It looks like Sir Mike Tomlinson has his work cut out to earn his thousands
of pounds in consultancy fees as chair of Labour's new quango on education
in Camden. The paper setting up Labour's quango has been issued riddled
with basic grammatical errors.
Signed off by Camden's head of Achievement, the short two and a half page
paper misses out words, jumbles up sentences and contains several poorly
constructed sentences. For example:
- Paragraph 2.3 'The Chair of the Partnership indicated that there were a
number of important factors to be considering the membership of the Board'
- Paragraph 2.3 again 'Willing to represent the a broad range of views from
schools in Camden, and knowledge and experience of working with schools'
- Paragraph 2.4 'The Chair of the Partnership considered wider factors
including enabling as far as possible for the partnership to have an
appropriate balance and mix of gender, ethnicity, and to support as many
schools to be represented on the Board as possible, through a mix of
headteachers, governors and parents'
- Paragraph 2.5 'The Chair of the Partnership also invited representatives
from specific further education, higher education, businesses and cultural
organisations that had indicated or been involved an interest in the work of
the Education Commission to sit on the Partnership'
"Most residents will wonder why Labour is spending £2 million on a new
quango to promote educational excellence when they are already employing
large numbers of officers at Camden Town Hall to do exactly that," commented
Cllr Andrew Mennear, the Leader of the Conservatives on Camden Council.
"We didn't oppose the creation of Camden's original Education Commission
although we warned Labour that they must be careful of how much it would
cost. Yet here they are casually setting up a new quango to duplicate work
that they're already meant to be doing at a cost to local residents of £2
million. This is money which Labour has taken away from the play service,
the libraries, elderly drop-in centres and other front-line services.
"Quite frankly it's wrong, and the lack of care taken in typing this report
is symptomatic of Labour's consideration of the impact of their decisions on
local Camden residents at a time when we're all suffering from great
financial hardship in part caused by the last Labour Government."
End
Note: Camden's report can be downloaded from:
http://democracy.camden.gov.uk/mgIssueHistoryHome.aspx?IId=11177