Borrow a copy of the Advertiser this week, it isn’t worth buying.
Note a couple of things
1. The review of the year, that is 2015 915 says nothing about;
Child Sexual Exploitation
Wellgate Kashmiri Riots and fascist marches
The Casey Report
The imposition of the Commissioners
The rise of UKIP
2. The Leader of the Labour Party and the Council is given a dominant section of the Letters Page to make what is a defence of labour statement.
It is so good know that our freedoms and security are safe in the hands of such an august and independent newspaper, committed to seeking the truth.
Is the editors wife still working for Sarah Champion MP?
Onelaw4all
Rotherham Politics 
I would agree entirely with your observations, but please stop calling those who oppose the ongoing Labour scandal and the resultant ‘grooming’ scandal as fascists.
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… and it was “the rise, stumble and fall of UKIP.”
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Don’t count your chickens RR. When 3.8 million people voted for them in the GE. Which was a 12.6% share of the vote and a 9.5% increase on 2010. It would be premature to write them off
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Hi Mal, I’m not even counting my toes! 🙂
…. and I don’t want to sidetrack this thread, but I can’t see a future for UKIP after the referendum – no matter which way it goes.
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Like the SNP after Scottish referendum
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JC will lead Labour to greater things
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Obviously you rr believe whatever Chris Read says it does not say much for the borough when we had to have someone who worked as a full time union official and in North Yorkshire at that put in as our council leader also ask Chris Read how it was the extra £5 million pounds came about not because of him I do know that.
Also how can this council be improving when two more childrens homes were closed after ofstead inspections which means more money has to be found to find places for them there are still many unanswered questions that this council should be giving us the answers to but alas that will never happen
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Here we go again. The new broom was not brought in to fix two children’s homes. Read the well documented reports. Systemic failings across the children’s services sixteen over sixteen years need to be addressed. These homes should have been closed years ago given what we are learning about them. We should be glad! And how do you work out more will be spent when the homes are closed? Bets are cheaper placements have been found in the private sector – and in places that provide better care. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to presume savings from closed homes will be used to pay for any new placements. In the last year we have seen reports from victims and survivors of CSE that confirm the council is improving. Not good enough for you? In the Commissioners’ report they confirm social worker caseloads are much reduced and they have strengthened how referrals to social care are handled. Furthermore a big CSE case run by RMBC and SYP is now live and the signs are more are in train. The largest CSE SERVICE in the country goes live this year as a direct result of the work Read and Co have done. As for your comment about the role played in obtaining £5m what’s your evidence for ‘nowt t do wi Read’ stance??
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Placements in the private sector are the most expensive way to look after our children. Not only that the placements tend to be outside of the area, further away from family, friends and schools which provide stability. Why couldn’t the homes be turned into decent places to live, which are safe. How many of these children are forced to change schools, don’t get to see a dentist etc. It’s apallng that Rotherham cannot look after its own children. The council is improving, well when starting from such a low base it ought to be. Why does the largest CSE service go live, because of what’s happend in the last sixteen years under Labour. You would expect something to happen and if the current leadership of the council had not been led by the nose by the commissioners I doubt anything would have happened. All by the way of increasesd cost to the tax payers of Rothetham.
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Anonymous below. I think you are missing the point, however I would challenge only small part of what you say. Fiferalfa seems only able to measure progress by the closesure of two homes which shows s(he) has little concept of the gravity of the situation. I would refer to 3 reports for enlightenment: Jay; Casey and Ofsted. Sixteen years of failure means getting basics right and changing culture from top to bottom. So you say improvement is from a low base and is unlikely to have occurred without intervention which I find difficulty disagreeing with and is more insightful. However, I don’t agree that private is more expensive than public having worked in a neighbouring Borough for over twenty years. I am also a Foster Carer with an independent agency. So, further, we don’t know whether the young people are now in Foster Care and still in the borough do we? And we don’t actually know the net impact on cost given savings from the closures. Maybe an FOI would assist before the government changes the rules! The other considerations regarding school etc are very pertinent and one would hope decision-makers have balanced any disruption with the time it would take to turn poor provision around and the impact on young people during this period. This is the real issue. The council isn’t duty-bound to provide and generally councils should purchase from the best providers (Best Value) and if this is private so be it. These services in the main rely on good staff, committed to the cause not a bunch of politicians and this often gets lost in the debates we have. So improvement, yes. From a low base, yes. With outside intervention, yes. It’s now our job as local stakeholders to ensure improvements are sustained as Commissioners hand powers back to the council and local democracy is quite rightly restored.
