Small town delights (number 99 in an infinite series)

Posted by Justin on Mar 20, 2010 in Abaddons Musings, small towns, Tenterden | 0 comments This morning, while shopping in Tenterden with my daughter, I was approached by a postman in Waitrose with a recorded delivery letter that he had tried to deliver to my home earlier.He had left the usual card, so that I could collect the item from the sorting office. However, seeing me go into Waitrose, he followed, and I was able to take and sign for the item there.That’s what I call...
read more

Another school governor monitoring visit

Posted by Justin on Mar 18, 2010 in Abaddons Musings, cynicism, governor, local, small towns, Tenterden, Tenterden Infant School | 0 comments I have carried out another monitoring visit, this time focusing on “Community Cohesion”, which is a formal way of saying, “We all have to get along together, so play nicely” – I understate for effect, of course, but it does seem to require a lot of input for something that, in 90% of schools, must be taught and experienced automatically anyway. Ah, well, it ticks...
read more

School monitoring visit

Posted by Justin on Mar 10, 2010 in Abaddons Musings, local, small towns, Tenterden, Tenterden Infant School | 0 comments In my capacity as a governor of the Infant School in Tenterden, I today paid a monitoring visit to the schoolIt is always a delight visiting the school: all the children are well-behaved, happy and hard-working, and they really seem to thrive in the school’s positive atmosphere; It makes me quite proud to be a small part of that successMy visit focused on the “drop-off club” in...
read more

Dumped by the Abbey – an update

Posted by Justin on Mar 28, 2009 in Abaddons Musings, banks, conveyancing, lawyers, small towns | 0 comments Following representations made by the Law Society to the Abbey, it appears that the preremptory letter issued to 6,000+ firms last wek is part of an exercise to invite firms to apply to joing a combined panel for the Abbey and Alliance + Leicester. If this is true, the original letter was extraordinarily cack-handed, as it gave no hint of this. It may be that the Abbey is finding a way to climb...
read more

Dumped by the Abbey – yet more

Posted by Justin on Mar 27, 2009 in Abaddons Musings, banks, conveyancing, lawyers, local, small towns | 0 comments The Abbey’s draconian step of removing some 6,000 solicitors from its conveyancing panel for mortgage work – without warning or any specified reason except low volume of transactions – is getting some media publicity
read more

Dumped by the Abbey – further thoughts

Posted by Justin on Mar 25, 2009 in Abaddons Musings, conveyancing, lawyers, local, small towns | 0 comments I have today heard from another (fairly local) solicitor who has been dumped by the Abbey from its conveyancing panelThis is particularly harsh for him and his clients, as he has 4 cases going through at present, and suddenly the Abbey is disrupting everything and causing chaos and extra expense. This does not surprise me – the Abbey just does not seem to care – but it has firmed up...
read more