The Manchester Evening News has a letter today that slams Kate Chappell, the Executive Member for the Environment for a broken promise (she said she would set up a blog, never did so). The letter (written by some Moss Side malcontent) also points out that the so-called and needs-to-be-killed-off “Stakeholder Steering Group” won’t even allow elected members of the Council to view its meetings.
Here’s the letter.
And here is the text of what I sent, which they’ve not altered;
Thank you for your report on the draft Transport for Greater Manchester report, with its vision of “nightmare scenario” of floods and heat-related deaths by 2040.
Since 2008 various public bodies, including the council, have been producing principles documents, ‘mini-Sterns’, ‘Calls to Action’, Climate Change Action plans, delivery plans, refreshes and pink and polka dot plans. All say action must – and will – be taken to avoid future disaster. If documents full of bureaucratic bluster could save the world, then the upcoming Paris climate meeting would have been cancelled thanks to Manchester’s council.
Two examples of the escalating failure will suffice. In February 2014 the Executive Member for the Environment, Kate Chappell, wrote a letter, on council letterhead, that promised to set up a blog detailing what she was doing, by March. She never did that, or explained why not.
At the last Neighbourhoods Scrutiny Committee meeting Councillor Dan Gillard (chair of the committee) asked if he would be able, as an elected representative of the people of Manchester to attend meetings of the “Stakeholder Steering Group on Climate Change”, which was set up in 2010 to galvanise action. He wasn’t even given the courtesy of a straight answer, yes or no. That’s stakeholder democracy for you! If it weren’t so serious and tragic, it would be funny.
marchudson.net 
Marc – democracy is far too precious and delicate to be just handed over to the mob.
There are interests – folks who have a stake in the future far outweighing you own. They involve cash. They have invested in the past and that gives the past a greater influence over the future than folks like you and me who are just worried about leaving a livable planet.
Democracy coquettishly suggests we are all equal. It suggests it but doesn’t deliver.
Great letter. I expect you will be deported shortly.
Sadly I cannot disagree with your assessment. Noam Chomsky uses a quote by John Dewey –
As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance.
Quoted in John Dewey and American Democracy by Robert Westbrook (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 440; cited in Understanding Power (2002) by Noam Chomsky, ch. 9, footnote 16; originally from “The Need for a New Party” (1931) by John Dewey, Later Works 6, p. 163. (Via Westbrook.)
Re: deportation. I took the precaution of being born in Australia before 1986 to two ten-pound Poms. Voila – two passports!! And, theoretically, protection against deportation, if not rendering and drone strikes…