitments to spend it on. 

Whilst we cannot claim the same level of high profile headline grabbing projects as some of the big boys in local goverment, what we can claim is that we try to do the very best we can with what we have and we appear to be able do that better than many of our peers.  Under such circumstances, this Excellent score is a tribute to the amount of effort that is put in by all concerned and in particular to the staff who make it all happen day after day.  

When my kids were at school and would bring home the dreaded school report, I always used to tell them that, as long as it had an A in the effort column, I wouldn't be disappointed by the scores in the other columns.    

A previous leader of SHDC who is now a big cheese on the county council used to say of the relationship between officers and members, "We can't do it without them and they shouldn't do it with us".    

Andrew Lansley very nearly did the impossible the other day (for a politician it would seem) he made a straightforward statement without any spin on it.  Telling everybody that future government spending would need to be cut by 10% across the board should have been blindingly obvious given the miserable state of the finances. 

Yet Labour, with their standard issue head in the sand approach, immediately started whinnying on about how this was the Tory's revealing their true intentions and that voting for Labour next time was the only way to ensure the status quo.

The only failing in Andy's statement was the combination of the populist and the politically correct.  Populist because of his claim that the sacred cow of the NHS would not be affected - even though most people agree that there are many millions of pounds to be saved by culling many of the faceless managers, box tickers and bean counters it employs. 

His claim that overseas aid was safe was both surprising and extremely difficult to understand.  One can only assume that this is the big picture stuff we little people don't understand and something the adults in Westminster do for our own good - or is it that taking money away from foreigners is just not PC these days? 

I understand that hundreds of millions of our £s go to India every year.  Yet this is a country that has developed its own nuclear weapons, fights regular wars with its neighbour and has a space programme.  It can't be right that they are effectively using our money to do these things can it? 

Add to that the number of countries that receive out money and are run by corrupt leaders, who feather their own nests at the expense of their taxpayers - whoops I slipped back to Westminster without realising it! - and you have to question the soundness of continuing to send money abroad when, at the present time, the needs of our own people seem to be so much greater.