NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND James Plumridge

Who takes care of the caretaker, when the caretaker’s busy taking care?

Like me, you may have been a mite surprised to read on the front page of the latest edition of ‘York and Districts Community Matters’ (YDCM) that our Commissioner, James Best, is here as ‘caretaker’ of the suspended York Shire Council. 

For me, the word ‘caretaker’ evokes nostalgic memories of my distant English childhood.  In those days, every state school had someone called a caretaker. I particularly remember from primary school a seedy old chap with a mop and bucket, who reeked of tobacco and disinfectant and could often be discerned crouching outside the boys’ toilets rolling cigarettes.

Commissioner Best is nothing like him, as the photo accompanying the article makes clear.  It’s a pleasant photo, cleverly posed and composed, taken by local photographer Lisa Astle.  It shows the Commissioner to his best advantage, sitting on a conference table with a pen at the ready in his right hand.  Maybe copies are available from Lisa at a reasonable price.  I’m sure he would be happy to sign them.

I have a few ideas, or perhaps I should say ‘ideations’, I’d like to share with you arising from the article, but first I want to give my namesake a well-deserved pat on the back. 

Turn to page 12 of YDCM, and read the ‘infotorial’ (sic) from AVRA entitled ‘The Missing Bits’.  James has assured AVRA that he supports the Shire’s position on SITA’s proposed landfill and is keen to represent York as its JDAP representative at the SAT hearings. 

In that capacity he will stand in for Matthew Reid, our ruler-in-exile, or in the words of the Jacobite toast, ‘the king over the water’.

This should dispel once and for all persistent rumours that Mr Best’s appointment reflected government support for SITA’s proposal. It is good news for York.

So come on, Hon. Mia Davies, our very own parliamentary representative and ‘passionate’ lover of the Wheatbelt, don’t be shy, take a leaf from James Best’s book and tell us, before Colin calls an election, where you stand on the landfill issue.  

The New Oregon Model

Until the Commissioner mentioned it, I’d never heard of the New Oregon Model. So I googled the topic, and found an article by one Steven Ames at http://www.jfs.tku.edu.tw/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/152-S05.pdf .  

In four short pages, Mr Ames, a management consultant, managed to convince me that I had no idea what he was going on about.  Not even Stephen Hawking was able to do that.

Then I looked more carefully, and on the third page found a series of questions underpinning the tripartite ‘Community Visioning Process’ on which the model is based (‘Envision, Plan, Achieve’).  I felt as Alan Turing must have felt when he and his team found the key to Enigma, or like Ventris and Chadwick when they deciphered the logo-phonetic Mycenaean script known as Linear B. (Stop showing off, James P.  Signed, your wife.)

These were the questions, all in the plainest of plain English:

·         Where are we now?

·         Where are we going?

·         Where do we want to be?

·         How do we get there?

·         Are we getting there?

·         Are we having fun yet?

(I added the last one myself.)

More nostalgia, as my mind drifted back to the ubiquitous ‘workshops’ of the ‘80s and ‘90s, when earnest ‘consultants’ * exhorted lethargic public servants and NGO staff and volunteers to cover acres of butchers’ paper with answers to questions that were pretty well identical with the ones quoted above.  (Confucius say:  ‘consultant’ means someone who borrows your watch in order to tell you the time.)

Then it struck me:  people have been doing that kind of stuff for millennia, probably since the dawn of civilization. In those days Gilgamesh and his mates must have used clay tablets instead of butchers’ paper, which I suppose would have slowed things down a bit—or maybe it was sticks making lines and squiggles in the sand.

Translated into everyday language, the process makes sense.  The first three questions relate to something akin to brainstorming, the fourth to planning, and the fifth to monitoring and evaluating progress.  The last question, the one I added, is not as silly as it sounds.  It’s well attested that humour assists (sorry, ‘facilitates’) creative thinking in any field.

So the New Oregon Model boils down to getting people together to talk about their wants, needs and ideas for the future and to form a common purpose regarding important aspects of the life of their community.  Hang on a tick—isn’t that what Matthew Reid, our elected Shire President, was trying to do before the Minister gave him the shove?

*Confession:  Bless me, comrades, for I have sinned.  I was a consultant myself once, way back in the dark ages.  I never really succeeded in walking the walk or talking the talk. Honesty and common sense kept breaking through.

Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it infamy!

 (apologies to the late Kenneth Williams and Carry on Cleo)

As a frequent contributor to this blog, I was quite deflated to see it described as ‘infamous’ in the YDCM.  Shame on you, Mark Lloyd.

It isn’t infamous. It is famous throughout Australia and apparently even further afield, and becoming increasingly so.  I suppose that if you line up with the Dark Side, meaning Minister Simpson (‘go, winged thought, widen his brow’) and his mutant gaggle of senior bureaucrats (‘may their hair fall out, their teeth turn green, their bowels dissolve and their feet blister’, ancient Hittite malediction), you might prefer to say ‘notorious’, and for some inexplicable reason I would find that perfectly acceptable.

Commissioner Best says the blog is bringing a kind of publicity that ‘isn’t doing York any good at all, most locals and visitors want to see a vibrant, active place’.  Even though I was only a visitor then, I remember York when it was vibrant and active, many years ago, before it fell victim to the Curse of the House of Hooper.  There were trees along Avon Terrace, no empty shops, smiling faces everywhere and you had a wide choice of places to eat and drink. 

Paradise Lost, you might say (but as you’d expect, not without the occasional serpent).

The Commissioner has spent only a month in the town. How would he know what ‘most locals and visitors want’ and what is or isn’t doing us any good?  The blog is certainly raising the morale of its readers by giving the town a voice.  Ask around.

No, James B, my dear fellow, you are wrong.  This blog has put York firmly on the map. Unfettered, the blog will remind York people of their shire’s pristine glory. It will inspire them to rise up against their oppressors and restore their rightful king to his throne.  I dream of the day when tourists will come from the four corners of the earth to visit York, home of that rare humanoid species, the ‘passionate extremist’…

Oh, crikey, I’m envisioning again.  Nurse, fetch my pills.

Another pat on the back for Commissioner Best

I was delighted to read that James B ‘will commit to investigating the issues [raised] in the Fitz Gerald Report and pursue the necessary action to resolve the situation as far as possible under the office of Commissioner’.

I’m baffled, though, by his next sentence:  ‘Of course we wish to minimize any damage it may cause in trying to pursue it’. 

What kind of damage?  Damage to what or whom?  What’s the ‘it’ that may cause it? How will it be minimized?  Who is he reassuring? Commissioner, pray tell us more!

It’s good to see James begin to build bridges, but I remind him that he has a lot of bridges to build following his unpopular usurpation of Matthew Reid’s authority, and his socially awkward speech on Australia Day.  Let’s see you do much better, Mr Best.