This weekend over 1066 people viewed Why does Simon Dudley believe his school can have £480,000 while others get NOTHING?

And since the 30th June, in less than a week, over 850 residents of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead have signed the petition demanding the council to change its mind… will they be able to ignore the electorate?

The cause of this outrage… Deputy Leader and “head of finance” for RBWM Conservative Councillor Simon Dudley has seen the school he founded awarded with £480,000 of CIL money, formerly Section 106, with others getting absolutely nothing.

Technically he may well be within his rights but morally and on any other level surely it’s unacceptable that the person who controls the purse strings is allowed to be involved in such decision?

In my opinion he either needs to step down from the council or step down from the school… how can he be impartial?

This story has been bubbling around since the elections which was my first introduction to politics and the way the world is spun…

I didn’t realise the level of self interest that fuels the motivation of those who choose to be part of the larger parties… which only reinforced my own desire for independence!

When Catherine del Campo Osborn, a local copywriter, decided to write the petition thank goodness she had the skills to write it properly… so many petition fail because the author has no real wordsmith skills and simply pours out a ton of emotion, allowing the target of their anger to smirk and walk away unscathed.

Hopefully the RBWM Council will take the petition and level of local feeling seriously and take the appropriate action.

Facebook has proven highly valuable in galvanising the energy of the people who were already angry but had not work out a way to vent their frustrations…

A Fair Funding for All Borough Schools Facebook page had been set up with a few hundred people liking it, with the glue of the Petition it now has 506 likes.

I’d been wondering how to approach this story but for the last few weeks I had been involved in a bunch of charity projects and so needed free head space to think it through.

I was made aware of the petition on Friday and had planned to simply chill out at the weekend after two busy weekends but as I enjoyed my new lounge on Saturday morning I figured pushing the story around the Windsor and Maidenhead Facebook Groups I was part of would make for some light entertainment that could potentially drive a few dozen signatures with a fair wind 😉

Great idea to put old sofas on decking, even if it's just for one summer #fancyabrew pic.twitter.com/rKjhVYl1Nw

— I Love Windsor (@WindsorWords) July 5, 2015

Historically, I have never had a single story achieve over 1,000 page views in a couple of days… nothing is really that interesting to others… I might find things interesting but that doesn’t mean others will too.

People are increasingly irritated with those in power thinking they can just do as they please and no-one will notice or even care…

This topic is obviously of interest and with over 850 signatures in just 6 days then the council had better take it very seriously indeed or the Tories could be out next election.

I did say to Adam Afriyie MP at the hustings that he needed to control the local councillors… see what happens when they run amuck Adam!

Social Media is an amazing sling shot, catapult, information driver for topics that impact a local community… make sure you use of it to both inform and be informed.

Thank you.

Jon