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A campaigner's diary, part two: the mirror crack'd
Monday, 1st February 2010 - 11:00

Julia Salmon is an OU alumna and member of the Platform Community Group. She's also a campaigner and in a series of blog posts she explains why it can be a very frustrating and thankless pastime. In this, her second post, she runs through phase one of campaigning – identifying the problem…

The first principle of fighting for a cause is, of course, to identify your aim. This seems a pretty obvious point, but causes are tricky beasts; what you are aiming for is often located on a moving (or concealed) target. What you thought you were looking at very often metamorphoses into an entirely different creature.

I have noticed that my own mentality on tackling any problem in life has significantly altered. My thought process used to work according to the following project plan:

1.    Recognise the difficulty
2.    Identify how/why the issue arose
3.    Examine the possible options
4.    Map out the consequences of each potential solution
5.    Choose your solution
6.    Job done

At point three, if there didn’t appear to be any possible (or palatable) options, there would be an additional sub-category ‘Go down the pub, discuss with friends, moan at friends, sulk etc.

Over the last six years, I have been forced to re-define my strategy on problem solving, as a result of trying to negotiate with public services and government institutions. The project plan now reads:

PHASE 1 – What is the problem?

1.    Recognise the difficulty
2.    Identify how/why the issue arose
3.    Understand why there is a major discrepancy between the actual difficulty experienced and the reporting structure of the organisation to whom you are addressing the difficulty
4.    Explain the discrepancies to the organisation between their report conclusions and actual events
5.    Assimilate the organisation’s response and identify the contradictions, omissions and re-directions in the organisation’s response
6.    Repeat steps 2 to 4.
7.    Once step 5 has looped around, try to break the cycle by gathering further evidence, to conclusively prove to the organisation that they are mistaken (or evading the issue)
8.    On receipt of the organisation’s response, repeat steps 3 to 7 at least 15 times
9.    Eventually, the organisation will refuse to communicate with you anymore – indeed, the greater the volume of information that you accumulate, demonstrating the organisation is in error, the more erratic will be their responses (which can be quite useful in itself) – until the organisation finally hopes you will go away
10.    Now you have a fabulously well documented problem – the causes of the problem – the rationale as to how the problem occurred, why it is significant, how many people it affects and the way in which it could be corrected. However, you have not yet reached the ‘Solution Achieved’ stage.

Once a dialogue – of sorts – has been entered with public services, your own language will become tortuously long and complex. This is a by-product of the engagement, through exposure to public service obfuscations and the inability to answer direct questions with direct answers. Just think Any Questions or Question Time and you will get the gist of how the exchange sinks into a fog of dodging and doublespeak.

What you have now established, at the end of Phase 1, is that you have two problems, rather than the one problem you began with: firstly, you have your original difficulty still unresolved; secondly, you have now been obstructed by a public service that is attempting to side-step the issue. This is a key tactic of the public service defence system: escalate the scale of the problem and bury the complainant in red-tape, until said complainant gives up. The additional benefit of this approach is that the more of your time a public service can consume, the less time you will have remaining in which to file any civil litigation case against them (or judicial review) – all of which have strict time constraints. Therefore, the best policy a public service can adopt is to be as inefficient and complex in its internal structures as possible – the aim is to run rings around you poor, unsuspecting members of the public.

This is a long business – patience is therefore the first quality you have to develop in spades. If you didn’t have much before, now is the time to introduce either yoga, Tai Chi or transcendental meditation into your life – the alternative is alcohol, smoking or tranquilisers. So unless you really want to adopt a coping mechanism which will require a detox or health complications at a later date, opt for the ‘state of mind’ relaxation now. Try also affiliating yourself with the character, Jim Hacker. ‘Yes Minister’ is required viewing, in preparation for the task ahead, but look upon this wonderfully informative BBC TV classic series as an educational documentary, rather than for entertainment purposes.

I will give you the opportunity to develop your mantra, ‘I-will-remain-at-peace-in-the-face-of- bureaucratic-indifference’, before we move on to Phase 2 of the problem solving project plan.
 

