Lunacy of the Week 2

This is the second Lunacy of the Week entry. For the second week running, I am submitting this after the Friday deadline. My, my, the auguries are not good. I promise to be more efficient from now on.

Ever heard of the Local Government Ombudsman? I hadn't until last week. For now I am prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt that they do a useful job. It is hard, though, as the next paragraph will demonstrate.

We are informed in the Sunday Telegraph of 9 October 2005 that a council that expelled a boy from school for carrying a knife has been fined 10,000 pounds by the Ombudsman for failing to find him another school. Poor Greenwich council. We are told that the ruling includes a payment of 5,000 pounds to the pupil's mother to compensate her for the 'anxiety and uncertainty she has suffered' while her little cherub was out of school. I should add that the council did make attempts to place Bladeboy in other schools, but not surprisingly, not all the schools were willing to have him. One school, though, was brave enough to take him, but he did not want to go there. He was then offered a place in a pupil referral unit, but his mother was not happy as it did not offer the full range of GCSE results. One would think that Mama Bladeboy would have been more concerned about keeping her loathsome child out of jail.

The Ombudsman also ordered Greenwich council to pay 6,000 pounds to meet the cost of tutors for the boy.

For the avoidance of doubt, the award for Lunacy of the Week goes to the Ombudsman, although Mama Bladeboy came pretty close to nicking it. I promise, I will get round to contacting the Ombudsman. I still haven't contacted last week's winner though, so first things first.