We must celebrate people like Rosalind Brotherton, who proved herself and rose through ranks from dinner lady to headteacher
Rosalind was always more ambitious than doling out peas and mash - and climbed the greasy pole to prove she really could do better
WHEN her marriage broke down some two decades ago, it was imperative for Rosalind Brotherton to find work as she had three little boys to raise.
Being a dinner lady was perfect. The hours absolutely suited the family.
Although Rosalind hadn’t enjoyed the academic side of her own schooling (she left at 16) she was always more ambitious than just doling out the mashed potatoes and peas.
So while working at Swan Lane First School in Evesham, Worcs, she started studying at night for a history degree at the Open University.
With three rumbustious lads running around it wasn’t easy but she did it.
Next step was to gain the PGCE teaching qualification. And where better to be a trainee teacher than back at her old school, Swan Lane.
She moved to another school where in 2009 she was made deputy head.
And now, not surprisingly, she climbed to the top of the greasy pole and has been made head teacher at Flyford Flavell First School, near Worcester.
What a fantastic triumph. From dinner lady to head teacher. You couldn’t make it up.
And imagine if you were her sons Alexander, 28, George, 25, and Sebastian, 21. How proud they must be of their mum.
We should all salute the Rosalinds out there who refuse to accept the hand they have been dealt — instead saying “I can do better than this” — then going on to prove it.
OAP fee greed is a disgrace
IN the event you are planning a pension or, even worse, thinking of switching your current one, you must give the charlatans at St James’s Place wealth management a very wide berth indeed.
Not only because their exit fees are massive – why the Financial Conduct Authority hasn’t cracked down on this is quite beyond me – but also because of the way they hide their charges.
I am indebted to the excellent Sunday Times financial journalist Ali Hussain, who has been investigating the quasi-criminality at St James’s Place.
He took up the cudgels for lawyer Arnold Rosen, who simply wanted to know how much SJP had taken from his fund while it had grown from £280,000 in 2009 to £391,490 in 2015.
Try as he might, and he is a solicitor, he couldn’t get the number out of them. Finally he turned in desperation to reporter Ali.
It was only after weeks of to-ing and fro-ing (and remember they were the Sunday Times, not little old you) they revealed they had taken 24.9 per cent of the £111,490 growth.
It won’t surprise you that SJP is the only pension fund provider in the top ten that does not set out its charges online.
What have they got to hide?
These pension providers are making 40 per cent from you whereas energy companies have only four per cent margins.
Who would have thought I would hold up British Gas as an example of fairness to consumers?
So tell your friends not to have anything to do with St James’s Place wealth management.
They are not the slightest bit interested in your old age – only their own bank balance.
Post-Brexit Brit cars are promising
HAVING just bought an overpriced but incredibly basic BMW 4 series – for £41,000 you do get a door as standard – I am feeling pretty hostile towards the German car industry.
Brexit gives the UK a golden opportunity to start making our own cars once again.
If the idle, unionised French can produce excellent Renaults and Peugeots then anybody can.
Remember, these days the unions here only run the railways, so we won’t be producing any more of those disgraceful “Friday nighters” that destroyed our car makers in the Eighties.
If Toyota wants to bugger off from Derby I am sure there’s a clever designer/entrepreneur who can produce a great Britcar from the plant. There’s plenty of opportunity out there.
A Spokesman Saved...
I AM officially the dog’s b*****ks.
Column reader Wendy Taylor of Lancing, West Sussex, received her dog insurance renewal of £500, went on my price comparison site and got the same cover for £87.
Yes, £87. Further, she checked her home and contents insurance and instead of paying £465 with Lloyds she got better cover for £97.
She said the drinks are on me. With these savings the whole brewery should be on her.
Do keep sending your saving stories to kelvin@ the-sun.co.uk.
BlackRock's blacklist
THE giant American fund BlackRock (they have investments in EVERY Footsie 100 stock) has warned Britain’s largest companies that they will seek to overturn executive pay awards if they are larger than those being paid to their employees.
Great news. Some of the wages and especially pension perks given to ho-hum talent are a scandal and ill-deserved.
So how much do you think the founder of BlackRock, Larry Fink, paid himself last year?
a)$260.
b)$2,600.
c)$260,000.
d)$26,000,000
You’re ahead of me.
I think you will agree his argument may have had more impact if he was on c) rather than cleaning up on d).
'Bloody foreigners' are NHS lifeblood
A ROMANIAN lady who cleans for a friend of mine couldn’t find an NHS dentist to treat her tooth abscess, tried her local GP, went on to A&E who didn’t want her blocking the system, so finally paid £200 for a flight to Bucharest where a dentist did the business.
The lady was not impressed by our NHS.
She told my chum: “A&E is full of bloody foreigners.”
My recent experience is that it is “full of bloody foreigners” – they are the doctors and nurses doing a wonderful job, working flat out all hours of the night and day for comparatively little financial reward or praise.
Those “bloody foreigners” at a local A&E treated my mother magnificently last week.
I'll back Dan on front
EAT your heart out, Nike.
They decided in their infinite wisdom to stop sponsoring British No3 Dan Evans, which meant he had to buy his own plain £12 white T-shirt for his biggest-ever tennis test against seventh seed Marin Cilic in the Australian Open.
When you are going through a poor run like Nike, you can’t do anything right.
The apparel from Under Armour is killing them, they have pulled out of the golf clubs market and failed to back a winner in Evans, who went on to have the biggest success of his career by knocking out Cilic.
Anyway, I believe in Evans, who during his win chastised himself with the word t**t and followed it up by saying: “F***ing t**t”.
I wonder if Corbyn might do the same at PMQs?
So I contacted his people in Melbourne and offered him £5,000 to wear the logo of my price comparison site A Spokesman Said on his T-shirt for his next game against the mercurial Australian Bernard Tomic.
It may be too difficult or too late to get the logo on by today – you will know if you watch the game on Eurosport – but it’s worth 1) supporting one of our own, and 2) putting one in the eye of the losers who run Nike.
This week's top punnies
ON a builder’s van in Stoke-on-Trent – Don’t Steal My Tools. I Need Them To Pay Your Benefits.
Fish and chip shop in Bilston, West Mids – Singh For Your Supper.
Chimney sweep in Stafford – Up Yours.
Bakery in Castleford, West Yorks – Bake My Day.
On a van for Crocodile Cleaning in Merstham, Surrey – Give The Croc-a-Dial.
Roadside cafe/van on the A507, near Milton Keynes – Formula Bun Pit Stop.
Seen on a house cleaning van in Colchester – Crème De La Clean.
Motorcycle dealer in Stamford, Lincs – A Twist Of The Wrist.
Computer repairer in Bognor Regis, West Sussex – Bits and Bytes.
Off-licence in Southampton – Cloud Wine.
Trophy shop in Fareham, Hants – Katastrophies.
Your punnies are bigger and better than ever. Keep sending them to [email protected].
CLEARLY there was a price to be paid for a couple of heavy nights on the falling-over lotion, plus finishing off the last of the Christmas cake would not have helped.
But even so losing NO weight in week two at Slimming World was quite a setback.
When I looked crestfallen, the lady operating the weighbridge had a nice line in reassurance: “Never complain about maintain.”
AT his age it was not surprising Apprentice chairman Lord Sugar needed an urgent heart operation while holidaying in Florida to deal with a blocked artery.
What was astonishing was the doctors discovered a heart at all.
-Please note that in their previous version of this article, we said the total percentage charged by SJP was 35%, in fact it was 24.9%