[Ssf] Reg Vardy & the Evangelists

[Dan]

For anyone who missed this story about local people stopping the opening 
of a creationist, evangelical Christian 'academy' in Conisbrough -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1389500,00.html

It's interesting, I think, when we're thinking about what political 
action means.  I wonder: maybe a street party relating to a particular 
issue.  Maybe we could have one in Burngreave?  Or would that just piss 
everyone off?

It all sounds horribly familiar, for anyone who's been following events 
in Burngreave... e.g.:

"The local consultation process was squeezed into less than a month, 
taking in a spate of meetings between staff, parents and interested 
Thorne residents, and representatives of both Doncaster council and the 
Vardy Foundation. A one-page "questionnaire" was distributed, with no 
mention of the Vardy Foundation, and only two sentences: "I support the 
proposal to establish an academy in Thorne" (followed by boxes labelled 
"Agree strongly", "Agree", "Disagree" and "Disagree strongly") and "I 
have the following additional comments". Little more than 70 were sent 
back to the council, which subsequently announced that 87% of their 
respondents supported the plan. Some of Thorne Grammar's teachers got 
the impression they were witnessing a fait accompli. "At the meetings, 
we were allowed to ask questions with no comeback, and that was it," one 
told me. "There was never a real way of registering any dissent. And 
anyway, we were operating in the dark: a lot of people didn't even know 
what academies were."

But!  It didn't happen!  Even though the sham-of-a-consultation process 
had officially finished, there was enough local resistance to stop it...

Dan

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