The Gloucestershire Blog

Archive for the ‘Gloucestershire Politics’ Category

Teachers will no longer receive increases based on length of service – but instead there will be a stronger link to performance, says the profession’s pay review body.

The School Teachers’ Review Body says pay increases in England and Wales should be based on annual appraisals. Education Secretary Michael Gove welcomed the “greater flexibility”.

The idea has been attacked by teachers’ unions, with one saying it would be “a disaster for children’s education”.

The Unions really do need to join the 20th century even if they can’t manage the 21st. I really do wish one of these dinosaurs would tell me how paying good teachers more than poor ones would be a “disaster for Childrens education”

Some of you may have heard of the new law governing the use of cookies on web sites. Cookies are pieces of personal data stored when users browse the web, sometimes to power advertising, or to remember your log in credentials.

Westgate St Gloucester

On Visit Gloucestershire we only use cookies on our bulletin boards ( they will not work properly without them ) and for our google ads which pay for all the free content here. We don’t allow anything that would track you, and we don’t allow other sites advertising to gather information about you.

Like the majority of sites we are late in implementing the legal requirement, but we will be fully compliant within the next 2 weeks. Last week the UK government admitted that most of its sites would not comply with the new rules in time. It said it was “working to achieve compliance at the earliest possible date”.

If you are a customer of SoftData Internet Ltd web hosting we will be offering you a complimentary script for your site to make sure that you are fully legal. Do Contact Us if you have any questions about this.

If there was ever a real “hero of Gloucester”, then that person should be Ivan Taylor, chairman of the Westgate Quarter Traders’ Association, who runs Truscot Jewellers .

Ivan can be seen every day early in the morning sweeping up, not only in front of his own shop, but all of College Court and into Westgate Street. He is incapable of walking past any rubbish without picking it up and putting it into the nearest bin. Most of the decorations and many of the plants that are brightening up the westgate quarter were bought by Ivan, and then put up and planted by him. He is over 70 years old, but nothing seems to stop him.

Not content with running the Westgate Quarter, Ivan is also the driving force behind the four gates of Gloucester , and a great supporter of local business. If we had another dozen like him, then Gloucester would be transformed. We all owe him a great vote of thanks.

Once more, we see the prejudices of the governing class over-riding the democratic feelings of the people of this country. The truth is Mr Cameron, Mr Milliband and Mr Clegg are horrified by the prospect of a referendum because, they fear the result might reveal the true depth of anti-EU feeling in the country.

To say it is a distraction is disgraceful. This is an abuse of power by all our political parties.

In the third day of a judicial review into plans to shut 10 libraries and reduce opening hours at others across the county, James Goudie, defending, challenged the prosecution’s claim that the council was “failing to meet statutory obligations” to provide a comprehensive library service, as required by the Libraries Act 1964. He said: “A comprehensive service doesn’t mean a library in every village in every town and every suburb of Gloucestershire.

In Gloucestershire less than one fifth of the population has borrowed one item or more in the past 12 months, and we know that library use has declined nationally as well as locally over the last decade.

This court case is imo another case of the give me evrything for nothing brigade. Libraries, like other services must take their turn in the queue for public money.

While our useless politicians worked themselves up and spent hours in pointless point scoring, and achieving nothing worth talking about, world financial watchdogs issued an extraordinary warning of a global economic ‘earthquake’ triggered by the failure of many countries to get to grips with massive debts. Greece is going to default, and of course we are going to pick up the bill. Indeed the very future of the Euro is now in doubt.

Time to get a grip.

Well, I took the entire day off yesterday, and I’m only going to do a small amount of web work today, and that is working from home. So not going into the office until Tuesday.

I had a marvelous day yesterday, really enjoyed being at home with “she who must be obeyed” and did some personal browsing on the web. That turned up some interesting things.

My personal stalker has been telling everyone that I support all tory policies and I read the daily mail. Shock horror.

In fact I buy one newspaper now, and that is the Sunday Times. As for politics, I don’t support any party, indeed I feel our party system is contributing to the current lack of trust that many have with politicians. If anything the nearest slot I might fit into is anarchist. I’ve always believed that the best government is the least government. When governments and councils try to control every aspect of life, it invariably goes bad.

Anyway, a happy St Georges day to you all

” The quiet man is still with us.

He does not vote

He dodges taxes

He doesnt speak up for any causes

For any social ill, he deals with it in the coinage of cowardice: “They should do something about it”

”

Quotes from the autobiography of Harold Evans. Library compaigners please take note

The subject of the big society seems to be confusing and annoying people at the same time. Of course there is lots of politicking going on as well, but the essence to me seems quite simple.

What do we expect the state to provide for us, and are we prepared to pay for it. I think the library protests are a good case in point. Libraries were not initially provided by the state at all. The victorians regarded this type of project as the duty of well off members of the public and business, and it was businesses that built and provided them. It is the same story with the magnificent town halls that were built in the last couple of centuries. They were built by business that were proud of their locality.

Sadly nowadays people expect the state to provide them, not with just the basics, but all the luxuries as well. I have never believed that the state has a duty to maintain my lifestyle of choice, but looking at all the protest lately, I’m in a minority.

Local councillor Barry Kirby has made an interesting post on his blog