Tag: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Saughall Massie Fire Station Part 1

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Saughall Massie Fire Station Part 1

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Saughall Massie Fire Station Part 1

                                   

photo 15 Land off Saughall Massie Road Saughall Massie 13th December 2016 SAVE OUR GREEN BELT SAY NO TO THE FIRE STATION banner
Land off Saughall Massie Road Saughall Massie 13th December 2016 SAVE OUR GREEN BELT SAY NO TO THE FIRE STATION banner


People of Saughall Massie, your attention, please.

This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council.

As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of Saughall Massie require the building of a fire station on your green belt. And regrettably, your green belt is one of those scheduled for demolition. The process will take slightly less than three of your Earth years. Thank you.

There’s no point in acting surprised about it!

All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Wirral Council for months, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now. … What do you mean you’ve never been to Wirral Council?

Oh, for heaven’s sake, it’s only a few miles away and they have a website you know.

I’m sorry, but if you can’t be bothered to take an interest in local affairs, that’s your own lookout. Energize the demolition beams.

I don’t know, apathetic bloody village, I’ve no sympathy at all.

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the western arm of the Wirral lies a small unregarded village called Saughall Massie.

This village has a problem which was this: most of the people in it were unhappy for pretty much of the time about the plans for a fire station on greenbelt land. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of them involved either building it elsewhere or keeping Upton open.

And the problem remained; the planning application was refused, but revised and lots of people were miserable.

Many (apart from councillors on the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority) were increasingly of the opinion that the whole thing had been a big mistake in the first place.

And then, one Thursday, years after the first 12 week consultation on the new fire station when the residents of Greasby told the fire service what they thought of their plans to demolish their library, one journalist sitting on his own in Bidston suddenly realised what it was that had been going wrong all this time and he finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place.

Sadly, however, before could get to a keyboard and tell anyone about it the idea was lost forever.

This is not his story.

But it is the story of the fire station in Saughall Massie and some of its consequences.

But first a journey back in time to two fictional meetings.


“I have a dream comrades, of having no Conservative MPs on the Wirral!”

*cheers*

“But to do this, we will have to blame something on Esther!”

*boos*

“and her government!”

*louder boos*

“Any ideas what we could do?”

*audience looks to each other and one brave soul answers*

“Close a fire station?”

“No, that is not bad enough comrades, we will *dramatic pause* close two fire stations!”

*audience mutters*

“That’s not going to be enough!”

“OK, then how about closing two fire stations, planning to demolish Greasby library and community centre, then giving our Labour candidate the credit for stopping the plans while blaming it all on the government!?”

*cheers all round*

“Right, any other business?”

*there’s always one*

“But if we give our candidate the credit for stopping the fire station being built in Greasby where will the new fire station go instead?”

*everone looks confused*

“Name one Conservative councillor you dislike comrades!”

“Chris Blakeley, he works for Esther McVey.”

“OK, comrades, Saughall Massie it is then!”

“What do you *expletive deleted* mean the Labour Chair of the Planning Committee voted to refuse the planning application for a fire station at Saughall Massie?”

“Err, well, she did!”

“Well, get Cllr Phil *expletive deleted* Davies to change the *expletive deleted* Chair of the *expletive deleted* Planning Committee before it gets decided again then!”

“Err, well that’s not up to Cllr Phil Davies, it’s a vote of the Labour Group of councillors each year and then of all Wirral Council councillors.”

“*expletive deleted* democracy! Aren’t we the *expletive deleted* Labour Party?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean we should act like it’s a dictatorship!”

“Well we *expletive deleted* don’t have any scheduled elections (apart from in Claughton) this year of councillors to Wirral Council, so why not?”

“Because it would harm the Labour Party. I thought we were supposed to be on the side of the ordinary people?”

“Not when we *expletive deleted* have a chance to blame our own decisions on the government!!!”

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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Wirral Council

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Wirral Council

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Wirral Council

                                                                

A question on councillors expenses to Cllr Adrian Jones Wirral Council 14th December 2015
A question on councillors expenses to Cllr Adrian Jones Wirral Council 14th December 2015

The following is meant as satire.

