Cold comfort for children

There's one rule for councillors and another for schoolchildren at West Sussex County Council.

Schoolchildren, even if they live in poverty, can no longer get hot school meals from this mean-minded authority. But councillors still get piping hot meals served to them in style.

Demonstrators who turned up at County Hall yesterday to protest over the axed hot school meals were rightly disgusted when they saw the councillors about to tuck in to a hot beef dish, washed down with wine.

It would save council taxpayers a lot of money if these councillors, who are largely well-heeled, were not provided with hot meals.

They would certainly not like to sample the cold packed lunches that are now provided for children at the schools.

Hungry protesters sniffed at the meal served to councillors and thought it smelled delicious.

They may have picked up more than a whiff of hypocrisy about the hot civic lunch and it was still cold comfort for the kids.

Strike a deal

Strikes have largely disappeared from Britain since the bad old days of the Seventies and Eighties.

But that does not apply to railways in Sussex, where a hard-nosed privatised railway company keeps clashing with an obdurate union.

Last month, industrial action by the train drivers' union Aslef was called off after a one-day strike, but now it has announced even more stoppages.

Let's hope for the sake of hard-pressed rail travellers that these two tough customers can settle their differences within the next few days.

If not, the rail franchising director may well wonder why Connex is involved in so many disputes compared with other operators.

You pay anyway

Residents of the Kemp Town Estate claim Brighton and Hove Council may not have the authority to impose a parking scheme on them.

They say there's no record that the council ever took over the roads from the old estate many years ago.

But there's a catch. If the roads are private, then the council has spent thousands of pounds on them over the years without being paid for the work.

The residents might end up paying the biggest parking bills in town instead.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.