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Council spies on family for three weeks � to check they lived in the school's catchment area

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AB Asks | 10:20 Fri 11th Apr 2008 | News
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An undercover council official spied on a family for three weeks to check that they lived within the school catchment area. The official logged the family's moves without them knowing. The family are of course furious that they had been 'stalked' in this manner. The council won't inform the family as to whether or not those watching her and her family were police checked and whether they were taking pictures. Poole Borough Council acted under an Act which is meant to be used for improving national security. What do you think - a complete and utter waste of money and an invasion of innocent people's privacy?
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Maybe someone can give the AB team a tutorial on how to post a link, or failing that a direct link to the Daily Mail website for every question they ask. Here is the link.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles /news/news.html?in_article_id=558632&in_page_i d=1770

The council were checking a potential fraudulent application after a report by the member of the public. The 3 week surveillance was in fact a car checking both properties to see who was there (not a weekends). The Mail likens this to the KGB which might explain why the lost the cold war. The family were cleared and the child has gone to the school of their choice.

The whole school selection policy is stupid. If you wonder why there is congestion at rush hour it is because children are being driven 5 miles to a selected school rather than go to one near to their homes.

Its not like the family were followed around 24 hours a day is it! The council were right in checking the family concerned lived where they said they did.
Fair enough Gromit but parents would not feel the need to drive their kids 5 miles to a rare oasis that is the good school if the norm wasn't a failing desert of trendy hopeless education experiments.

Most of the government, famously in some cases, would not send their kids to the state school they so readily force on the plebs.


AB - Clearly you feel that it is a waste of money and an invasion of privacy.
I have never really understood why AB post questions, but particularly questions like this. I would understand if it were a well presented argument highlighting both sides of the particular situation. At least then it might open an interesting debate on the site.
I have always felt that it is the users of the AB site who should be posting the questions, leaving AB free to concentrate on the management of the site.
Loosehead

I totally agree.
.......I think I;ve got one of my heads comming on!

Isn't it an infringment of civil liberties or human rights or something to be tailed and watched just because of they wanted their kids to go to a certain school.
Shame they couldn't have put that much effort into watching terror suspects. The London underground bombings might never have happened.

tigerlily11

A suspected crime was reported and the council investigated it. No infringement of any rights occurred.

Trailing suspected terrorists is not the responsibility of Poole Borough Council's Education Department, unfortunately.
Blame the goverments immigration policy for the fact that
in some schools, 90% plus of the pupils cannot even speak English.

With this in mind can you blame some parents going to all lengths to try and get their children into a school where they will at least get a reasonable standard of education?

Don't most of us want this for our children?
Yes but Gromit have you read that artical. Its a bit much just to check if they live within a catchment area.
If said artical is to be believed they have made a mountain out of what was quite clearly a mole hill.
Any body would think they were watching the McCanns to see if they had Maddie.
So over the top when they could be putting their time to better use. As Loose said if all they are guilty of is finding a good school in a bad situation then good on them.
Hardly worth the council wasting time and money on is it.
Congratulations AOG, I completely missed the race angle on this story, but you spotted it like an halal ferret - well done.

Sorry to report that 98.1% of Dorset residents are white so it is unlikely that the family were trying to avoid a non english speaking school (or even that one exists in Poole).

The school did very well in its OFSTED report, so of course, everybody wants to send their children there.

You can't blame the looney left PC brigade either because Poole Borough Council is solidly Conservative.

Quite innovative of them to use anti terrorism laws in this way. But in the war for Freedom we must expect be prepared for the politicians to steal our ours if they feel they want to.
tigerlily11

You probably wouldn't say that if you couldn't send your child to the school of your choice and found out that someone not from your area had got the place instead. Especially in this case, the school was very good.
I had to fight to get my son into a school that wasn't my catchment. I wanted him to be in the same school is brother and sister went to. It was a good school. It had room for him but I still had to fight. I would be labelled as neglectful if I hadn't tried and I will be labelled as worse for having tried as they did and if you noticed in that artical the council had suggested they move house after they had secured a place in the school. So the council were still wasting time and money watching them because they had told them to do it.

Hello tigerlily11

I am pleased you got you lad into the school of your choice. Had you moved house since his siblings went there ?
The version of the story in the Telegraph is more informative.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml =/news/2008/04/11/nspy111.xml

The mothers' two elder children, aged six and 10, were educated at the school.

The Council said it had used the law on two other occasions during the past year and on both had proved that parents had lied about where they lived.
-- answer removed --
Gromit,
Maybe someone can give the AB team a tutorial on how to post a link, or failing that a direct link to the Daily Mail website for every question they ask.

Who set you up as the as a potential tutor of the AB team? You are forever critising the team on their postings, it is their site so they can run it how they please. If you are not happy with the site on which you tend to spend most of your time, then perhaps you should consider setting up a web page of your own, Having said this I am glad that you have led the team to one of the best links. After all this is the one YOU seem to read the most, so it can't be all bad.

Regarding your rather sarcastic dig at my post. For your information I wasn't particularly referring to the school in question or the political leanings of their council. I was making a generalization of the way some of our schools are going, (see the link below) Which you would have noticed if you had not been so keen to swallowed the race bait so quickly.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles /news/news.html?in_article_id=559158&in_page_i d=1770

Sorry AOG, but why do you want to talk about generalisations - rather than the actual question asked.

And then why put a specific link in? To a potential legal case that no evidence has been presented in?

So Gromit is not allowed to talk specifics but you are?

Sorry didn't realise the new rules on here
AOG. You have asked on another thread for me to reply to the nonsense you have written above:

1. No one set me up as a tutor. I wrote 'maybe someone can give AB a tutorial'. That does not say I am doing it, that I am volunteering to do it, or that I want to do it. Someone in this instance, is someone other that me.
Your lack of comprehension of a simple sentence is worrying but not surprising.

2. Is there a rule which says I cannot criticise? It is commonsense to include a link to a story (especially if, as in this instance, it is quite low down on the news agenda). To ask (for the hundredth time) for AB to supply a link to find the full story of their rather short and lacking of facts. question is entirely reasonable.

3. The link I kindly supplied was not the best one. It conveniently left out the information that previous investigations had found fraudulent applications. Meaning that local children were not denied a place they were entitled to because someone else had lied.

4. When asked about a specific case with published facts, it is pointless and wrong to ignore that and deal in generalisations.

5. You rather pointlessly tried to make this a race issue. I offered a few proven facts to demolition that stupid claim. If that is taking the race bait, then so be it.

6. It was a poor question from an editorial team who you would hope would be objective. It had clearly taken one side and was asking a leading question. It is fine for us looney left PC brigade fools to ask biased questions but not an editor.

7. I have wasted enough time on this. Who appointed you as guardian and watch dogof AB?
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