Topic: | Re:Re:I am back after Bronchitas and answer's are still needed! Watch this space | |
Posted by: | Phil Andrews | |
Date/Time: | 13/11/10 14:52:00 |
Dawn It was good to see you at the Legion and I am sorry to hear that you have been suffering with bronchitis - I do hope the two events were unconnected. I am pleased that you would appear to have overcome the condition and are fighting fit once again. Your disappointment at the nature of the meeting was obvious Dawn but with respect I do think the misunderstanding was yours. You told the meeting that you had come to "have a go" and expressed your disappointment that there were no council officers present, but I don't that anybody had ever suggested to you there would be. It was a meeting of LBH Watch, and council officers do not attend although we have had a couple of councillors come along on a previous occasion and others have indicated that they may do in the future. I do not recognise the alleged instructions about LBH Watch not being permitted to "criticise" or "antagonise" the council. I can assure you that when required we have done both and the reaction towards LBH Watch by some Labour and ersatz Labour councillors, past and present, on this forum bears testimony to this. But any criticisms we make must be constructive, intelligently made and, most of all, reasonable. We could have spent the entire duration of the meeting shouting at one another about the things we believed to be wrong with the local authority, but although this approach may make some feel better it would not have achieved a thing. The approach preferred by LBH Watch is patient, measured, logicial, organised and clinical and in my view that is entirely the right way to go about things. I also feel it would be inappropriate for a group such as LBH Watch to single out a particular political party for criticism as you seem to suggest we should. Despite the untypically modest turnout (the list of apologies submitted on this occasion was actually longer than the attendance list) we had people present from all of the major political parties in Hounslow, and I would not be happy for LBH Watch to risk alienating any of those very sincere and useful people by turning what is supposed to be a constructive initiative designed to help introduce some transparency into our local government into some kind of narrow political crusade. We will inevitably during the course of our work upset those who feel they have a personal or political interest in resisting any move towards greater transparency but I believe it is important that we recognise this to be a cultural battle as opposed to a party political one. One should remember too that many of the problems we face from elements within the Lampton Road bureaucracy have not just arisen during the last six months. The appalling treatment meted out to Nick Marbrow in labelling him a "vexatious complainant", for instance, came about during the coalition administration, as did a similar attempt to prevent Christine Diwell of The Isleworth Society from contacting the council on behalf of hundreds of local residents whom she represents. The latter didn't happen solely because the ICG made it clear that we would not tolerate it and would bring the whole matter to a head if it wasn't instantly dropped, but what was perhaps most telling about this whole experience was the preparedness of certain chief officers to challenge the Community Engagement agenda head-on even during the coalition administration. One cannot blame Labour councillors for this. Dawn, if you prefer a more vigorous approach there will be a new initiative in the New Year which I feel may be more to your taste and I will keep you posted on that one. But LBH Watch is the wrong vehicle for table-thumping protest and nobody would be helping its cause by trying to push it in that direction. |