duh

The locals are agog, Councillors are holding Press Conferences to announce progress on redesigning our Town Centre.

Curious, this. We have a party who have been in power since Noah finished off the scale drawings for his boat. These guys must be the supreme embodiment of the people’s wishes. How could they not be?

Election after election these shining examples of truth, beauty (well, not beauty!), commonsense and responsibility, trundle themselves forward, pick up the block vote, then settle down for a further cycle of good works, bit of cheer leading, and poking the Neighbourhood Forms in the eye.

But you might think, or at very least be forgiven for thinking, that their collective hearts would beat to the same drum as the People. That they themselves might know instinctively what it is that the people want. They, after all, meet and greet, they talk and they listen, they make themselves available, they pose for pictures when the MP is unavailable.

Would they not be in prime position to form a view of what the Town is,- and what the Town might be?

Er……No.

This happy band display all the sublime inner confidence of a paranoid fieldmouse on the downers.

Given a substantial sum of money to redesign the Town Centre, they come up with the jaw dropping proposal that this should be turned over to ‘Expert Consultants’ whose conclusions will be available for public consultation.

You and I, the little people, will be given the awesome responsibility of selecting which of the expert schemes we prefer.

Should we, however, take the view that the experts have missed the point, our view would not prevail. The money, by then, would have gone. Along with the expert.

We don’t need experts at this stage. Any fool can find an expert. We need local leadership to state convincingly and unequivocally what the Town might be. We need the matter robustly debated – we could even do it in public. And then we need the result converted into a first stage brief by an expert.

Our councillors enjoy the trappings of office. They do not seem to understand the responsibilities of power.

They should take advice.

Perhaps from an Expert Consultant.



Nightwatchman