The Community Councils Review – a diseased language
published this on 4:30 pm, Thursday, 25th June, 2009Community News| Local Government | Comments (rss) | Respond | Ping |
Along with the communities themselves, we have been dragging our way through the strategic review of Community Councils. The issue became whether to take a shotgun to its authors or to seek relief by turning it on ourselves. Then one of the emails we’ve had on the matter seemed to say it all. So here it is:
‘ The community council strategy paper has been distributed recently and I have just sat through an interminable meeting deciding on how our cc is going to respond. Problem is the chair spent two days wading through the thing just so he could competently summarise the thing. It is written in such badly constructed corporatese that we wee folk o’ the glen hardly know wha’ they’re talking aboot. The story is that they talk about engagement and then they do the worst thing they could by asking for feedback on a barely credible document. They also propose a whole new level of admin and management. Have you had feedback on this at all? For a flavour this is one of my favourite paragraphs (5.3.1):
” The Argyll and Bute Community Planning Partnership brings together the public, private and voluntary sectors in Argyll and Bute enabling them to work together more effectively and efficiently. From 2009/10 the Argyll and Bute Single Outcome Agreement (which forms the basis of the funding relationship between local government and Scottish Government) will be developed by the Argyll and Bute Community Planning Partnership. The Community Planning Partnership is currently drafting an Argyll and Bute Community Engagement Strategy which will build on the National Community Empowerment Action Plan and will set out the principles by which the Argyll and Bute Community Planning Partnership and Argyll and Bute Council seeks to work with local communities. ”
To turn decent analysis on stuff like this would be an abuse. The choices of response are a bullet or a laugh. So – comments, cries for help, clinical diagnoses, offers of therapy, keys to ammunition stores … all welcome.
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June 27th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
Wholeheartedly agreed. I’ve reviewed many a document in the past, a necessary evil but accepted the need and felt it a useful task. This series of documents score 0 out of 10 for semantics and syntax. Lots of fresh gargon introduced to what purpose? I really question whether any of the new rules and regulations will help attract more of the community to step forward. I’m sure that we will look back sometime in the future and wonder what it was all about. Thank goodness that the deadline for comments has now passed.