Unsavoury Practices

Rigging your public engagement to make it look as if you've got  community support for your management is corruption. That's because public money is involved. Without being able to demonstrate public support you're less likely to get the grant money dispensed by those entrusted to respond to grant applications. So you need to show the public's behind you, even if it isn't.

That's why attracting volunteers and showing support in consultations is so important to the likes of SRWT and others and why they put so much members' money into public relations spinning a narrative that portrays themselves as the guardians of wildlife. It's why we get the excruciating manipulation of language and the resources dedicated to press releases, Twitter and Facebook.

But ultimately if you're representing something as different to what it really is in order to get funds what do you call it? Some may say that's normal practice these days which shows how standards have fallen.

On Blacka the public engagement via the RAG was not serving the purpose of the managers so it was scrapped in favour of another system that is not transparent yet designed to show the authorities, and dispensers of grants, that the public (in this case anonymous) are in support. That is corrupt.