Mary Reid

The Rose Theatre celebrated its first birthday two weeks ago, and I'm afraid I forgot to upload the pictures from my camera and blog about it.

Jerry Hall has supported the project for years - I remember when she contributed some Stones memorabilia for an auction that raised £50,000 for the Friends of Kingston Theatre in one night.

She has now agreed to become the Patron of the Friends, so cut the cake for us.

The reception in the Culture Café, was followed by dinner at Frère Jacques, who have been keen sponsors of the theatre for some time now.

It was a very enjoyable evening and I hope it helped to raise some more funds for the Friends.

I've just been sent a list of all the activities in February at the Hook and Chessington Library (Hook Centre) - and pretty impressive it is too.

If you haven't done so yet, do visit the new café at the centre.

I woke up this morning to the voice of Conservative MP Edward Leigh, who was ranting about levels of literacy and numeracy in the UK, but clearly didn't know what functionally literate and numerate meant. He also demonstrated that he didn't know the difference between Mathematics and numeracy.

I started arguing loudly with the radio (to complaints from Ian), but that seemed a rather fruitless activity, hence this blog.

A person is functionally literate if they can read well enough to function within our society. This is generally taken as a reading age of around 9 years, which is the standard of reading required to read The Sun. 

Similarly, a functionally numerate person can calculate bills, understand percentage increases and generally do basic arithmetic.

Basic skills is the term more commonly used to describe functional literacy and numeracy.

The problem is that people confuse basic skills with passes at GCSE, or worse still, good passes at GCSE.

Edward Leigh  - he who made sure I started the day in a bad mood - is the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, which found that

... in 2007 51,000 pupils left school without a GCSE of at least D-G in maths and 39,000 left without this in English.

Now bare passes at GCSE could be taken as a measure of basic skills, but failure to gain the certificates does not necessarily mean that a young person is illiterate or non-numerate. Any secondary school teacher knows that young people 'fail' to gain GCSEs for all sorts of reasons - mainly because they have been going through crises in their lives - and that needs to be factored into the raw figures before assuming that they are lacking in skills.

But what really bothered me was that Edward Leigh referred to GOOD passes at GCSE in English and Mathematics, that is, grade C and above. He implied that someone needed to achieve at that level in order to be considered functionally literate or numerate.

He was quite wrong. Passes at Grade C and above mark achievements which are way beyond the basic skills level.

He also equated Mathematics with numeracy. Anyone who studied for O Level or higher level GCSE Maths between the ages of 14 and 16 will remember algebra, geometry and trigonometry, whereas numeracy is purely concerned with arithmetic.

Edward Leigh finally linked together the Government target of 95% adult literacy and numeracy by 2020, with the percentage of good passes at GCSE achieved by 16 year olds.

It is shocking that the Chair of a Committee should be so muddled about the basic distinctions drawn in the report that he commissioned, then blame teachers (the usual scapegoats) for any inaccurate conclusions that he draws.

The problem is that this incompetence will detract from the important issues which were unearthed by the research. For example, the report found that only one in five offenders with poor basic skills had enrolled in appropriate courses. Clearly criminals who cannot read have little hope of integrating back into society when they leave prison, however good their intentions.

Yet, it is the same Conservatives who see prisons as places of punishment, not of rehabilitation. Providing education is sadly perceived as being soft on criminals, rather than as of benefit to society as a whole.

There's been a bit of a fuss in the national media about items sent for recycling which don't actually get recycled.  So I've been finding out what happens in Kingston with the things that are collected each week for recycling.

Recycled materials are sold on to specialist recycling companies, and the high costs of doing the collection are partially offset by the proceeds from these sales.

It seems the price councils can get for materials has changed. Mixed materials, that is those that have to be sorted manually after they are collected from homes, have dropped in value, because of the costs involved in separating them. On the other hand, materials that have been sorted properly have become more valuable.

Fortunately, in Kingston householders are asked to sort their recycling before they put it out, so the value has not dropped. Most of the scare stories have been about mixed collections.

Just a tiny proportion of materials collected in Kingston are unsorted and I expect some of these end up in landfill. However the vast majority is considered high quality recycling.

Some Councils have been stockpiling recyclables, mainly where they are mixed. Kingston has no stockpiles at all.

