In response to an article in last week's Hackney Gazette about the site of Bibs and Braces nursery being turned into a private nursery - with the help of lottery funding - a Hackney Independent letter from Asha Kelly hit back. Lead letter in Hackney Gazette 23rd October reprinted here:

Councillor Linda Kelly may be denying any responsibility for shutting the Bibs and Braces nursery (Nursery Back in Business - Hackney Gazette October 16 2003) but it was her party that sold it off last year. Closing down a council-run nursery that served working class parents and reopening it as a private nursery charging £135 a week may strike some as perverse until you realise that this privatisation by stealth seems to be part of Labour's strategy in Hackney and beyond. If the nursery is now "vital for the area" as Cllr Kelly claims, wasn't it "vital for the area" when it was council run and a whole lot cheaper?

Isn't it also a touch ironic that the new nursery can now be built after lottery funding was made available? After all, it's not usually the middle class who buy the lottery tickets which provide the money for lottery funding, but the working class. A strange case of the poorer part of the community dipping into their pockets to subsidise a private venture for the better off!