Wirral Council [The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy] says, is one of the most perplexing organisations known to mankind. It’s motto is "by faith and foresight".

Those unfortunate individuals who have experienced its public meetings have said the experience is far worse than listening to Vogon poetry (the third worst poetry in the universe). It is hard to put into words the experience of a public meeting at Wirral Council, but to give one example one evening Wirral Council so upset the universe that nearby buildings owned by Wirral Council spontaneously collapsed to the ground merely to bring one public meeting to an end. People have been witnessed leaving meetings in tears or having to leave suddenly as the whole process made them feel ill.

It is a well-known fact across the universe that politicians seem unable to answer questions (leaving some people to wonder what planet they’re actually from). However at Wirral Council politicians have made this frankly useless skill that would in any other profession get you the sack, into the sort of art form that you’d wonder if they’d actually received a performance arts grant for this from Arts Council England.

Even if by some one in a million chance, your question isn’t consumed by the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal before a politician gets a chance to read it (or said politician hasn’t been bamboozled (which we are told by our own legal team that we have to clarify is the meaning of bamboozle to confuse) by Chief Bamboozler at Wirral Council Mr Tour first, a politician will not give you an accurate answer to the question you’ve asked. You see despite being highly paid, politicians at Wirral Council are reduced to doing something a seven-year old could do and given answers to read out that are written by other people. This is what politicians call "research".

If really pushed for an answer a politician will promise to send you a written answer (which in some cases you will not receive). This system has evolved over time so that the employees of Wirral Council aren’t put under threat by a politician actually having the chance to say anything.

A whole new industry has grown up at Wirral Council to deal with whistleblowers. Whistleblowers are seen as a threat to the smooth running of Wirral Council and persuading the public that black is indeed white. In fact anything outside Wirral Council (and indeed inside such as the trade unions) is seen as a threat to the smooth running of Wirral Council. Therefore information is controlled. English laws (in fact Wirral Council does not recognise the law as applying to it unless it decides it wants to) such as freedom of information do not apply and if Wirral Council was a country America would be referring to it a rogue state.

However back to whistleblowers. Wirral Council has a secret (not subject to freedom of information) playbook for dealing with whistleblowers and troublemakers (a category which covers pretty much everybody including its own politicians) which if it actually considered the law applied would be banned as it would be classed as a cruel and unusual punishment.

Step 1 is whistleblowers will be told they are not being "reasonable". Completely missing the irony that Wirral Council is under a legal duty to be reasonable (which it rarely is), this can be combined with lying to the world and stating whistleblowers are flat out wrong. If the word reasonable doesn’t work, whistleblowers are told they’re "inappropriate" instead.

If a whistleblower isn’t fobbed off in this way and doesn’t fall at the first hurdle and takes some bold step such as telling the press and/or regulators step 2 is employed.

Step 2 is more tricky for Wirral Council as even step 1 can spectacularly backfire (despite highly paid PR advisers). At step 2 the whistleblower is thanked, but told that Wirral Council is seeking legal advice. Properly employed this tactic can stall matters for months. Therefore nothing is done until that advice is received (this advice will however remain confidential). If by some fluke Wirral Council receives legal advice it doesn’t want, it can ask for more until it receives advice it wants to hear. At this stage Wirral Council sincerely hopes the whistleblower will just give up and not force it to step 3.

Step 3 depends on whether denying what the whistleblower stated would get you laughed at and accused of perjury if you tried it in a court of law. By this point the game is up, so it is admitted that mistakes were made in the past (although no individuals can ever be found to be accountable), lessons have been learnt and an action plan has been drawn up with recommendations to make sure it never happens again. This is known in PR terms as a partial hangout. The whole fiasco is never admitted, but it is hoped that by admitting (what by now is in the public domain anyway) that the political pressure will drop and people will "move on".

There used to be a different stage 3 which was paying whistleblowers to keep their mouths shut, but it didn’t seem to be effective.

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