People sometimes ask why Kingston doesn't collect other materials at present, such as plastic containers. At the moment there is no recycling market for a number of materials, even though they may technically be capable of being recycled.   Don't try adding other types of plastics to your plastic bottles - they will be treated as a contaminated (ie mixed) load.

I just want to report one simple, but rather astonishing fact.

Since 1994 road casualties in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames have dropped by 60%.

This is the best level of reduction in the whole of London.

How has Kingston done that in the face of increased car usage? Much credit has to be given to James Parker, the Borough's Road Safety and Travel Awareness. He is one of those inspirational figures who is not only eager to innovate but who also manages to draw an enthusiastic team around him.

Because of him Kingston introduced the first 20mph zone in London. These have now been set up around almost all the schools in the borough, as well as many other roads. In fact, at present 37% of residential roads have a 20mph limit, and this figure is rising.

Kingston has also installed those smiley face signs, which can be moved around to speeding hotspots. School zigzag markings are now mandatory.

Sadly, the police do not enforce 20mph zones, but for me that is a fairly marginal problem. Their main value is educational, creating a culture in which road safety is a social norm. Of course, there will always be drivers who act stupidly, either from incompetence or bravado, but the aim is to ensure that the majority of drivers respect the needs of residents. Public education programmes do take a long time to have effect, but they do work - think about the drink driving and smoking campaigns, which have both radically changed behaviours.

Kingston has demonstrated that a local campaign about safe driving really does bring about change.

Stand up to hatred - that is the theme this year for Holocaust Memorial Day. 

I must admit that I find hatred difficult to understand. Not the kind of hatred that arises out of rage and anger in a relationship - that is something we can all empathise with. No, the hatred I just don't get, is hatred for people because of their group identity.

Most of us can imagine ourselves reacting to an unknown group with curiosity, anxiety, even fear - but not hatred.

The problem is that because we don't really believe it can happen, we ignore the signs when it is.

This was the clear message that come over to me at the event today in the Guildhall in Kingston. A short act of memorial was followed by three very different but powerful talks.

The first was from Philip Spencer who teaches courses on the Holocaust and the Politics of Mass murder at Kingston University. He reminded us that before every genocide of the last century, intentions had been clearly articulated, but people had assumed that it was all rhetoric and that actions would be tempered by pragmatism.

Most of us take up moral positions based on a recognition of the humanity of us all, and the value of being good to each other. This can easily blind us to those whose philosophy is fundamentally different.

We have to acknowledge the awful truth that some political and ethical stances really are based on hatred of particular groups, whether defined by ethnicity, religion, class, sexuality or any other factor.

We must be ready to resist hate-based ideologies, at the stage when they are first expressed, and not wait until the proponents have gained the power to put them into action.

Much to think about, especially in relation to the growing visibility of the BNP.

One of the statements used today was this:

Acts of hatred always involve making a choice.

We choose
to attack,
to abuse,
to exclude,
to stand back and do nothing

- or we choose
to resist,
to respect,
to protect.

Some more gloomy crime figures today, but also reasons to be cheerful. 

Last month I was really pleased that crime had dropped very substantially in Chessington North and Hook. And it seems this is matched across the Borough.

Kingston is, according to the Metropolitan Police, the safest borough in London. And it's not just a matter of the crime figures rising here more slowly than elsewhere, because crime in the borough has actually fallen.

You have to remember the context for this - the centre of Kingston has the biggest retail turnover in Greater London outside the West End. And we have a very lively club scene at night.

Kingston gets half a million visitors a week in the peak season, though I'm not sure how that figure held up this past Christmas.  500,000 is three times the population of the borough, so you would think this would put a huge strain on policing resources, given that the local police receive no additional funding in recognition of the pressures.

In spite of that, thefts in the town centre went down by 24%. That's massive.

You can check out a detailed breakdown of crime figures in London on the Met's crime maps.

For the last couple of years the Labour Government has been trying to hide information about MPs from the public. 

They want MPs to be exempted from the Freedom of Information Act, which would mean that we, the citizens who pay them, would not be able to see how their large allowances were being spent.

The original argument was that it was necessary in order to keep MPs casework confidential, but as I've argued before, the Data Protection Act already protects personal data, so this was a red herring.

Since then there have been a number of high profile cases about the misuse of MPs expenses. Remember Derek Conway, who 'employed' his student son, while the son was living at the other end of the country?

