The Department for Education (DfE) have appointed Elenor Brazil to turn around the city's troubled children's services department after a damming Ofstead report.
MS Brazil has a reputation for turning around failing council departments, including those in Haringey and Birmingham. She will be employed by the city council until 9th September, the bill for her services will be £34,400.
This works out at some £800 per day, nice work if you can get it about which James O'Connell of the Taxpayers Alliance, quoted in the Sentinel, said 'taxpayers will hold that by paying such a large amount in fees for outside expertise, they will get good value for money'.
Mr. O'Connell is almost certainly unaware of the unhappy history this city has of paying huge sums for advice from experts. During the Labour years the Civic center seemed to have a revolving door delivering a succession of advisors and consultants and then sending them on again with their pockets jingling.
This time the appointment has been commanded by the DfE and seems particularly unjust. However good her record it hardly seems like value for money to pay MS Brazil, or any other official £800 a day for their services.
Imposing such a cost on a city like Stoke-on-Trent where a decade of austerity has seen services cut to the bone. The £34,000+ involved would be better spent on improving services.
Get again central government has proved to be dangerously out of touch with the concerns of cash strapped councils. They demand the purse strings to be tightened like those of a violin, whilst at the same time force councils to spend like sailors on shore leave on outside advice.
Hopefully some good will be done, but the cost will inevitably lead to other services suffering as a result.
Hail to the Tweet.
US President Donald Trump has taken to Twitter to criticize London Mayor Sadiq Khan over the capital's problems with knife crime, describing him as a 'disaster '.
There is no question that London, and many other UK cities have a problem with knife crime that needs to be addressed. It pales into insignificance though compared to the epidemic of gun violence that has swept America from sea to shining sea leaving a trail of misery in its wake.
Perhaps Mr. Trump should be using his power to take on the gun lobby, don't hold your breath waiting for him to do it through. Upsetting a group that wields such political clout in the name of a higher good would require the sort of courage befitting a leader of the free world.
Sending snarky tweets though, any tiny handed man-child can do that. The faces carved on Mount Rushmore must be turning away in shame.
Noise but no signal.
Like Boris Johnson I missed the first debate between the candidates for the Tory leadership. Unfortunately, I caught the radio broadcast of the second and found it a disappointment.
There was little to be learnt that we increasingly bemused observers of this fight between five bald men over a comb didn't already know.
Michael Gove and Jeremy Hunt are both oilier than a can of sardines; Boris Johnson and Sajid Javid tend to bluster when in a tight spot. Pretty much all the candidates are determined to leave the EU on 31st October, deal or no deal. Although they're vague on how they're going to force Brexit through against the implacable opposition of parliament.
To his credit Rory Stewart tried to be a voice of common sense, but mostly got drowned out. He's likely to be out of the race after the second vote anyway.
As a guide to what any of the challengers might make of being Prime Minister at one of the most difficult times in our recent history, your guess is as good as mine.
And Another Thing:
Since writing most of this article the field in the Tory leadership race has been thinned down to a face-off between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt. Two white upper-class men who both went to public schools and were chums at Oxbridge. How can they represent the diverse and divided Britain they are vying to lead? They can’t because they can’t even begin to understand it.
There is no question that Tory MP Mark Field was wrong to manhandle a climate change protestor out of the Mansion House banquet for having the temerity to interrupt Chancellor Phillip Hammond’s turgid speech this week.
He claims to have been reacting to the possibility she might have been armed, his facial expression caught by the news cameras says something different. This wasn’t someone reacting to a threat to life and limb; it was an alpha male taking the opportunity to assert his dominance over someone he deemed to be weaker.
Field has since been suspended from his job as a minister in the Foreign Office and has reported himself to the Cabinet Office for investigation. Both acts have been carried out under the unspoken understanding that he will get a slap on the wrist, then it will be back to business as usual.
That is nowhere near good enough; he should be hauled up before the courts.
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