So that was SWT’s public engagement, that was. It could be
the last we hear of bringing people together to consider the vision for
Blacka. Because that was not what
happened. Accountability it ain't.
There were more conservation professionals than 'members of
the public' at last night’s event. I know. I asked for a hand show.
Have Your Say is the call. Public engagement is happening
here! Our managers are out on a search for people who might tell them what they
wish to hear. I may just possibly have already said what I think about
post-it-note consultation fraud and its prevalence as a way of avoiding
accountability. But let's stay with it a bit; there’s more to say.
SWT's contribution to the public engagement event was
characterised by fear. See the previous post. They have employed a professional
fixer/facilitator with a clear mandate
to manage the avoidance of public discourse. He is paid according to his
success in preventing challenge to the managers and delivering for them a
minimal-stress event. All is an exercise
in ducking and dodging of responsibility. The flimflammery of the post-it-note
consultation has now been replaced by the racket of the post-it-note public
engagement. Some care has been taken with the choice of words. And with the
process itself. All is focused on evading an awkward challenge in public,
something dreaded by institutions with a bad conscience. So the meeting is
planned to disperse the seated participants around the room. This is welcomed
by many because they have been carefully placed in a small hot sweaty room
uncomfortably close to one another. Thus
they make dupes of us all. This is well known to those in the infamous trade of
devious facilitating. (The more comfortably your audience is sitting the more
likely they are to want to stay in their places to ask questions.) Start with a
boring or badly presented talk - in this case a screen that can only be seen by
the front row - and they soon get restless and welcome a chance to get up and
talk among themselves.
So engagement with the public is via the route of divide and
control. As they leave their seats you isolate potentially troublesome
individuals (guess who?). That avoids the unsavoury effect (for the managers)
of the public sharing information and perspectives that could create the kind
of challenge that becomes hard to cope with in a larger group. The beauty of
the post-it note scam is that most people don't know what the other
participants are saying or writing on their post-it notes. The idea that that
some sort of dialogue between people reading each others' notes is ridiculous
yet I've heard it claimed as a justification. They might as well be in a
confessional cubicle.
So it’s have your say. But who says what? I personally wrote
nothing on any post it note. What’s the point when the process is so flawed:
for example, how do we know if post it note comments were written by ‘the
public’ or by professionals who are there to back each other up? That was a
commitment made at the earliest Sheffield Moors Partnership meetings. Nor
whether SWT themselves have already put in their own comments? That is a serious
comment. We know they can’t be trusted. There is already an online form for
people to comment on. These comments are anonymous. But what are the safeguards
against, say 20 employees commenting or 30 mountain bikers with no indication
where they are coming from?
The managers, who've already committed themselves to the
decisions that are the only ones worth discussing, will sift through these
anonymous comments and Pick N Mix the ones that fit their own agenda. They will
then claim they've run a proper consultation. The cost of this will never be
disclosed, but a fair guess is that it will be covered by some kind of grant
funding part of it from Sheffield City Council who were not represented at the
event. Other contributions will come from pensioners who were accosted to join
the trust outside their local supermarket or on their own doorstep.
As ever, the only thing that’s transparent is that we are
engaging with a scam.
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