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Anonymous firstly let me say to you as a foster carer admire you for that it seems that you think I believe that only the closure of two homes will solve the problem far from it, we may have new officers in place but we still have councillors who were in place over the last 16 years who are still there and in denial which you do not seem to agree with me on. As for the private sector being best that is not always the case and the COUNCIL has to foot the bill for finding new places for these children as they have been let down badly as far as the home closures go this was done AFTER the COUNCIL supposedly improved seems they are still unfit for purpose. I still await your response on the financial matters I put in my post
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Fiferalfa I didn’t say private is best I said the council has a duty to provide best value which maybe in the private sector. Regarding cost I thought I was clear. The move is likely to have saved the council money actually not cost more as you seem to frequently imply. The LA homes weren’t being operated for free were they? Finally, my central point to you is if you are measuring progress by the closure of two homes then I’m not sure you appreciate the scale of the challenges being addressed by the new leaders given the findings of the reports quoted. I suggest you read the Commissioners’ progress report for affirmation.
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You continually sasy I am measuring the progress made by this council by the closure of two homes iam NOT doing that you keep avoiding points I have made regarding several things that have NOT been addressed by the councilI I appreciate there is still much to do but until all issues are dealt with by the COUNCIL they will still be unfit for purpose as for reading a progress report by the commissioners they are not the be all and end all as you seem to think we will agree to differ it seems time will tell
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It sounds like the advertiser is airbrushing with an emulsion brush?
Its like one of those rags in westerns that are controlled by the local bigwigs or corrupt!
For the record. There are a lot of decent labour party members and supporters who are appalled at the CSE and at the failure to inform and safeguard the public by those in positions of trust including MPs, Cllrs, council and police officers etc
Those who knew and said nowt should be booted out for dereliction of duty.
Those who claim they did not know are either lying or incompetent.
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Spot on dave.
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I agree with you Dave, there are a lot of good people in the Labour Party…the question however is, what do they actually do to prove their goodness?
Some of those in the know they will tell that a number of those who turned a blind are still councillors. That those who won’t accept the ethnic elements of Jay and Casey are still being selected, and even promoted within the Party.
You will remember that a while ago a member of Boston Ward was accosted, threatened and bullied during a Ward meeting and on the streets afterwards.
This was because he prepared a paper, at the request of a previous Ward meeting, summarising Jay and a couple of other reports criticising the then sitting Ward Councillors. It was a nasty and threatening attack upon local democracy, organised at a Mosque and including in the gang at least one alleged rapist.
The same claque of entryists who disrupted that meeting, led by those who bullied the member previously, turned up en masse to select Taiba Yasseen & Saghir Alam as candidates for the 2015 elections. Now they have been elevated to cabinet membership.
Labour is infiltrated and corrupted….leaving the many middle of the road moderates in Rotherham faced with a choice between UKIP and a blind and lost Labour Party…a very grim choice.
And one last thing….at a community meeting a couple of weeks ago I listened to a very well respected resident of Canklow, receive cheers and a round of applause when she stated that the abuse and exploitation of young people is “as bad as ever.” Perpetrators from the same families, using the same tactics, hanging around the same parks and shops…I can’t say if she’s right, but you can’t say she’s wrong.
So, I’ll ask you Dave and Labour Man…what are you doing to clean up the local party?
Onelaw4all
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Now THAT’S spot on.
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I have tried on several occasions to elicit an answer from the Advertiser to the question why won’t you publish any of my letters, it would appear that the cowardly editor is some how afraid to answer my emails. Perhaps he would like to take the opportunity to answer on here, or is he one of the many who deny they read this blog?
Dave Smith
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Maybe the link is Sir Nutkin and the displeasure he might feel if your letters were to have been published? Hear Sir Nutkin is developing paranoia, or so it seems?
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Is that sir nutkin of chatsworth who sold the miners out as well as the minors?
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If anything Anonymous was seen to uncover any wrongdoing by this council it would not be published and apparently the three amigos have no link to the council or talk to any councillors if we are to believe what we hear. Until the commissioners start to do their job correctly and the council becomes more open we in the borough will continue to suffer
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We all brought into the new dawn thing, lessons learnt, thing can only get better and we were so gulliable, we believe the same people, who had cause the mess in the first place. Did you really think that these bunch of scaundels would change, did you really think this council would delve as far back and find the awful truth and do everything in its power to route out and indentify these wrongdoers. Did you really think, this most discredited of a newspaper, who for decades had one of the biggest, world breaking, exclusive stories in its own backyard, would improve….not a chance.
It’s business as usual, see no evil, hear no evil, report no evil….this is Utopia and everything is smelling of roses.
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