Free schools empowerment

However, empowering communities to take control of their children’s education is new in this country, so I was not surprised to see a letter in your paper last week repeating common errors about what Free Schools are and can do.

To clarify then our Free School will only be set up when we have convinced the Department for Education that we will meet or exceed exacting standards in teaching, learning, premises, safeguarding and community engagement, among others.

Like other local schools, it will be overseen by a charitable trust to ensure it is run in the long-term interests of the community rather than politicians or any other particular group.

We will receive exactly the same funding as other state schools, and any capital funding we attract will be in addition to that which the council obtains for its existing schools.

With regards to admissions, we will be proud and feel privileged to work with whichever students join us. Our school will adopt exactly the same kind of admissions code as every other local school – we cannot, and would not wish to, ‘choose the best students’.

We believe that every child has something unique to offer and can achieve academic and personal success! The people of Bedford and Kempston have a chance to be among the first to take back control of our schools from bureaucrats and politicians.

Yet again the Tory councillor, Tom Wootton chooses to get his facts wrong and misleads local residents with his comments.

He complains about the lack of parts for the crossing to get it complete but fails to mention that the decision to install this type of crossing was taken under the old county council, when he was responsible for deciding on the Pegasus crossing.

He also complains that the crossing is being installed as a tick box exercise. Well if that is the case, he would know, wouldn’t he? He fails to mention that this is part of a scheme to link up green routes for cyclists, horseriders and pedestrians and will be a key link for route 51, the cycle route that goes out to Sandy and will now be accessible from Goldington and Putnoe.

For the benefit of readers I can confirm also that the work has restarted on the crossing as I have seen it myself today.

And this is not the first time this Tory councillor has had a bout of memory loss and complained about something he was responsible for implementing.

The product is the same, comes from the same depots, by the same fleet of tankers, and is sold by the same big name chains, paying the same low wages with the same overheads.

I have a dream where the local petrol station and supermarket managers apologise to us for collective naughtiness and we get about five pence per litre off for a long period to make up for it – some dream.

I was driving on the day of the accident (May 10, 2002) and I drove a train at high speed over the set of points only a few hours before the fatal derailment.

A warning had been given the previous night about a rough ride over this part of the track but no other action was taken. This put my life and those of my passengers in danger.

A full public inquiry should investigate whether Jarvis – the maintenance contractor – at the time, complied with the high safety standards needed and whether the accident could have been prevented and if anyone was responsible for the failures which led to the loss of life.

We’ve already seen the Child Trust Fund abolished, changes to tax credits, scrapping of new schools and proposals to make social housing insecure, taking the food out of their mouths and the roof away from their heads. The cynics among us may wonder why children have been targeted so blatantly, could it be because they don’t have a vote.

Conservative Governments in the past have always known the cost of everything but the value of nothing.

Some things never change.

I quote, ‘We don’t want to deal with problems in Hertfordshire’.

In modern Britain, crime is multiborder.

No doubt criminals from Herts come into Bedfordshire to commit crimes, as some of our criminals reciprocate.

Bedfordshire Police do not have the highest respect nationwide, so joining a higher quality force can only do good. We should be aiming for national police force, not loads of little self interest groups.

Buckinghamshire – population 495,000 – is making budget cuts of £9.2 million; Bedford Borough may be cutting £10.9 million.

Notice the ratio of about three to one. The Mayor and his advisers were three times over-optimistic about BSF funds and have to make budget cuts similar to a three times larger authority.

The Mayor’s dream was for a viable unitary authority. The dream was funded by BSF, the dream involved forcing Middle Schools to close, etc.

Roll on council elections in May 2011.

In early May I informed CBC of two footpaths obstructed by growing crops. An Ampthill footpath was obstructed by field beans and the other, in Maulden, by oilseed rape.

By mid-July the footpaths were still obstructed so I again wrote to CBC.

I was informed that farmers were about to clear the crops from the footpaths.

At the time of writing the Ampthill footpath is still obstructed. The Maulden footpath has now been cleared but only because the crop of oilseed rape has been harvested.

For three summer months the public has been denied use of these two public footpaths because CBC took no effective action.

With the imminent cutback in public services CBC’s rights of way department will be forced to find effective ways of asserting the rights of the public. It certainly needs to do just that.

As a citizen of Bedford I do hope that the town, county and regional planning departments are doing as much as they can to make their area of responsibility as sustainable as possible aiming to reduce the area’s carbon emissions.

I hope that every effort is being made to move away from our dependency on fossil fuels and to work towards renewable resources.

We must meet or exceed the Government’s pledged target of reducing our carbon emissions.

I strongly believe that every county should have an area allocated for the use of either wind power, hydro or solar to generate energy to be used locally.

I believe that the area may receive a Government grant of £5.6million to build the infrastructure for electric car kerb-side chargers and I hope that the electricity for the county could be supplied by a local source generated by renewable energy.

Carl Stoner Fairholme, Putnoe, Bedford