Author Archives: Rebecca Hanson

Opinion: Radioactive waste consultation – a loss of public trust

By Rebecca Hanson | Mon 18th February 2013 - 12:53 pm

On Wednesday 30th January Cumbria County Council voted not to proceed with a consultation to explore Cumbria being the host of a high level radioactive waste repository. This left Ed Davey with a problem.

The problem is very substantial and urgent as there are facilities at Sellafield full of decaying and highly toxic waste including B30 and B38, which are considered to be the most hazardous buildings in Western Europe. These structures are in a deteriorating condition

Posted in Op-eds | 50 Comments

Opinion: A serious blow to Gove’s Red Guard – How will the Lib Dems respond?

By Rebecca Hanson | Fri 23rd March 2012 - 12:36 pm

Michael Gove’s and Sir Michael Wilshaw’s plans to use Ofsted to drive up standards in schools have been much vaunted in the press recently.

Hit squads of inspectors started arriving in schools in January to force the ‘satisfactory’ schools into special measures and to force schools to rapidly rid themselves of their ‘satisfactory’ teachers. The fact that ‘satisfactory’ is a categorisation used for all qualities of service about which there is no cause for concern and which often includes highly regarded practices which don’t tick the boxes Ofsted has defined for higher classifications (especially in teaching) does not concern them.

But it is …