Area Forum Meeting - Episode IV "A New Hopelessness"

Below are the alternative minutes to last night's Area Forum meeting. I will type up the second half of the meeting (the GLSG bit) when I get a minute.

Excuse grammar, spelling etc.

After waiting for a baby-sitter so that I could attend this meeting of the great and the not-so-good, I was a little late.

I missed an update on the St. Ann’s Hospital development, but was in time to hear further evidence of the shoddy consultation process in the Q&A.

Next to speak was Joe Goldberg with some Council accountant side-kick. Joe was every inch the Cannes man (assuming that man is Philip Green). Blue suit jacket with jeans, and billowing untucked shirt.

They had come as part of the “Where Next” consultation. It was billed as an opportunity to discuss the regeneration plans and to let the Council know what our …”main priorities are for the area”. We were presented with a 2.5 minute video you may have seen before.

It has been claimed by some Councillors that the video is simple electioneering by the Labour Council.

At the end of the video Joe projected 3 questions on the monitor. What do you love about Haringey? What are your concerns? And, it think, something about what needs to change?

So, these trite and puerile questions that have been answered ad-nauseam simply illustrated the lack of conviction and integrity the Council has in genuinely consulting the public.

Joe insisted that we break into two groups to discuss these 3 questions. If he had been given his way, that would have been it. But Zena insisted that we have a proper Q&A as well.

Joe took one group and the accountant took the other. What the purpose of this was is hard to fathom. An accountant asking about social issues? Joe Goldberg asking about social issues?

I watched as Joe jotted down some of the group’s ideas onto his scrap piece of paper. ‘I love the parks’ said the lady in a floral dress. ‘What about the dog mess’, said another. ‘We need planning enforcement’, ‘Thanks for selling our Parks to promoters’ etc…

This childish pantomime continued for far too long. I suggested that it was wasting time and was not productive... that these questions had been answered too many times before.

I also suggested that Joe might understand my cynicism about his motivations given the letter he sent to Labour Party members touting both the video and the Area Forum meeting as useful vehicles for their election campaign. Joe's response was inaudible but a tense-looking Babs Blake (St Ann's Labour Candidate) did her best to get him back on track.

The lady in the floral dress stirred.  ‘Is there a group within the Council dedicated to the development of commercial endeavours? Some other Councils in London have them. How do you come up with commercial or revenue generating ideas?’

Ooph… another body blow, as Joe struggled to come up with anything better than ‘we just try to take any opportunities we can see’.  So, ad hoc and ill-considered. That was the end of that discussion.

The accountant and Joe then read the results of their ‘consultation’ to the class.  Joe was surprised that enforcement was such a major theme in the concerns of the group. He hadn’t heard this from any other meetings. Yes, the guy who has thousands living in illegally converted Warehouses in his own ward. Little wonder that nothing has been done for all of these years. He didn't mention the anger over the Parks, the question about commercialism etc.

We were now half way through the time allotted. So the ideal opportunity for the accountant to pull up a powerpoint with charts, facts, and figures. What?

More timewasting.

Finally some Q&A.

What was meant on the video by “we want Haringey to be London’s borough of choice”? Whose choice, for what?

Joe spluttered that he had not written the text…  yes, he had signed off on it, he said. “Well, um we want people to feel happy to …”. At this point Emine Ibrahim (Labour Candidate for Harringay) started mouthing things for him to say. Coaching the failing representative in the Party and Council line. The things you can see from the back of the room.

Ian Sygrave spoke well about the importance of enforcement. That it was the lynchpin of regeneration, and that it was nonsensical for the Council to have cut it so aggressively. Joe offered the ‘take that onboard’ platitude.

I asked why he, the Head of Finance, and an accountant were at the meeting. To me, it just reinforces that the core of the Council’s process when approaching the regeneration is money. For them, this is a commercial operation, not a social one.

Where are the planners, the sociologists, the thinkers? Why, in the video are they asking ‘how do we get more investment’? Why not better investment? Not all money is equal… a loan from a payday loan company is not the same as a loan from a bank. Financing from a property developer is not the same as that from a social enterprise. Further, that the longterm development of the Borough appears to be in the hands of financial dilettantes who are basing multi-generational decisions on one or two business cycles.

Joe dodged the question, even when it was re-asked. Instead he went into auto-pilot. Austerity, Coalition government cuts, hard choices etc. Point missed.

Mario asked searching questions about the decline in democracy in the borough, providing compelling anecdotal evidence of the Council’s disregard for process.

Joe thought it best to completely ignore his points, even after Zena had voiced her support for Mario’s line of questioning. Joe did not even acknowledge that a question had been asked.

I don’t remember much after that. Joe and the accountant packed up and left. They were pursued down the hall by Mario.

Joe told me on Twitter today that he was "informing and empowering" the public. I think he and the Council are so far gone that they might actually believe this.