These are testing times here in Birmingham. The city is presently the focus for a highly charged debate about the meaning and prevalence of extremism.
Prompted by the alleged "Trojan Horse plot", what started with a relatively straight-forward need to investigate concerns about suspected abuses of school governance by religious conservatives has since metamorphosed into a contentious war of words about where the threshold of extremism should be drawn - crudely caricatured as lying somewhere between the crocodiles and the whole swamp - and whether or not some schools have crossed an, at best, I'll-defined red line.
As someone who holds a politically restricted post what I truly think about these deeply politicised issues will have to wait for my memoirs (working title "The Graveyard Is Full Of Irreplaceable Town Clerks"). But what I believe I am entitled to talk about is the moral imperative we all share to remember the children in all this.
Read the full feature, from the chief executive of Birmingham City Council, for free here.
