Who does Roberts think he's kidding?

We'd just like to advise our reader to fear not about the sobriety of the Council leader when they read his comments in this utter fantasy. He's not drunk, and nor is off his trolley on Colombian marching powder, he's just doing what Greenwich Council does best and spinning a report which is not actually as rosy as it might seem.

The Council is not so much lying to you, but is instead being economical with the truth. Yes, it is true, these are Greenwich's best marks ever. What they don't acknowledge is that they're still in the bottom 25% of the country. Yes they've improved, but they've done so from a low base. And yet, the Council leader says utter crap like this

"We were awarded the top two marks for all the areas they looked at and received the top possible mark for our ambition. This shows we are providing high-quality services for everyone living and working here."

Chris, just stop it OK. We know you're reading this even if you do claim you don't use a computer anymore. This report does not show you are "providing high quality service for everyone living and working here", stop talking bollocks.

What it shows is that you're slightly less shit than you were, but you still remain shit compared to the other 75% of the country. Stop living in a fantasy world and stop treating us with utter fucking contempt. We're not fucking idiot mules you know, we have brains and we can see through your disingenuous wank.

Editors Note: Mr Roberts, clearly such intemperate language is inappropriate and as you would never sink to the level of aggressive swearing and/or intimidation we shouldn't either. As such the offending author has been severely reprimanded with a flogging in our cellar. We've also sent him to work for a week in one of our sweatshops in Burma. He has though been rewarded with a watch for expressing the correct sentiment at your weasel words.

Cutting through some truancy spin

As some may be aware, Greenwich has the worst primary school truancy in London. However, London is actually the the worst performing area in England, which, consequentially puts Greenwich at the bottom in England. Yes, we have the worst primary school truancy rate in England.

You may wonder what the Council says about this. Well, apparently, it's all because Greenwich is "particularly rigorous" in measuring attendance. Just to repeat that, the Council's line to the BBC is that we are only bottom because we're really good at measuring attendance. The implication of course that the authorities who have high attendance rates are actually bad at measuring attendance.

Frankly, Greenwich Council needs to wake up and smell the coffee. The reason other authorities do better than it, is because their schools are good. It's not because Greenwich just pays particular attention to registration every morning. We have to say we're astounded that the Council would put out such stupid argument to justify its own incompetence in failing primary school children.

Greenwich Council spin at it's very best

When we set up this site we told the News Shopper that we wanted to "cut through the spin". We believe we've done that quite well in addition to the other stuff like legal threats, national media exposure and general gossip. Assuming we're to trust our traffic statistics there is an appetite out there for this site, the Council offices are no longer the highest percentage of the readership.

We've always known the Council places a higher priority on it's press management than anything else, an example of which can be seen in the GCSE results on their website. The spin on the results is quite subtle, but it's still there. If you visit here you will see that the GCSE results had a "slight drop on the previous year’s results". They link to the results table here. Now compare that results table to the one for the A-Level results here.

Isn't it interesting that the Council chose not to show this years GCSE results in comparison to last years? The odd thing is that we're pretty sure they were there a fortnight ago. Clearly someone wasn't happy about that, after all they make the claim of a "slight drop" laughable.

You see, whilst the entire country's GCSE averages went up, Greenwich's went down. Obviously they don't want you to know that though. If they did let you know then we'd need to change our logo strapline again in case anyone confused this site for theirs.