Then later the courts got involved and ruled that expenses spent on second homes should be made public.

Today the Government was trying once more to hide MPs expenses by making them specifically exempt from FOI - but caved in when the Comservatives and Liberal Democrats declared their opposition, and it became clear that a number of Labour MPs opposed it too.

Behind the scenes there had been a very active web based protest in the last week led by MySociety and Unlock Democracy (two organisations that I support and have worked with) which undoubtedly had a big impact.  As Tom says:

This is a huge victory not just for transparency, it's a bellwether for a change in the way politics works. There's no such thing as a good day to bury bad news any more, the Internet has seen to that.

Power - and information - to the people, indeed.

Chessington Community College already has some magnificent new buildings and sports areas, with more being built.  And they take the title 'community college' seriously so this is a plug for some of the new facilities that are now available to everyone who might like to use them.

You can now hire the outdoor floodlit courts, both hard and astroturf, which between them can cater five-a-side and full-team football, tennis, netball, basketball. It seems they are offering special introductory rates.

These are in addition to the large indoor sports hall, fully equipped gym, indoor climbing wall, licensed bar and meeting rooms. Chessington Rocks (great name!) is the biggest indoor climbing wall in the South East. There are loads of clubs and courses already using the indoor facilities.

Football coaching is being offered on the astroturf pitches to 4-14 year olds by AFC Wimbledon for only £5 per session. These run on Friday evenings and Saturday mornings.

The contact for Chessington Sports Centre (at Chessington Community College) is 0208 974 2277.

The news about the third runway for Heathrow could not be worse. I can't begin to explain how angry I am about this, so what follows may be rather incoherent.

This decision totally undermines any leadership that the UK was trying to give the world over climate change. How can we now urge the US to be more responsible over Kyoto and the rest if we take a step like this?

The 'sweetener', in the form of a new rail link from St Pancras to Scotland via Heathrow and Birmingham, is to be welcomed in itself, but it should not be dependent on a new runway.

Of course, we need more rail links if we are to begin to reduce our carbon footprint. But installing one at the same time as increasing air movements by 50% reminds me of those people who buy carbon offsets to assuage their guilt about flying on holiday.

Geoff Hoon said today that leaving the capacity at Heathrow at current levels would 'damage the economy'. Pardon?

There is much local interest in this. As it happens we have very little low flying over the Chessington area, although in the last year or so we have all noticed that more planes are circling as they stack above us. North Kingston already suffers from noise and pollution under the approach. With the new runway I'm sure we'll all experience much more of this.

Susan Kramer MP, whose Richmond Park constituents are already greatly aware of their proximity to Heathrow, is leading the Lib Dem campaign against the third runway. And the campaign is not over yet by any means.

A couple of days ago you will have seen Alistair McGowan fronting Greenpeace's latest protest. They have bought a plot of land, one acre in size, right in the middle of the planning area for the new runway.  They are now in the process of sharing the title between thousands of people as beneficial owners. If the Government does invoke compulsory purchase they will have to deal with everyone, not just the title owners. Susan was one of the first to be signed up.

I signed up too on Tuesday, and so can you on the Airplot (geddit?) site.

William Stone died at the weekend at the amazing age of 108. He was one of the last four surviving servicemen who had served in both World Wars, and you may have seen the him, with two others, laying wreaths at the Cenotaph last year.

A couple of years ago I spent a very cheerful time with him, travelling on one of the Dunkirk little boats up the Thames.

Here he is. on the left, with some other veterans. He thoroughly enjoyed the day, needed little assistance to get around, and was as bright as a button. He told me some of the stories of his time on active service on HMS Hood, and particularly of the runs at Dunkirk during the Second World War.

It was a privilege to meet him.

Susan Kramer MP has been leading the Lib Dem's campaign against the  expansion of Heathrow Airport.  Her constitiuency of Richmond Park includes all the parts of the borough north of the Kingston/New Malden railway line, and she has the full support of her Lib Dem colleagues nearby.

So it is pleasing to hear that she has decided to focus all her energies on this very important environmental campaign.  In the Shadow Cabinet mini-reshuffle today she announces that she has chosen to leave the Shadow Cabinet to concentrate on this, and she clearly wasn't pushed as she was doing a good job before on families.

