A Morbid Fear....

"I have a morbid fear of the public gaze.............." ** ( Conan Doyle -see below)

It's about scrutiny. A few 'whys': Why would those managing a public service/asset wish to avoid scrutiny? Why is this a major problem in local governance? Why did the Rotherham scandal happen? Many more 'whys' along the same lines.

Scrutiny is a major safeguard for the public. So why has it been abandoned?

Scrutiny is  not simply a gathering of information and views from a section of the public which are then processed by professionals with total authority in their field. It is about  independent people including those directly concerned and well-informed, putting questions some of which will be searching, and getting answers from those in a position of responsibility. When Blacka's Reserve Advisory Group (RAG) was meeting four times a year it was possible to ask these searching questions, much though the managers disliked it. It was possible in this way to reach a conclusion about what was being done and the judgements of managers. It was possible to hear about plans before they had gone too far to alter. That's almost certainly why the RAG stopped; fear of the 'public gaze' and a desire to avoid being accountable for decisions taken. Well before then managers had tried various means to avoid searching questions from the public, including packing the RAG meetings with agenda items driven from above, taking an inordinate amount of time over items they felt comfortable with, putting a rigid time limit on potentially difficult agenda items, talking fast and quiet in the hope that things would not be noticed and challenged.

Amid general concerns about inadequate scrutiny in Sheffield City Council its Director of Policy Performance and Communications is conducting a review of Scrutiny. An interim report was presented to Sheffield's Scrutiny Overview Board on 24th September

 http://sheffielddemocracy.moderngov.co.uk/documents/s15248/Scrutiny%20Review%20Report%20v%201%200.pdf

The suspicion is always that democratic scrutiny is an inconvenience to those in post. They simply don't like people asking questions about decisions they're making. And that's sometimes because there's something not quite right about a decision and the way it's been taken.

Another recent quote.

There should be nothing threatening about this; good officers should welcome challenge as an essential part of local democracy.

                                 ........ from the Jay Report into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham


According to the Centre for Public Scrutiny too much local decision making is inadequately monitored.

• How do I know that this council, and those with whom it works, will be aware when significant problems rear their head – and do I have confidence that this information will be acted on?

• Does scrutiny have access to information which will allow me to confidently challenge, on the basis of independent evidence, the council’s assertions about the quality of a service?

• Do council officers and officers from other agencies accept that scrutiny has this role to play?

 ____________________________________________________

** Quoted from Lord Holderness, a character in The Priory School, by Arthur Conan Doyle 

Rightly Suspicious

No self respecting wildlife has much time for humanity. And I sometimes feel guilty on behalf of my species for all the damage we still cause to wild nature. So those that can move quickly should be congratulated on a fast gettaway. Fortunately most humans don't look around much.

So failure to get a decent photo of the roe deer this morning should be a cause of celebration that the animals are wise enough to shun people. So the pictures are simply a record. A buck and two does, and none seen for months.

New Gods, Old Gods

Looking to the east brings this on. Somebody, I can't recall who, described consumerism as a God of the present age. It might be better to say that it has replaced God in the minds of many. And it needs energy to fuel it. So the power station takes on a role that other structures might have played in the past.

Just a few degrees on the compass to the south take us to a bearing directly east.

Perhaps the finest cathedral in the land. And anyone who doubted that the bump on the horizon really is Lincoln should zoom in a bit more.

Chain-Saw Alert

More crass intervention imminent from conservation vandal madcaps.

 

The storyline does not change. If it's not chain saw murder it's herbicide poisoning. Cutting down trees is an obsession with sections of today's conservation industry. Forget any assertion that they value wildlife when they swing into manly action bent on cutting down some of the best wildlife.

The only excuse I've heard for destroying trees here in this part of Blacka is that eventually trees would spread across Cowsick and change the habitat in which other plants thrive such as Bog Asphodel. That's the kind of tangled up thinking you get into when you try to justify intervention.What could be more mind-boggling than cutting down beautiful native trees to 'protect' a special wild flower when at the same time you're bringing in non native alien heavy farm beasts who trample all over the very same flowers?

On this part of Blacka the landscape is brought to life by the trees that are there all the time. They are mainly young and have slowly and heroically survived the worst of droughts, bizzards, severe frosts and storms. Their position alongside and across the levels owes nothing to the human intervention we know about from the present management characterised by clumsiness and poor taste and owes everything to the spirit of true wildlife.

Some of us have watched them and loved them and photographed them over many years. Those planning to destroy them should be ashamed for even thinking about it.

Last year trees were casually destroyed in the area of this photograph purely, I believe, to satisfy the need to give some employment to surplus workforce. Remember this when somebody tries to get you to contribute funds to wildlife charities and demand that they show how well informed they are about what's going on here.

Please God, give us some land free from meddlesome humans.

More Stirrings

Following on from this post, Time to Stir, another obvious inducement for the stags to move onto Blacka was  just a few yards away this morning.

The Ugly Side of Biodiversity

"But you like the Bog Asphodel flowers, don't you"

Is this question sincere or disingenuous - a complete misinterpretation of all I've said?

Apparently they are planning to cut down more birch trees at Cowsick. The stated justification is that Cowsick bog is 'the most biodiverse' part of Blacka and birch is 'threatening' that.

I repeat once more, mixing patience and indignation, that I don't want human intervention. If one part of the natural world gains an advantage over another part that is just what happens. When office workers decide that cowpats shall be deposited all over an otherwise beautiful scene that is vandalism. Hence the comment  "you like bog asphodel" comment, implying that if I don't support the felling of trees then I'm responsible for the flower being put under threat. Do they really not get it or are they so strangling their thinking to deny the obvious?

It is getting to the point where I might have to accept that stupidity and insensitivity has defeated me. Without the trees this place has no value for me. They break up the monotony of the view. They show the passage of the seasons. The birds love them. But some perverse agricultural dogma has it that cows and cowpats are more important than native trees. Where do these people get programmed? Are there indoctrination clinics, disguised as in-service conferences?

It has to be asked. Just how far does the biodiversity agenda go? In the case of something being acknowledged as natural and beautiful is it justifiable to change it industrially for the worse because there would probably be an improvement in its biodiversity? If that question can't be answered then they should be doing a different job. (South Yorkshire has a vacancy at the moment.)

Time to Stir

Weeks of stillness have given way to change. Fresh winds and lower temperatures mean brighter skies, and wildlife responds. Leaves are patterning the paths, and bracken has been knocked back while kindly rewarding us with its best scorched colouring. Birds of many kinds are in restless pre-migration mode. In the mists of the last few days Chiff Chaffs were calling in the birch. They were silent today, if they were still there. Others were twittering and fidgeting instead. Whinchats in the bilberry and young birches that break up the uniformity of the heather stands. Jackdaws in loose formation heading west, a pattern that repeats every morning through the season.

Looking around for stags after many days absence, because these are just the conditions when they think of moving onto Blacka, I could see none. For them the new coolness, the promise of fewer midges in the fresh breeze, and the variety of food and shelter available are an inducement. Finally one was spotted far off in the bracken above the track. Right after all.