Charging at the tip now to get rid of certain things- that should guarantee more rubbish in the rhynes and hedgerows keeping Brittain tidy eh?

Hmm, I think you may unfortunately be right Michael. It is not as though people respect them already, but there are so many unscrupulous people around they'll dump their rubbish anywhere to avoid paying a few quid.

Sorry Nick,did you say tory brains. I was under the impression they were part of the cuts as well.

Half a tick fellows. The big tories - Eric Pickles, ( you can't get much bigger than him) the minister concerned have told the tories of Somerset off about this one and have actualy told us poor folk to object to Taunton rule over this load of rubbish

Hi VegaStar, sorry to confuse, the point I was making about John O when he visited is that he didn't quite seem to understand the benefits the SS brings to many of the frontline services who have had funding cut: the SS has never recieved funding from SCC despite years of trying, and my hope was that even a small amount of funding from them despite their cuts, would sustain the services for the benefit of all the children's services who have had their budgets slashed. These groups need to make their pennies work very well, and maintaining the work through creative activities and play is vital. John Osman doesn't 'get' that bit and undervalues this side of the work. He was keen to talk about throwing millions of pounds at social care off the back of the 'Baby P' incident but he doesn't see how valuable it is to have people working with families doing preventative work, such as in children's centres. Delivering a creative or play session using materials such as ours, to a small group of dysfunctional parents and their small children, can reap enormous benefits. More often than not, it's the simple softer skills that are needed to be developed; communication between parent and child, confidence, almost the 'permission' to relax and enjoy the activity with no expectations. The progress that can be made from this type of work is astounding. So he doesn't seem to appreciate the value in this, and then secondly, he doesn't appreciate the value in the fact that all these resources would normally go and be buried in the ground. It's a fals economy to slash children's services budgets and then expect them to spend their money of buying consumables from a catalogue. The result is that they can't afford to do this front-line, grassroots work and so it doesn't happen. Then the result is that families are being deprived of the kind of work that significantly works to negate potential difficulties between parents and children.
I'm not saying that the Scrapstore is the key ingredient but it is more valuable to these groups than the councillors understand. At least John Osman was good enough to actually come and look round - I can't recall any other local councillors taking the time to do so.
Sorry for the rant! But in answer to your question (!) MDC re-instated the third and final year of our core funding this year. £8000, which is a small but significant contribution towards the £45K needed to keep the place running on an annual basis.