Mary Reid

I did it! I completed the Prize Super Sudoku in today's Independent.  These 16x16 grids take so long to finish, so I usually content myself with doing the advanced 9x9 puzzles.

I now feel very guilty as I'd promised myself that I would get on with some writing today, and now I've wasted a couple of hours on Sudoku.  The least I can do is to enter the competition and hope to win a DAB radio/CD player.  Oddly enough, that's just what I gave Ian for Christmas.

Nigel Roberts, a fellow Lib Dem web designer, has won a remarkable victory by being awarded damages for unwanted spam.

Although the EU passed the directive on privacy and telecommunications over three years ago, Nigel is the first person to take a company successfully to court over unwanted junk e-mail. He only claimed a token £270 damages from Media Logistics UK so that he could pursue it through the small claims court.

Perhaps it should inspire us all to do the same. I once made a claim through the small claims court and it really is a straightforward process and requires no legal expertise. The real problem, of course, is identifying the source of the spam.

Yes, I had a lovely Christmas and I thoroughly enjoyed doing some 'proper' cooking for various family members over the four days.  So it made my eating experiences yesterday even more excruciating.

We were traveling down to Wales to take my mother and aunt back home.  They are both in their eighties and have mobility problems - that is my only excuse for going into the Little Chef at the Leigh Delamere service station on the M4.  At least we could sit on relatively comfortable chairs and have waiter service.

It began when the waiter told us that they had no cappucino, latte or hot chocolate because the machine had broken down. 

Ian and my aunt ordered soup and were proudly told that it was unadulterated Heinz.  When it arrived the soup was luke warm, but the rolls were, oddly, too hot to handle.

I ordered a jacket potato with chicken tikka and my mother ordered one with chilli con carne.  After a long wait we were told that the tikka and chilli were off because they hadn't defrosted.  Ditto for the lasagne.  But we could have baked beans.....(Heinz, no doubt)

The place filled up and the two waiters could not cope, so perhaps we shouldn't have ordered the pancakes.  When my aunt's arrived the waiter told her that the lemon was off (!) and would she like maple syrup instead.  We had to ask for spoons.

My mother's coffee (sadly not cappucino, which she loves) was bitter and black.  She had to ask for milk.

We left after an hour and a half, having not received a single item that we actually wanted, nor anything that could be remotely described as good food. The only compensation was that we weren't charged for our desserts because we had to wait for so long.

Has anyone ever had a good experience in Little Chef? I certainly don't blame the waiters who were having to take the rap for bad management and poor products.

But surely there is a demand for decent food at service stations?  The only alternatives were Burger King or self service chips-with-everything. I'm not thinking about gourmet restaurants - just good honest pub grub or perhaps a pizza-'n-pasta chain. Why has no-one cracked this yet?

I haven't been invited to a wedding myself, but I send my best wishes to all those couples celebrating their civil partnerships in Kingston today.

I've been very sympathetic to gay rights for many years, dating back to the seventies when a number of my colleagues and students went through the difficult process of 'coming out'.  It was only a few years earlier that men (never woman, because Queen Victoria didn't think it was possible) could be prosecuted for private homosexual acts. 

It was an uneasy time, not helped by the disapproving attitudes of many who shared my faith.  But the context in which I explored these issues was the Church of England college where I taught, so we were together able to develop a theology that recognised the differences between people and celebrated love in all its forms.

Although the church as a whole still has ambivalent attitudes towards gays and lesbians, things have moved on.  Last year I was privileged to be invited to the installation of Dr Jeffrey John as Dean of St Albans.  His name hit the headlines when he was nominated as Bishop of Reading, and he subsequently withdraw after his appointment threatened to split the worldwide Anglican communion.  The cathedral at St Albans was packed, and I have never seen so many clergy in one building, all there to express their support.

On the issue of civil partnerships the church has been remarkably liberal.  By the simple expedient of avoiding the term 'marriage', the legislation was passed with little fuss, and I'm proud that the UK has taken this step.

I can't get along myself but you may like to sing carols in Parliament Square on Wednesday evening.  The invitation reads:

"You are cordially invited to a public carol service in Parliament Square at 6pm on Wednesday the 21st of December 2005.

This inclusive service will contain both Christian and secular verse, and is expected to last no more than an hour.

Candles and song sheets will be made available, with donations going to Medical Aid for Iraqi Children."

It goes on..

"Please note that if you attend this carol service, it will classify as a spontaneous demonstration (of faith, hope, joy and/or religious tolerance) and there is a possibility that you will be cautioned or arrested under Section 132 of the Serious and Organised Crimes and Police Act 2005."

This despicable ruling outlaws any public demonstration within about half a mile of Parliament.  It was designed to put a stop to Brian Haw's four year protest on Parliament Square, although that failed in the courts.  But it was recently used to convict Maya Evans for reading out the names of soldiers killed in Iraq.