Edward Davey remains as the party's Shadow Foreign Secretary.

One move that really interests me is the new role for Lynne Featherstone. She is going to chair the party's New Technology Board. As it happens, her website was one of the first I designed for the party, when she was still a councillor in Haringey. The site is ripe for redesign at the moment but I was quite pleased with it at the time. And it set her off exploring the potential of the Web for campaigning, which in turn led her to produce one of the best political blogs around.

How bizarre!

I've just checked my webstats and find that in the last couple of days this entry has been visited 934 times.

I wrote it back in August 2007, and it caused some discussion at the time, but I can't think why it has suddenly attracted attention again. Can anyone explain why?

Update - Friday

And still they come... nearly 2000 visits to that page in the last four days. Nothing else in my webstats indicates where they are coming from.

 Last month I urged you all to vote for King Edward's in the 'Help a London Park' scheme, which will give grants of £400,000 each to ten parks in Greater London.

For some reason they have renamed King Edward's Recreation Ground as King Edward's Park, but it's the same place, on Hook Road just south of the A3.

This is the only park shortlisted in the borough, so please vote for it, even if you live some way away. 

Funding for this park will ease the pressure on the budgets for other parks, so we should all benefit.

Voting is open until 30th January, so please do your duty if you haven't done so already.

I've just realised that you can vote if you live or work in Greater London, or even if you are a visitor to London, provided you give a London postcode! Hmm...

There doesn't seem to be any barrier to children voting, and indeed it seems quite right that they should want to support improved facilities in a local park as much as their parents.

Swallow Park is Kingston's official traveller site. It lies alongside the A3, at the far end of Tolworth Girls' School playing fields.

Just before Christmas we heard the good news that the Government had agreed to the bid for £1.9million to completely refurbish the site. It has not met current standards for some time. The new plans provide two further pitches to relieve the overcrowding These will be located on the patch of land to the front, which has not been used much except for fly-tipping. There will also be a new wall to the front, matching the ones nearby, to act as a sound and pollution barrier.

Travellers are among the most deprived communities in the UK. But, as well as meeting their needs, it is important that Kingston provides adequate pitches; if it doesn't then the law will uphold the right of other travellers to stay on land where they do not have planning permission.

This has been part of the issue with the unlawful site in Clayton Road (just beyond the Nursery) - the courts may not uphold an enforcement order against them if the borough does not provide sufficient lawful pitches elsewhere.

The Swallow Park residents have been involved in drawing up the plans to meet their needs, so they are happy with them. The Council has kept the the residents living in the roads near to Swallow Park informed about the proposals. They held a public meeting last year to discuss the plans with them. Only one couple turned up, and they were very positive about what they saw.

So I was rather puzzled by the report on the BBC this morning. It was very brief, but it suggested that residents and campaigners were unhappy about the funding. The report did not explain why they were not pleased, and unfortunately I can't find the item on the BBC website.

My guess is that there is a general annoyance, which I share, that councils are not given any funding to improve existing social housing, let along to build more houses. The Government will only provide funding for housing through housing associations, not local councils. So where the council tenants (as in Kingston) have opted to stay with the council, rather than have their homes transferred to a housing association, they are penalised by the Government.

However, that is no reason not to be grateful that some funding has been provided for one aspect of social housing, namely travellers sites.

I do get some pleasure from the inventiveness of those Nigerian scam emails, but this one, with its ironic self-referencing, beats the lot. Enjoy!

Anti-Terrorist and Monetary Crimes Division
FBI Headquarters In Washington, D.C.
Federal Bureau Of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
935 Pennsylvania Avenue,
NW Washington, D.C.
20535-0001
Website: www.fbi.gov
Date: 02/01/2009      

ATTENTION FUND BENEFICIARY,         

This is an official advice from the fbi foreign Remittance / telegraphic dept., it has come to our notice that the C.B.N Bank Nigeria district has released 10,500,000.00 US dollars into bank of America in your name as the beneficiary, by inheritance means.   

The C.B.N Bank Nigeria knowing fully well that they do not have Enough facilities to effect this payment from the united kingdom to your account, used what we know as a secret diplomatic transit payment (s.t.d.p) to pay this fund through wire transfer, they used this means to complete the payment.   

