Earlier this morning a delivery lorry for cake manufacturer Mr Kipling got stuck under the railway bridge on Stoke Road, Stoke-on-Trent, as shown below and as reported by The Sentinel.
Mr Kipling still uses the advertising slogan – as seen on the side of the trailer – “Exceedingly good…“. That phrase presumably does not extend to (one of) its drivers. 😉
One thing living in Bristol for nearly 4 decades has taught me is that Bristol City Council is profligate and lacks competence.
This was once again brought sharply into focus earlier this morning in a dead-end street called Clifton Street (map) leading to the back entrance of Easton CofE Primary School where I encountered the roadworks shown in the photograph below.
The view shows the entrance into the staff car park of the school, the approach to which has just been enhanced by 2 dropped kerbs and textured paving on each of the street’s two footways as part of works to replace the street’s kerbstones.
There are only going to be two times in the day on weekdays when there is likely to be any traffic at all on Clifton Street – before and after the school day.
As for the use of textured paving, this is generally installed to assist the visually impaired and I cannot see many visually impaired people using dead-end streets in Easton anyway.
I wonder how much this municipal largesse by the city’s highways department has cost the public purse.
If the city council really wanted to spend money on roadworks in Easton, there’s plenty of other stuff that needs attention, as shown in the example below.
The damaged pedestrian refuge shown above is on Stapleton Road, just a couple of hundred metres away from Clifton Street. Local residents have been attempting to get the council to repair it for over 6 months, after it was damaged by a bus driver with delusions of driving competence. These efforts have so far come to nought.
In the recent TidyBS5 residents’ rubbish summit (posts passim), it was stated that council officers frequently intone the words “It’s the inner city” as an excuse for lack of action. Clearly this only works one way, i.e. when the lack of action concerns something either highlighted or desired by residents; when the initiative comes from within the council, there’s apparently no object, no matter how pointless what is proposed. I’ve encountered this ‘not invented here’ syndrome before in local authorities.
It’s normal to see a spate of daft council spending in March each year, just before the municipal financial year runs out. This year it seems that Bristol City Council is providing the residents of Easton with an early Christmas present in the form of dumb expenditure.
New technology is unlocking the key to the biggest problem that has been bedevilling the education world for years – the poor performance of white working-class boys in reading, The Independent reports.
The Early Years Literacy Survey shows the role touch-screen devices play in the home and pre-school learning environments.
Figures show that a higher number of children from low income groups (DE households) are more likely to read stories on touch-screen devices for longer and use them for educational activities than those from high income groups (AB households). Findings show that:
The survey also found that 91.7% of children aged 3-5 have access to touch-screen technology at home and access to touch-screen technology in early years settings has doubled since last year. Moreover, the majority of pre-school teachers and practitioners said they would like to see more touch-screen technology in use in early years environments.