Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Have you heard the GOOD NEWS about Haringey branding?
Since I am sure that Mr. Stanton would be supremely indifferent to a call for God to bless him, I don’t suppose I would be going against my principles to issue such a plea, because he has bequeathed to me nearly half an hour of good solid fun in his request to Haringey for details of the ‘rebranding’ which was recommended last October.
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/haringey_new_logo_rebranding...
As you will see, these were furnished to him by the "feedback review officer", an employment category which in itself conjurs up images of what you might be forced to appraise on the pavement outside a kebab joint on a Saturday night.
Anyway, I scraped through the bigger bits and discovered that Haringey is not only "edgy" but it is not in fact a place. According to the Brand Guidelines is is an Attitude. So, not a borough, then. We are the Attitude of Haringey. According to the Collins Dictionary, an attitude is at best a physical orientation and at worst a hostile manner. Judging by the colour of the letterheads and signage it is also permanently in a red mist. From ID cards to care homes, all is red—including the cards that Councillors have to hand to their parishoners. Even the LibDems have to hand out red cards to people, so whatever it is and whoever hands it to you: STOP THAT AT ONCE!
Apart from the graphics, there are also instructions about language. Employees of the Attitude of Haringey are urged to “create energy with short sentences” rather than being “staid, stuffy or formal” (note the use of three words meaning the same thing, right after the request for brevity) and to write as if talking to a good friend. Oh us cuddly folk at Haringey Attitude. We are just so ….LOVABLE.
But the best is probably in the letter heads.
There are two versions for use with the residents, customers …um… Good Friends. The letterheads come in “good news” and “bad news”. Surprisingly, someone has realised that the bouncing buffoonery that now spells out the name of our borough in a font which looks as if a serial killer has scrawled it on the wall in blood, might not be the best thing to put on the top of a letter telling your dying grannie that she is about to be locked out of her flat by Haringey Social Services. I am impressed by their sensitivity. Good news letters, btw, have the bouncing bloodstain at the top of the page, while the bad news ones have “Haringey" in black and at the bottom of the page, so as not to associate our edgy Attitude of Haringey with anything negative.
Since the Attitude now has double designs of stationery, instead of just the one, this means double the number of trees turned into pulp to communicate council wafflings. Oh, and all of us Council Tax payers have double the expense, of course, Which theme should they use to give us *that* information?
That, by the way is not the end of it because there is special stationery for use only within the Council—good news, bad news and something called a “partner” letterhead which has its own category. All of these add to the different stacks of stationery to be printed and wasted but by this time I have lost count of the multiples. You’ll have to work out the trees for yourselves.
Sod the trees, though. It’s the council workers I feel sorry for. Can you imagine the nervous stress of trying to decide in which category they should form their communications? Can you imagine the discussions over every letter to determine whether it qualifies as good news or bad news?
Even with committee discussions about the right stationery dragging on into the small hours, there will still be problems because any fool knows that good and bad news is often a matter of opinion. The continued printing of "Haringey People", for instance: good or bad? A ten-day rock festival in Finsbury Park: good (wow! free music for over a week!) or bad: (how the hell do I get the kids to sleep)? Permission for your neighbours to build a huge and looming loft extension: bad (there goes the light) or good (great! that means I’ll get permission for my basement swimming pool)?
Perhaps some sort of mnemonic would be useful. As they (almost) recite in Full Metal Jacket — “this is for sober-speak and this is for farces, this is for Kober’s clique and — “ ….oh shucks, I can’t think of a rhyme for the rest of it.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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Just as you claim to have intimate knowledge of the thought processes of all bankers.
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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We're told the attitude is transforming London. Are you buying this?
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Permalink Reply by Lydia R on
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"Are you buying this?"
Well yes, Clive. We are. Because we have to pay our Council Tax.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Yes, indeed Lydia.
One advantage of the internet is that we don't have to wait till May 2018 to indicate disapproval. We can tweet or email or otherwise post online right now a clear message about how these clowns waste our money.
By the way, I had information today from an insider that Haringey seem have supplied me with only eight of eleven of the documents in this set. (In my Freedom of Information Act request I wrote that there may have been twelve. It now seems there were actually eleven.) If accurate, it's a further indication of how Haringey behaves towards its residents even when one uses the law to obtain information.
I'll be looking into this further.
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Permalink Reply by alex on
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If the council wasn't trying to hide what it was up to, people wouldn't have to use FOI requests to find out how our council taxes are being wasted. Considering the cuts being imposed on services that the Council ought to be running, it's perfectly reasonable to question and want to understand their justfication for funding private interests and personal vanity projects.
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This, a screenshot from the document Tone of Voice.
I hope it applies to Freedom of Information requests.
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Are you accusing anyone of abusing Freedom of Information requests, Mr William Hoyle? That would be a serious allegation.
Perhaps you would like to write to the Information Commissioner for guidance naming names and giving your reasons.
But of course you won't do that, will you?
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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There wouldn't be any point. The Information Commissioner is there to police the information provider, not the information requester. It would be a bit like OffGen investigating a complaint by British Gas about a customer who queried their bill all the time.
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Michael, the Office of the Information Commissioner (ICO) issues quite a useful Guidance Note (available online) about what constitutes vexatious Freedom of Information Act Requests. (FoI)
The purpose of my reply to Mr William Hoyle ('Billy Hole') was to suggest that he is interested neither in evidence nor in any sensible and helpful guidance from ICO.
It appears that he disagrees with some unnamed person or persons attempting to use the Act to exercise their legal right to obtain information. Rather than engage with the substance of the topics for which information is requested he accuses them of abusing their right.Mr Hoyle is correct that I use the FoI Act. He asks why and the obvious answer is that I wish to know the information. I also wish others to have access to it.
I would make fewer requests if the public authorities concerned placed the information on their own websites in the first place. In other words, practised what they promised about openness and transparency.As I have explained before on HoL I do so through the free website WhatDoTheyKnow.com which has the advantages of acting as a public repository for the information and making it available to anyone else who wishes to access it.
Mr Hoyle refers to several (also unnamed) people who he tells us have been dissuaded from doing business in Haringey because of (unspecified) Freedom of Information Act requests. I wonder what information subject to the Act they wish to keep secret. Not their personal information obviously, as that is exempt.I, at least, will not be deterred by Mr Hoyle's comments on this site from continuing to make reasonable and proportional Freedom of Information Act Requests. I am grateful to both of you for prompting me to make this information available on Harringay Online.
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Goodness, I feel a bit like a kid whose parents are having a row. "Michael, will you tell your Dad his dinner's ready" while the said Dad is two feet away!
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I'm not your parent, Michael. We are both grown-ups. You made a civil but I felt rather dismissive comment on what I'd posted in the context of this discussion thread. I gave you what I hoped was a helpful reply.
I added some further comments which may be helpful to other people. In particular anyone who wished to make an FoI request but may feel reluctance because of Mr Hoyle's negative comments. -
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