The local conservation mafia are shameless. The minutes of their SMP Action Planning Workshop in July speak volumes about their blinkered views and arrogance. Another choice excerpt from this priceless document tells how they consider themselves above public scrutiny. In a section reporting their plans for future meetings we read:
"Minutes of the meeting may well appear in the public domain due to freedom of information act, so any confidential items will be highlighted as such within the meeting and minuted as such."
This shouldn't really need any explanatory comment but, just to underline the message, they don't believe that the public should know what officers employed by the public (us) are planning. Demands of transparency put upon them by nationally agreed legislation are an unfortunate inconvenience and limit their options for secretly getting what they want and plotting their actions out of the public gaze.
So they intend to subvert the legislative requirements by erecting another 'confidential' barrier around certain decisions and discussions. This has the effect of setting at least three tiers of information. First is the version presented to the public, second is what you might discover if you go to the trouble of sending in a freedom of information request and third is what they agree between them in advance not to disclose. Managing the process indeed, and making sure that any consultation leads only to their preferred solution. Who do they think they work for?
They talk also of concerns about being an Inner Sanctum. What ill-founded self- importance. By their language we shall know them. A clique of self-serving yet publicly employed professionals with a fear that they will be found out and held to account only listening to what they want to hear.
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