As you will gather.
Even though I still feel strongly about issues in the town - in particular our very poor councillors- I'm spending less time dealing remotely with people as on this blog.
Talking directly to people who live nearby is far more rewarding.
Flag Fortnight is a far more stimulating project than I ever imagined.
It provides a taking point with all the people that live nearby.
I'm discovering all sorts of fascinating people that I've lived next to for years without realising who they were.
Now with a project like the Flag Festival, that most people love because of its past history in the town, talking to others becomes easy.
Most people like the kind of activities that are happening in The Gill - Pottery on the Railings and the Halloween Candlelit Walk - so there's a lot of cooperation and points of contact.
Only tonight I came away with another sixty pounds for the Ulverston Flag Project and good long chats with people that I didn't know before.
Dealing with 'the public figures' in the town can be so frustrating as they do so little but love grabbing the lime light and trying to appear 'important'. In the case of my own SLDC councillor, who loves making the most of his status, far from beoing helpful, he actually stops SLDC doing things for our area because it would reflect well on me and poorly on him. One civil servant described his actions as 'out of order' when I talked to him recently.
At a time of government cutbacks, local government can do less and less, so that the existing politicians are becoming irrelevant, so dealing directly with each other and the people who actually DO things, is far more effective and in my view avoids frustration and puts a spring in my step.
18 comments:
You are doing DOING.
A can do, will do.
How can we make it better attitude is working you have proof.
You have a very young innocent fun approach.
"If families want decent free fun join Geoff and group.
That is a very serious allegation. You're saying Councillor Hodgson is corrupt. What proof do you have to back that up?
Jeb.
Good.
I'm glad that someone else sees it as serious.
I have proof.
So what are you prepared to do about it?
if you have proof then post it up for everyone to see and make there own minds up
Jeb,
You seem to want to make out that I'm at fault.
Why aren't you soing something about this?
Contact the Councillor involved and ask for his reaction - as I have already done - several weeks ago.
Time to stop sniping. Get off your backside and do something.
As I said before I'm enjoying ignoring 'important people' and just getting on with action.
I see them largely as irrelevant.
Don't you?
For "soing" , please read "doing"
My finger missfired.
I do think that if you choose to defame one of our leading councillors in such a manner then it might have been prudent to contact him first to tell him that he is (allegedly) corrupt and you can prove it, rather than spread it all over the public prints, so to speak.
The only copper bottomed, 100% defence to an action for defamation is that any allegations are true. Are you certain of your facts? (not opinions, assumptions, circumstances or hearsay but Facts?) If not, a swift retraction might well be in order.
I agree entirely with Atticus.
Which is why I am raising the matter now having given the Councilor plenty of time to answer my allegations which were made several weeks ago.
I am happy to publish the correspondence between us should he wish it.
I am content to leave the councilor to speak for himself and for you the readers to check out his reaction to my statements.
Frankly, Geoff, I prefer you when you are at your best — getting on with delightful schemes.
Thanks Gladys - I certainly enjoy this more.
But then who will keep the politicians on their toes?
Or should I do what most people do - ignore them - a sad state of affairs in my view!
Geoff, you may very well have contacted him several weeks ago, raising your allegations. I assume this was done privately and that you received no response, or at least no response which satisfied you.
Did you tell him that should he not respond then you would "go public", thus indicating that it was probably in his interest to respond to you?
I must assume that you did. And also assume that the councillor regarded your allegations as baseless and adopted a "publish and be damned" stance, indicating that he could quite easily defend and disprove any allegations.
Mmmm. I think that you have not given this affair enough serious thought. had you kept the matter private - fair enough but you went public with, as jeb says above, a serious allegation.
Of course, I don't know any of the facts, having made your allegation you do not give us any details. Now may be a good time.
The feedback that you are giving me sounds like telling me how I should behave.
I am very happy with what I have done and leaving it to others to follow this up .
I suggest you contact the councillor involved if you are concerned.
As I said before I very happy passing this over to others to follow up if they wish.
I'm afraid your coming across as 'armchair politicians' - being critical, pronouncing judgement but doing nothing.
Why for a start don't you identify yourselves?
I'm not impressed!
Consider the "facts" Geoff.
You have seen fit to publically condemn one of our elected councillors as being corrupt.
By doing so you have chosen to abandon any confidentiality which existed in correspondence between you and the councillor.
Despite this, and despite the fact that you obviously feel strongly about his alleged activities and how they may affect the electorate of Ulverston, you choose to obfuscate and not give any detail.
You have a track record on this. Its only a couple of weeks ago you broadcast that somebody had been forcibly detained and was only rescued by yourself and another councillor. Again, you did not elaborate upon your accusation.
If I feel the need to "do", then I need to know both sides of the story and evaluate for myself what has or has not been going on! Neither myself nor anybody else it seems is getting your side.
Perhaps better just to regard your latest attempt at sensationalism as the utter piffle you seem to be getting rather fond of, of late!
You didn't publish my last comment, so I doubt you'll do so with this one, but in response to Atticus's very reasonable contribution you firstly wrote this:
'The feedback that you are giving me sounds like telling me how I should behave',
when there is no one, absolutely no one in this community who is more openly critical of others, almost always for no good reason and quick to tell them how to behave than you are. Followed by this:
'I'm afraid your coming across as 'armchair politicians' - being critical, pronouncing judgement but doing nothing'. When all you ever do is pronounce critically on others.
So far as I can see you're simply telling lies about Cllr Hodgson because you have no 'proof' to back up your allegations of his corruption, or your ego would have compelled you to have published it under a banner headline.
In a way it is a shame that Hodgson is a reasonable sort of person who perhaps as you down as a cross between the village idiot and the village gossip because you really do deserve to be punished for continually making unfounded accusations against others unable to defend themselves.
Jeb.
Jeb,
Rest assured I shall be publishing your comment but not as a comment here but as part of a posting devoted to your attitude.
Talk about spin.
How to make the bad guys sound like choir boys and the good ones like underhand ruffians.
You do a good job - but do any people really agree with you?
Let's have a debate in the public arena face to face and see how you fare!
May I remind you all that this posting was focussed on how I was enjoying not having to think about politicians.
It's clearly not a good idea to bring things out in the open.
Best to keep quiet and continue the hat doffing tradition of one hundred years ago; keep the mumbling and grumbling behind private doors.
Who said anyone was corrupt?
Corrupt no. Control maybe ?
We elect our servants to serve us.
The spoilt boys we have for a goverment are now learning at OUR peril.
eg.
Then John Mann rose, stared frostily in Mr Clegg's direction and declared: "He is the first deputy prime minister in British history to have failed to show up for work when the PM was away. My question is what's the point of Nick Clegg?"
Clegg almost closed his eyes - perhaps he was imagining a remote cabin with a wintery log fire and a glass of brandy to steady his nerves.
If an old war horse like CH and you could combine and co'operate WOW.
DO IT for the good of all.
Why don't you ?
"A selfish peron can gain everything but happiness"
A Roman
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