With Friends Like These, Who Needs an Opposition?

John Howarth, the election supremo for the local Labour party who lost his own seat, has finally caught up with the tragic events which resulted from failings in the Reading's Children's department.

In his regular column for the Evening Post the voice of wisdom declares that "political resignations rarely solve anything".

But let's not be too hasty in forgetting that Cllr Ruhemann (Mr Howarth's fellow Labour party collaborator and former council colleague) would have been forcibly removed had he not resigned. Instead Howarth attacks the ratings system which obfuscated the quality of Reading's service and points to the faulty statistics which said his friend was doing a perfectly acceptable job.

Mr Howarth asks an important question: "why did Ofsted’s inspections of 2005, 06 and 07 fail to detect what we are now told are systemic failures? "

So scraping the froth away from his palaver, Mr Howarth tacitly accepts the systemic failures existed, which were under the responsibility of Cllr Ruhemann, and he blames the regulatory system run by his party at a national level for failing to do it's job.

Oranjepan asks:
which government minister will Mr Howarth be defending over the systemic failings in Ofsted?

(Clue: Ed Balls MP is the Minister for Children, Schools and Families. Mr Balls is a protege of PM Gordon Brown and is married to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. So not him then.)

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Update: Cllr Swaine is particuarly aggrieved by Mr Howarth's spin and exposes the behaviour of entrenched and unaccountable officials beholden to their political masters.

Jane Griffiths gives Mr Howarth a thorough fisking and strikes a couple of personal blows for good measure too.

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For full coverage of the events which have rocked Reading since the death of Child T, go to the Special Report on Children's Services in Reading (see sidebar).