JAMES TRIES HIS BEST David Taylor
Australia Day Address 2015
I was hugely impressed by Mr Best’s bold statement that ‘The splintering of the media has increasingly given a voice to those people at the extremes-not only are the voices of passionate extremists louder and more pervasive- through social media they are now focused more on their self-interest at the expense of the community interest- more focused on personal attack than on matters that build our Social Capital’.
Obviously, Mr. Best has a certifiable University Degree in Communications, focusing on the negative impact of social media on mainstream media in the 21st Century. His thesis must have been written with a particular emphasis on the development of a class of self-interested extremists in Rural, Regional and Remote Western Australia. A Fundamentalist, Jihadist, Social Media-Extremist Splinter Group bent on personal attack on the institution of Local Government and the destruction of community ‘Social Capital’.(Best may also have a degree in Social Economics)
Mr. Best must have shared many hours of animated discussion with News Limited’s, Rupert Murdoch, the Editor-in-Chief of West Australian Newspapers Ltd, Bob Cronin, and TV Executives such as Channel 7’s, Mario D’Orazio, to form such a clearly defined, academic, holistic evaluation of the current fragmented media situation in Western Australia, Australia and the entire Western World. And how, in particular, this ubiquitous splintering of the media equates to York and its’ people?
Mr Best’s inference is that York- has within its community ranks- ‘extremists’ (a word that I would be very careful in what context I used it). It has a ‘dictatorship’ by a passionate minority- which is untrue, and a thinly veiled insult! It also seems that the extremist, dictatorial population of York should understand what civic obligations are- which is also insulting.
Most offensive of all is that these extremist dictators, in Mr. Best’s estimation, are focused on their own self-interest at the expense of their community interest.
What is extremely amusing among all his pretentious, offensive drivel is Mr Best’s quote from WB Yates “The Best lack all conviction- The worst are full of passionate intensity”.
This means a ‘Best’ has a lack of conviction’ which certainly guarantees York has, and I quote, an “uncertain future” with Commissioner Best. I think that most people in York would rather be ‘the worse for passionate intensity’.
Mr. Best has obviously found a real buzzword “Social Capital”. He has used it as an ‘anaphora’, the meaning of which he will probably have to ask someone.
To be fair to Mr. Best, I highly doubt he wrote this speech. It smacks of political interference, and the jargon used by Ministerial, advertorial acolytes called Dumb and Dumber. Otherwise he downloaded it all off the Net. This is called plagiarism.
David Taylor –York Ratepayer.
IS COMMISSIONER BEST THE
MESSIAH, OR JUST A NAUGHTY BOY?
If,
like me, you missed Commissioner James Best’s Australia Day speech, don’t
despair. You can find the complete text
at http://www.york.wa.gov.au/News/Details.aspx?NewsID=53.
It’s
not the Gettysburg address, ‘Fight them on the beaches’, or ‘I have a
dream’. James is not that kind of
orator. He doesn’t have dreams. He envisions visions—that is, when he isn’t
ideating ideas.
Talking about
civil society…
James
wants to stir up in York ‘a debate about
civil society’. This would require ‘a whole of community vision’ and ‘building a cohesive and future-focused set
of actions that we can agree on.’
[Translation:
‘Let’s get together and talk about the kind of community we want to be and make
plans to improve the shire for everyone who lives here’.]
…and Social
Capital
James
regards York as ‘a disengaged and
dispirited community’ needing to build up ‘Social Capital’, that is, ‘the network of trust and collaboration
that links individuals into a society’.
[Translation:
‘You’re a sorry lot right now, Yorkites, but if you could have a bit more
confidence in yourselves and each other and learn to work effectively together your
lives would be happier, more successful and probably more fun’. NB: This is a
free translation.]
His
plan is to gather together all the different organizations in town—from the CWA
to the RSL, from the Croquet Club to the Church of Christ, from the Men’s Shed
to the Salvation Army—and encourage them to ‘build
a common identity’ through a process of ‘Community
Visioning’. In fact, he will be ‘facilitating a series of Visioning Forums
to bring the community together and build York’s social capital’.
[Translation: ‘I’m going to organize and oversee a series
of town meetings where all the clubs and groups in York can get to know each
other better, find out what ideas and dreams they have in common, unite to forge
a common destiny and share their hopes for the future.’ NB: This is a freer translation, because of
the linguistic challenges posed by the original text.]
‘Away, you
passionate extremists!’
But
there’s always a serpent in Eden (my metaphor, not James’s). In York, the serpent consists of all those nay-saying
reprobates, or ‘passionate extremists’,
taking advantage of social media to promote ‘their own self-interest’ and focus on ‘personal attack’.
[Translation:
‘Those bloggers are a damned nuisance.
David Taylor’s the worst, followed by that Plumridge fellow and the
cartoonist, whoever he is. They must be
in it for themselves in some way, because in my world everybody’s busy looking
after number one, unless of course they’re completely selfless, like me. I wish I knew what those radicals are after,
and why they keep having a go at me!
It’s not fair. All I want to do
is lead my people—they are my people, Tony Simpson said I could have them—from
the Slough of Despond into the Promised Land.’
NB: This is freer still, but I think captures the spirit of the
original.]
Instead
of ‘participating in safe and productive
dialogue about our uncertain future’, the extremists ‘disengage from politics’ or become ‘single issue evangelists’, a ‘trend’
leading inexorably ‘to the dictatorship
of the passionate minority’ (as distinct, presumably, from what York knows
only too well, the dictatorship of a privileged few).
