SPOKESMAN BOOKS
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Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation
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Catalogue
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Socialist Renewal - fifth series: 3
"A wonderful analysis cutting to the chase through all the spin, quangos and obfustication by New Labour and its acolytes."
Mike Hogarth's letter to the Reading Chronicle
9th June 2006
Sir,
Answers to questions put by Colin Lee on public use of
the John Madejski Academy School Leisure Centre will not be forthcoming from
Reading Borough Council because the truth is likely to be so unpalatable to
Reading residents that they would never support the loss of a taxpayer-funded
leisure centre to a private Academy School.
Reading councillors are simply doing what New Labour forces them to do
which is to have at least one academy school in every town or lose the money
on offer from the Treasury.
In his booklet, New Labour’s Attack on Public
Services, (Spokesman Books, Nottingham), Dexter Whitfield writes, “The
academic claim ‘to bring new life into the local community’ is fraudulent
because they are caught in a VAT trap. The
Treasury waived VAT on the construction costs under European VAT regulations,
but this is conditional on 90% of the usage being for ‘relevant charitable
purposes’. Thus academics must
limit after school use to less than an hour per day and not at all during
school holidays or face a VAT bill for 17.5% of the capital cost of the
school. Martin Coles, head of the City of London Academy in
Bermondsey, South London, stated: ‘We have this £27 million building and
the public can’t get in. It’s
a joke.’ (Quoted from The Times
3rd October 2005).” Will
the John Madejski Academy School have a different VAT rule applicable to it?
I am sure many more questions need to be asked about the plans for public use of the South Reading Leisure Centre and access to future Academy School facilities, but will they ever be answer truthfully for the voters to hear and decide where to put their cross next May?
Yours etc.,
Mike Hogarth
Price: £11.99
ISBN: 978 085124 7151
paperback
