Do Inner City Families Need Nursery Care?

George Osborne is apparently going to announce today that 260,000 2 year olds will be allocated nursery places, especially targetted at deprived areas. This sounds like it will result in children in poorer homes being given great education (a whole extra year at school!) and impoverished parents being able to get back into employment earlier. [...]

Read Full Post »

Christian Bloggers on AV

I’m still feeling somewhat spacey after a wonderful weekend in Eastbourne at Bible By The Beach. Terrific bible teaching, an amazing kids’ programme and lots of sunshine. We were sleeping in our new tent, which was lovely and spacious, but taking it down in the wind was like wrestling a team of octupuses (or octupi, [...]

Read Full Post »

Should Christians Vote For or Against AV?

And I’m not talking about the King James bible, also known as the Authorised Version. I have to say that I’m struggling at the moment to decide whether to vote for or against the new voting system called Alternative Vote. And most people I speak to locally are completely indifferent. I asked the Twitterverse which [...]

Read Full Post »

Politics – More Thinking Required

I did a quiz last night on my political views. It had 50 questions, and I found some of them a little hard to get my head around. Anyway, I thought I’d share my results. And also ask for reading suggestions so I can get a bit more up to speed on issues about how [...]

Read Full Post »

Coalition: Dan & Dan on our New Government

Whilst searching for the YouTube link to the Daily Mail song for a friend I came across a new clip by Dan & Dan, entitled Dan/Dan Coalition. Cheer up your Monday morning by watching. I think I’m Home Secretary in the Vicarage (definitely i/c loo rolls), but thankfully not Chancellor (although responsible for the tax [...]

Read Full Post »

General Election Lookalikes Continued

Now that Gordon Brown has finally called the General Election, I thought I should share this with you. Grumpy Grandpa sent me a pic of a third candidate whom he thinks will be standing in our local constituency at the General Election. The decision about who to vote for is getting even more difficult.

Read Full Post »

Happy in Sandwell

Happy is our new lodger. He’s also the Vicar’s new apprentice (aka the ministry trainee). Yesterday he went to a training event about our area. It was laid on by diocesan missioners with input from speakers from the local council and other taxpayer funded bodies. We live in Sandwell, one of the most deprived boroughs [...]

Read Full Post »

A sad end to term (and for some, to primary school)

We’ve been hit by the public sector strike here in deepest Wolverhampton. Our bins weren’t collected yesterday and, more disruptively, school is closed because the kitchen staff and caretaker are members of Unison. Do you know why the strike was on Wednesday and Thursday? Apparently they couldn’t hold it on Thursday and Friday because if [...]

Read Full Post »

The rise of the Tories – how it looks here

I went to see my dear friend Starstudent a few days ago. I’ve not had a good catch-up with her for ages, because she’s just been taking exams. Amongst the usual school gate chit-chat, we discussed the Conservatives’ victory in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election and also the local elections. The local elections resulted in [...]

Read Full Post »