[Translation: ‘And the bastards just keep harping on in
English. Why don’t they talk in
high-sounding, vacuous riddles like Brad Jolly, Margaret Wheatley and me? Do they think they can defeat Tony Simpson
and take over the world? Jeez, it’s
worse than Islamic State round here!’
NB: not really a translation at all, just reading between the lines.]
The Second
Coming—please, Lord, not another one, we’re still trying to get over the first!
James
decks out his argument with a couple of lines from ‘The Second Coming’, by W B
Yeats (not Yates, as James spells it, perhaps confusing the Irish poet with the
author of a well-known garden guide): ‘The best lack all conviction, while the
worst/ Are full of passionate intensity’.
This
apocalyptic poem, composed, Yeats said, in a mediumistic trance, ends with a kind
of prophecy: ‘And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches
towards Bethlehem to be born?’
Well,
our ‘rough beast’ came and went, slouching home at last to Dianella…
‘We don’t want
no council training, we don’t want no thought control…’
James,
York doesn’t need a ministerial appointee to help sort out its troubles. It was
your deceitful minister, his ham-fisted predecessor, and senior figures in their
department who, if they didn’t actually cause York’s problems, allowed them to
flourish unchecked.
York
doesn’t need ‘community visioning’ and a series of ‘visioning forums’ to bring its
community together. It needs a
clear-sighted, democratically elected shire council willing to involve members
of the public in decision-making and as informal advisers on matters of policy.
That’s
what Matthew Reid offered us. That’s why
so many of us voted for him. That’s what
your Minister stomped on, for the benefit of his political mates.
York
doesn’t need dire warnings about ‘passionate extremists’ busy launching
personal attacks via social media. If only
your minister and his predecessor had paid attention in the past to some of
those ‘passionate extremists’, you, James, would be focusing on your chances of
pre-selection for parliament instead of wasting your time and our money trying
to fix us up.
I’ve
said this many times before, but it bears repeating: there can be no peace and healing in York
until we’ve had an impartial, full and open inquiry into the issues canvassed
in the Fitz Gerald Report. Get Minister
Simpson moving on that one, James, and you will have earned the respect of the
York community and a noble place in the history of the town—perhaps even a
statue, or better still, a shrine.
‘Write
the vision, and make it plain upon tables,
that he may run that reads it. Habakkuk,
2:2.’
James
Plumridge
A response to
James Best’s Australia Day Address Jane Elise Ferro
In your Australia Day address, Mr Best, you made
some comments and statements that puzzle me. Would you mind telling me what
they mean?
Here goes:
1.“… town hall meetings that end in tears.”
I can’t recall any tearful endings to meetings while
Shire President Matthew Reid’s conduct of meetings was being monitored by the
DLGC. Most residents were pleased with Cr Reid’s style of governance and
saw no reason to weep.
How different from previous years, when Ray Hooper
and his compliant councillors were in charge of meetings! There was plenty to
cry about then, during the era you seem determined to close off from review
with your now-famous ‘line in the sand.’
2. “…debate since Federation has made a
difference”. York has endured 10 years of a shire council and
administration that many believe to have been corrupt. So how is York going to
move forward without a lively, unfettered debate on what was inflicted on its
people during those years?
3.Why are you concerned about “the current state of
citizens’ engagement” when the OECD ranks Australia as a world leader in that
category? How can you expect citizens to engage willingly in social and
political processes when confronted by a wall of discouraging managerial jargon
like ‘strategic facilitation’, ‘cohesive and resilient organisations’,
‘envisioning meetings’ and so on? You can say the same things much more
clearly in simple language that everyone can understand.
4. Your “concern for our children” is well founded
if it arises from a broader concern over the decay of democratic institutions
and processes and a corresponding rise in political corruption. Here’s an
instance of what I mean by corruption. Not long ago, in Northam, an indigenous kid
was arrested and charged for stealing a chocolate frog. By contrast, in nearby
York, a major government department is now doing its best to draw a veil over
the illicit conversion of public moneys to private ends by pretending it’s too
trivial (read ‘embarrassing’) to pursue.
Sweeping wrongdoings under the carpet, and using
insults and roughshod tactics to silence those who refuse to bow and submit, is
hardly behaviour our children should model. So I’m concerned, too.
5. What do you mean by “safe and productive dialogue
about our uncertain future”? Productive, yes, but why ‘safe’? Should we submit
to power for safety’s sake, instead of ‘speaking truth to power’? Remember
Hitler (the blog hasn’t let you forget about him!) his henchmen, and all the ‘good
people’ in Germany who played it safe by burying their heads in the sand.
Is that the way we should go?
6. Do you really want a change-for-the-better? If
so, such change is increasingly made possible by Social Media rather than via
ministerial support! Those who are choosing to take a stand against further
suppression of the truth are using this avenue for expression in order to bare
the realities of years gone by (you know, those years behind your line in the
sand).
7. How can you justify your insinuation that those
who express themselves through social media (eg, we bloggers) are extremists
who are focused more on their self interest rather than community interests?
Quite the opposite is true. Had Kalgoorlie or Chittering been able to publicize
what their towns were encountering / enduring during the ‘reign’ of Ray Hooper,
York may have been spared his more-of-the-same. If you read the blog entries
carefully, we do not want the same situation to occur ever again. We want a
vibrant, active town, a legacy for future generations.
8. The one statement of yours I agree with is: “There is no power for
change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.” Try honesty,
integrity, justice, fairness, respect, communication, freedom, joyfulness,
balance, equality, interaction, good governance, truthfulness, discernment,
openness, free speech, security, understanding, wisdom, sincerity, humour,
courage, flexibility, kindness, humility, compassion, generosity, gratitude,
harmony, peacefulness, TRUST.
Jane Elise Ferro
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