You try and help… And they get pissed off? (Local Politics, and how nothing good comes from it!) Part 1

Years ago, I was a happy little Cub Scout Leader. For two hours a week I volunteered my time with the occasional trip or camp at the weekends… life was good. Then the dark cloud of work got in the way - and suddenly I had to give it up. Around the same sort of time, I finished my college education and found myself with a Diploma in Media Production… how swish! The problem was (and still is) that I am in the middle of nowhere, and so to get the nice jobs playing with the nice expensive equipment, I would have to move to London.

Now, I have recently been thinking about trying to apply my Diploma in Media Production to some good use or cause, and also get back in to volunteering in my local area. This kind of thinking made me look at my past projects and which might be good for a comeback. One that stood out from the crowd was something called ‘H******** Future Media’ which was developed to allow the local community gain a voice and provide them the tools to produce their own media. At the time, after many meetings with local officials and committees, it was deemed not possible to launch the project as the technology was not available. Now, things are a lot different and so I felt it was time to dust off the proposal and bring it back. At the core of the Future Media project is to educate all ages of the local community to use multimedia (visual / audio / web etc), and if ran correctly would actually be able to fund itself.

I drafted a revised proposal and sent it to all the councillors for their thoughts and feedback - many were interested, some wondered why I cared or even bothered - but eventually I was told to go and arrange a meeting with two people in-charge of the Town’s leisure - leisure not education. These two are the only people with the power in my town. They do not need to worry about votes, or making a good impression. They have been employed by the council for many years and think they own the place… we shall call them ‘Nick’ and ‘Gordon’. I think it is important to note now that very little that happens in my local town, and it just so happens that whatever does happen in it, normally has the approval of these two gentlemen. If they don’t give the thumbs up - it doesn’t happen. Think of them as a rather pathetic version of the mafia.

Even before the day of my meeting with Nick and Gordon had arrived, I was receiving word back from several different sources about what kind of feedback both Nick and Gordon were giving to the council. So when I arrived at the meeting, I was expecting the worst. After usual offers of coffee and general pleasantries, I was marched in to a conference room. The mood suddenly changed, and suddenly things went from bad to worse…

As soon as the door had closed, and we had sat down at the table, the interrogation started. For the first 30 minutes the pair vented that they were ‘disgusted’ about how I had not contacted them first before contacting the councillors. They also then pulled from their collection of papers a copy of the proposal I had sent to the councillors, and started to lecture me on sections from it. I too pulled a collection of papers out of my bag, including revised versions of the proposal and claiming their was never any need for them to obtain a copy as the document was going to be updated anyway before the meeting. They did not like that, and started to plough through the new copies.

Throughout the whole hour and twenty minutes of the ‘meeting’ I was continually barraged with questions about me and what I wanted from the project personally. “You obviously want something from this project”, Nick claimed. Every answer I gave fell upon deaf ears, and the same question was asked in a different way.  They played the ‘good cop bad cop’ routine, but had obviously not spoken before hand to work out who was going to play which. In the end, after the continual harassment from them, I decided to walk out - with the look of shock on their faces. I never lost my temper, however I made it quite clear that they needed to realise that the Future Media project would find a way back eventually - with or without them.  And before I knew it… plans were a foot…

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