Ah! ah! Thanks, no I'm not a Councillor-I like to feel proud of the things in which I'm involved -and who admires and respects local goverment?0-). I am an aging (but not that old) Community Activist with some successes at getting other people active and involved. I do see the sense and necessity for the 'Real People, Real Power' and the links to that document are somewhere in the postings to this conversation. Because I want the things I and the groups I am with to become sustainable - to go on after me and the other very few people (also aging), we need more people to take an interest and anything that gets people up and interested is of interest to me. I never bothered about what the politians were up to until I got interested in those things. THEN I bothered!, because I could see how the action of goverment and council reflected on our everyday lives. I also learned how things worked, especially locally. OMG! If our council could find some way of implementing 'Real People' and giving some control to Communites, we may find that people would be more interested, more would become involved and then eventually more would become more political in their thinking. They would then stand for Council, we might eventually have a good choice of who to select then elect. If they were active citizens before they stood, they would go into it with some knowledge - not just what they thought, but what they actually KNEW. Say what you like the options are not good at the moment, especially in local government.
Me and other like me, (and I stress -there are few enough of them left), are angry that the Borough, trying to implement 'Real People' using 'Connecting People' will not work. Especially as they have invented the whole thing (without the very consultation that 'Real People' promotes, which is bottom up and NOT top down) and with the very people it will effect the most - those already active and with the experience to help them do it. Even if they by-passed us (troublemakers?), they have still not gone to the communities and asked how it will effect them. At the time when they should be offering more support they are cutting the very jobs that will help them do it well. They have repeatedly (mis)interpreted prior legisilation to their own ends, so they find us at the start of 'Connecting People' with hardly anyone to connect with in the first instance. When things don't work they say that's because they haven't had government funding for it. I could say more about the funding but this is a bit of a tirade, so will leave that for another time. In answer to your question: I don't think - No I'm sure Connecting People won't, do the job for Real People, because it's nothing new and dynamic. Again thanks for kind words. Mart:
I think you are right, the old way of developing communties are tried and tested, people have to have a few wins to feel empowered enough to join in and I don't mean 'Awards' or money in hand, but Real People wins like saving the Mechanics, not the sneers and derision we get at present. It's like we are the enemy instead of the hard working citizens they say they want.