They are still, waiting for confirmation from you on the already Transferred funds which were made in direct transfer so that they can do final crediting to your account. Secret diplomatic payments are not made unless the funds are related to terrorist activities why must your payment be made in secret transfer, if your transaction is legitimate, if you are not a terrorist, then why did you not receive the money directly into your account; this is a pure coded, means of payment?   

Records which we have had with this method of payment in the past Has always been related to terrorist acts, we do not want you to get into trouble as soon as these funds reflect in your account in the U.S.A, so it is our duty as a world wide commission to correct this little problem before this fund will be credited into your personal account.   

Due to the increased difficulty and unnecessary security by the American authorities when funds come from outside of Europe, and the Middle East, the f.b.i bank commission for Europe has stopped the transfer on its way to deliver payment of $10,500,000.00 to debit your reserve account and pay you through a secured diplomatic transit account (s.d.t.a). We govern and oversee funds transfer for the World Bank and the rest of the world.   

We advice you contact us immediately, as the funds have been Stopped and are being held in our custody, until you can be able to provide us with a diplomatic immunity seal of transfer (dist) within 3 days from the world local bank that authorize the transfer from where the funds was transferred from to certify that the funds that you are about to receive from Nigeria are antiterrorist/drug free or we shall have cause to cross and impound the Payment, we shall release the funds immediately we receive this legal documents.   

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   

We have decided to contact you directly to acquire the proper Verifications and proof from you to show that you are the rightful person to receive this fund, because of the amount involve, we want to make sure is a clean and legal money you are about to receive. Be informed that the fund are now in United State in your name, but right now we have ask the bank not to release the fund to anybody that comes to them, unless we ask them to do so, because we have to carry out our investigations first before releasing the fund to you. Note that the fund is in the BANK OF AMERICA right now, but we have ask them not to credit the fund to you yet, because we need a solid proof and Verifications from you before releasing the funds.   

So to this regards you are to re-assure and proof to us that what you are about to receive is a clean money by sending to us FBI Identification Record and also Diplomatic Immunity Seal Of Transfer(DIST) to satisfy to us that the money your about to receive is legitimate and real money. You are to forward the documents to us immediately if you have it in your possession, if you don't have it let us know so that we will direct and inform you where to obtain the document and send to us so that we will ask the bank holding the funds, the Bank Of America to go ahead Crediting your account immediately.   

These Documents are to be issued to you from the World Local Bank that Authorized the transfer, so get back to us immediately if you don't have the document so that we will inform you the particular place to obtain the document in United Kingdom (U.K), because we have come to realize that the fund was Authorized by (H.S.B.C) Bank in London.   

An FBI Identification Record and Diplomatic Immunity Seal Of Transfer (DIST) often referred to as a Criminal History Record or Rap Sheet, is a listing of certain information taken from fingerprint submissions retained by the FBI in connection with arrests and, in some instances, federal employment, naturalization, or military service.   

These Condition Is Valid until 7th of JAN. 2009 after we shall take actions on Canceling the payment and then charge you for illegally moving funds out of Nigeria.    Guarantee: funds will be released on confirmation of the document.   

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   

Final Instruction;   

1. Credit payment instruction: irrevocable credit guarantee.
2. Beneficiary has full power when validation is cleared.
3. Beneficiaries bank in U.S.A., can only release funds.
4. Upon confirmation from the world bank / united nations.
5. Bearers must clear bank protocol and validation request.   

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   

NOTE: We have asked for the above documents to make available the most complete and up-to date records possible for the enhancement of public safety, welfare and security of Society while recognizing the importance of individual privacy rights. If you fail to provide the Documents to us, we will charge you with the FBI and take our proper action against you for not proofing to us the legitimate of the fund you are about to receive.   

The United States Department of Justice Order 556-73 establishes rules and regulations for the subject of an FBI Identification Record to obtain a copy of his or her own Record for review. The FBI Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division processes these requests to check illegal activities in U.S.A.   

An individual may request a copy of his or her own FBI Identification Record for personal review or to challenge information on the Record. Other reasons an individual may request a copy of his or her own Identification Record may include international adoption or to satisfy a requirement to live or work in a foreign country or receive funds from another country, i.e. Diplomatic Immunity Seal of Transfer, letter of good conduct, criminal history Background, etc.)                                                                           

FBI Director                                                              
Paul C. Jordan, III