MEDWAY's Cabinet meets tomorrow. There's nothing unusual in that.
It's a month since it last met - that is less usual.
What is absolutely normal is that nothing is likely to be discussed by the august members about the Woodlands School debacle.
This shocking mess has cost council tax payers a couple of million unnecessarily-spent pounds on an education scheme that no-one is sure who authorised it.
One senior person to leave the council is Simon Trotter, an assistant director with a record of mistakes that include the mishandling of the primary school mergers, the scrapping of scheme one for Borstal's primary school rebuilding and - now - the little-short-of-disaster modifications at Woodlands School that were supposed to make 15 extra pupil places available.
Mr Trotter has gone with a golden handshake in the form of an enhanced pension following a disciplinary hearing.
As one person said to me: "It was either that or he would stay on sick leave, being paid and blocking a replacement."
Mr Trotter is not a well man. I am sorry about that.
What I am not sorry about is the catalogue of errors from which he has repeatedly escaped scot-free.
The report into the debacle that is Woodlands does not make it clear that the children at the school were safe. It may be half a century before some of those youngsters start to develop breathing difficulties leading to asbestosis and mesathelioma. They had unfettered access to the work areas where builders were merrily smashing their way through asbestos areas.
There was no segregation of the workmen from the children or teaching staff, no protective screens, no clothing changes, nothing.
If people suggest this is scaremongering, think again.
In Higham the wives of workers at the former British Uralite factory never went to their husbands workplaces, but they contracted the cancers that took their husbands lives. They got it because they breathed in fibres from the clothes their husband wore.
Let us hope none of the children and staff at Woodlands breathed in anything dangerous. The trouble is, if they did the symptoms can take decades to be known. By then it is too late.
***
The matter will be discussed in open session tomorrow night by the normally lightly-loaded audit committee.
Among those expected to attend are the headmaster and the chairman of governors, Elena Mutter-Child.
The charismatic head teacher, Nic Fiddaman, strongly denies any responsibility for the appointment of his school manager's building firm to the contract. Whoever did - and it seems to have happened at the school rather than at the council - failed to observe European competitive tendering requirements. And he admits he did nothing to monitor the work.
The audit report is a masterpiece of understatement. It was, they said, "at best a catalogue of errors."
This type of mayhem could happen increasingly with the withdrawal of supervision from schools. This is because the government is increasing the ease for schools to opt out of local government control.
Which is fine if they know what they are doing - and they have someone else to supervise them.
***
Cars have found Canadian Avemnue in Gillingham to be a fun place to race when there is a storm. It's one of those streets where the drains are incapable of moving all the water as quickly as the heavens empty it.
The result is that in sudden storms there can quickly be a foot of water outside local homes, followed by a tidal wave of tsunami proportions as drivers race into the flood..
It is, said Southern Water, an "extreme event".
That's correct - about every 16 weeks. That's how often the average gap is between "extreme events",
Southern Water has told householders new sewers are now in the company's five year plan - but that doesn't start until 2013.
RSS feeds