Thanks to Cllr Kevin Davis for this link

I was recently interviewed by a student journalist who asked me what I thought about those councils who had removed the word 'Christmas' from the seasonal lights and decorations, and used new terms like 'winterval'.

My comment was that in Kingston we celebrate diversity, both cultural and religious.  This means that we encourage, respect and promote the things that make us distinct, rather than fall back on a lowest common denominator. So of course we celebrate Christmas, along with the other great festivals of faith.

I've just returned from the children's nativity service at St Paul's, Hook.  It was the usual mix of tea-towel and tinsel costumes, enthusiastic singing and the odd accident as a wise man fell off the platform.  But then came a pure moment when the children gathered round the central communion table and brought us the rolls of bread to share.

If you are looking for a church service this Christmas, then the churches in Surbiton, Tolworth, Hook and Chessington have created a website - www.celebratechristmas.co.uk

The picture of a dove, the symbol of peace, is from a window in the beautiful church in Hammerfest, way above the Arctic Circle in Norway, which we visited a couple of years ago.

Oh dear, poor Dave. First he thinks he can lure Lib Dems to the Conservative party by claiming he supports our policies after all.  Then his team do not have the nouse to register all the libdems4cameron variants.

Have fun looking at these:

www.libdems4cameron.co.uk

www.libdems4cameron.me.uk

www.libdems4cameron.net

www.cameron4libdems.com

As his real site says: "Why not join a party that believes in green politics, social justice and localism?"  Indeed, why not? And whilst you are at it, join a party that has always believed in those things, and has campaigned extensively on the issues for many years.

"Since I first read - I mean, wrote - the White Paper...": Ruth Kelly, today, giving the game away about who really authored the Schools White Paper.

The Local Government Association had invited her to meet lead members (like me) and Directors of Children's Services.  It was not going to be easy.  The very visible challenge this week by her predecessor, Estelle Morris, is backed by over 70 Labour backbenchers.  But there has also been a less visible, but even more powerful, challenge from local government Labour politicians, backed by the Lib Dems and even many Conservatives.

And in the battle between Tony Blair and the Kelly/Prescott axis, she has clearly gained ground.  Trust schools, we heard, are no longer going to be the 'independent state schools' that Blair favoured, but instead are going to be simply foundation schools by another name. 

She also claimed that the planning of school provision would remain entirely in the hands of local councils, not under the influence of businesses or parents, as had been suggested. 

Many people at the meeting were worried about what would happen if all schools set their own admissions policies. It could lead to a complete free-for-all, with schools finding ways of 'selecting' pupils, and the losers would, of course, be the most disadvantaged.

In reply, she said she expected local authorities to appeal to the Adjudicator if they believed that a school's admissions arrangements were unfair.

In Kingston half our secondary schools set their own admissions criteria already and I have had real concerns about the fairness of some of them, but we haven't taken the step of going to the Adjudicator yet - perhaps we should be more bullish and do so.

Apparently this is part of the legislation for the Australian Taxation Office:

For the purpose of making a declaration under this Subdivision, the Commissioner may:

a) treat a particular event that actually happened as not having happened; and

b) treat a particular event that did not actually happen as having happened and, if appropriate, treat the event as:

 i) having happened at a particular time; and
ii) having involved particular action by a particular entity; and

c) treat a particular event that actually happened as:

i) having happened at a time different from the time it actually happened; or

ii) having involved particular action by a particular entity (whether or not the event actually involved any action by that entity).

 

This was the winner of the Plain English Golden Bull Awards.

It's official - Kingston's Education and Children's Social Care Services are amongst the very best in the country! 

Whilst I was off blog we heard that they had been awarded four grade 4's (the top grade) by the inspectors.  Only three other councils in the country matched that.

So, it's congratulations to all the staff for a magnificent result.

Although Kingston had top grades in the past, we were not sure how it would fare under the new system. Assessment is now based on the five outcomes for children: being healthy, staying safe, enjoying and achieving, making a positive contribution, achieving economic well-being.  You can download a pdf of this Annual Performance Assessment from the DfES site.

This year it was important that Kingston could show that it was working closely with its community partners - health, police etc.  Next year we will together be subjected, for the first time, to one massive joint inspection of services for children and young people.  This will replace about a dozen existing inspections.

Welcome to my new look blog!  ReadMyDay has been migrating to a new platform, hence the enforced silence for a while.

There are still a few things that need tweaking, but it has many more features than the old one. 

This time I'm being joined by a number of fellow councillors from Kingston, from all three party groups.  I'll introduce them when they have got their blogs underway.

If you are a councillor, or senior local government officer, and would like to blog then you can find out more about our ReadMyDay project..