Rob Shorrock

Dominic Grieve on the eve of the Tory Party conference has decided to way in against 'multiculturalism'. To his credit in a pointless interview with the usual portents of doom that accompany this peculiar brand of miserabilism he manages to avoid using the Dail Maileseque expression 'the failed experiment of multiculturalism.' His charge is familiar: people don't know what the culture is, other cultures seem to get special treatment, we ignore the Church of England and all of these things lead to extremism.

He is supposed to be one of the Tories' free-thinking intellectuals? 

First, he and indeed many other other people, who labour under the belief that government policy can somehow influence culture are working under the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. Governments don't create culture and they certaintly haven't created the multicultural society. Cultures are not set in stone, they are fluid and constantly evolving. Part of the beauty of living in many of Britain's towns and cities is the ability to experience different cultures through celebration art, music and food. In Leicester, for example, this is key part of its identity as a British city. 

Culture changes - As a British man born in the 60's my world is different now than it was for my parents. And my culture is different - we appreciate and embrace diversity and difference and recognise this as a good thing or at the least something that it is tolerable. Not suprisingly, the unchanging world of Anglicanism with its obssession with buggery is less important to us.

Multiculturalism in Britain is a recognition that people have different cultures and this is fine as long as the pursuit of those cultures does not contradict a national sense of justice, freedom and democracy. When it does we challenge it in terms of human rights and the law not in meaningless and humiliating fatwas such as banning religious clothing from state schools as some other European democracies delight in.

Cultural nationalism, with dogmatic and pickled views of what the national culture is,  as displayed in France and today in Austria (1\3 of the seats in elections taken by the far right) is what creates the real extremism, not a liberal and sensible view that we live in a society of many cultures. 

No one has a right to define culture and dictate the culture to its people. That is a feature of fascist states and not of Britain. The other feature is to stoke the fires of prejudice in the pursuit of power. Mr Grieve is doing this before the blue-rinse brigade meet in multi-cultural Brimingham. Appalling.

I have received a response to my freedom of information request on selction testing in Lincolnshire. What the data shows for 2006\2007 is the following:

10 and 11 year olds eligible to take the test: 7979 

Tests taken total 4666

Failure rate 2967

This means that only 58.5% of  those eligible took the test

Average failure rate was 63.58% almost 2 out 3 children will fail.

The costs of delivering this during 2006\2007 was £116,650 not counting central costs.

Lincolnshire County Council have not carried out any research or investigation into the impact of using selection on children at this age.

The final point is the most interesting. Lincolnshire County Council defend the system of selection but have never attempted to have the system independently studied. Given that we know that selective authorities have underperforming schools it should be an obvious starting point for the the authority to discover whether a factor in this is the process of selection at 10 and 11. Yet, more fundemantally, the authority now has the legal responsibility for ensuring that all children achieve and they address disadvantage. There is now compelling evidence that selection at 10 and 11 is potentially working against this and I will be asking the children & young peoples strategic partnership to investigate. 

SKDC has created one of its first 'gated' communities at the end of Redcross St by putting gates on the bridge leading to Dysart Park. This is response to the reported noise and vandalism committed by some individuals who use Redcross street as a thoroughfare from Wyndham park connected by the bridge over the river Witham.

The park is a haunt for some of Grantham's flotsam and jetsam and various other scoundrels depending on who you talk to. The idea of putting gates on the bridge was to stop people of the night getting across the bridge and making the residents of Redcross street lives a misery. This would force them to use two other exits including the neighbourhood around Alford st which just seems to be decanting the problem.

Without a hint of irony Tory cllr Ray Wooten declared the introduction of the gates a 'victory for democracy' with 87% of the residents of Redcross St in favour. The only suprise in this result was that 13% of residents presumably didn't want to become part of the gated community. In developing this approach, the council also took advice from an expert on 'designing out antisocial behaviour'. Essentially this means eroding access to public areas, closing public toilets, ripping out bus shelters, doing anything that moves a small group of miscreants on. Far from the victory of democracy declared by Cllr Wooten in his absurd Churchillian manner this is a really a surrender; we have sacraficed the rights and freedoms of the peaceful majority to be able to use a public route. The symbolism is clear. We have made it clear to the creatures of the night that they have their side of the river and we have ours. The drawbridge is up. This is a not a victory for democracy. This is a failure on so many levels: a failure to protect the liberty of the majority. A failure to deal effectively with the miscreants who cause criminal damage. A failure to ensure our park is a safe place for everyone to go.

Public bodies have a duty to be accountable to their local communities. At its most basic, this includes publishing decisions and the process of making those decisions i,e agendas and minutes of meetings. It remains staggering that a large number of public bodies do not even possess a basic website to make these available on demand - this includes schools and parish councils that spend significant proportions of public money and make decisions affecting a large number of people but are not immediately accountable.

For example, Lincolnshire County Council offers a free website service for parish councils, but as far as I can see no parish council has taken this up. Searching a commercial list site there were no parish councils listed for South Kesteven at all.

Schools, particularly primary schools are poor at this also, as well as rarely using technology to keep parents informed generally about what is happening in the schools, preferring instead the highly reliable system of a seven year old with a piece of paper in her bag! Given that schools are teaching our children IT the application of this to their wider business is often suprisingly poor. Even the Woodlands Junior School in Kent which has receieved many accolades for its website has no minutes of governors meetings published on its website. 

SKDC has made sure its decision-making and records are easily available to the general public and is a pretty good example of how to do it. Lincolnshire County Council have just ensured there is a clear link from their home page to their decision-making records after I contacted them about how difficult it was to find this information from their home page. I also had cause to contact Grantham College about the fact they didn't publish minutes of meetings and commitees on their website. I am pleased to say the Clerk has contacted me about this and will ensure that this is the case from now on.

I am writing to the DCLG and the DCSF about making the use of web technology compulsory, at the very least to publish decisions. There is no reason why this cannot be done and there is also the chance that some of these bodies will see the wider value of doing so!