A campaigner's diary: Why do I do it?
Tuesday, 29th September 2009 - 08:46

Julia Salmon is an OU alumna and member of the Platform Community Group. She's also a campaigner and in a series of blog posts she explains why it can be a very frustrating and thankless pastime...

 

If a job were advertised along the following lines: ‘Full-time position, anti-social hours, no pay, no expenses, no promotions, no holidays, frequently soul destroying, excessive workloads, impossible deadlines, minimum project length is 20 years, completion not guaranteed’, it would seem fair to assume that very few applications would be received.

 

But then again, it’s not the sort of job that is ever advertised; it’s a job you find yourself falling into reluctantly, resentfully, angrily.  In conversation with a colleague the other day, he muttered: “No one ever asked me if I wanted this bloody job. I’d rather be enjoying my life.”  Indeed, on a number of occasions in the last few years, I have sat on our kitchen floor, sobbing with conviction that the whole thing is too difficult. Wisely, my husband nods with the look of a sympathetic priest, pats my hand and puts the kettle on.  It goes hand-in-hand with Victor Meldrew-style phraseology creeping into your sentences: “I don’t believe it...”, “Did you see that?” and the apoplectic “What the...?”: all are part of a panoply of indignation, the necessary fuel of which drives you forwards.

 

And the tune to which I bang my campaigning tambourine?  Well, the journey has become as much part of the experience as the end goal; but my road less travelled leads to the Data Protection Act (1998), specifically focussing on medical and social care personal data records.  (No, I don’t spend my free time unwrapping twisted telephone cables or de-fluffing my mouse roller-ball.)  In plain English, the DPA regulates against fraudulent alteration of your personal data. However, the Act only recognises fraud where the perpetrator personally financially gains: this condition excludes public servants from being recognised as committing potential fraud. The Freedom of Information Act (2000) attempts to open up the argument on public accountability, as recently demonstrated by the Parliamentary expenses scandal. A key principle of our campaign is to protect the veracity of medical and social care records, something intimately relevant to us all.

 

However, the technicalities of a cause can detract from the emotional reasons for undertaking the journey. The problem with campaigning is the myth, misconception and martyrdom (the the Ms of the third sector) to which you can become prey, which neither serves you well nor furthers your chosen cause. I thought it would be helpful to define these dreaded pitfalls, as some dispelling is in order:

 

The myth – That a person is driven to be altruistic as a spontaneous act
Decidedly false. At least, no one founds what is now called a ‘social venture’, charity or campaigning group through boredom or to make themselves feel better. It is one of the most ruthlessly overwhelming activities, which frequently feels like self-flagellation. “Why did I ever get involved in all this?” most often permeates your thoughts, often followed by “Sod it”.

 

The misconception – That if a cause is genuine, the truth will out
Just occasionally this is true and it is this very slim hope that keeps you going. However, there are so many motives to evade answering issues, whether they are political, financial or represented by social taboos, that the truth generally gets buried in bureaucratic processes, until everyone has forgotten what the question was in the first place.

The martyrdom – A charitable person must be approaching sainthood
This is the easiest myth to dispel and would make my children fall on the floor laughing.  People comment, “Where do you find the time?” implying that I must have discovered the 36 hour day. My family’s reply would be, “Sometimes she’s an utter rat bag and marches around the house like Mussolini, because something’s gone wrong. We know when to duck.” When things are a struggle, I don’t suffer in silence; fortunately, my family responds with plenty of tea and hugs – they are my back-up team.

 

So, why do it? I have encountered a lot of people in the last six years: some have wanted to help (MPs, legal professionals, advocates, charities) but, to date, all suggestions have failed.  What initially appeared to be a simple problem has revealed itself to be a very complex one.  Over time I have become a repository of these various ideas and outcomes, both from our own and other families’ experiences. By using this information, I still believe it is possible to improve our own society, even if in small part. That is why I do it.

 

Therefore, I invite you to join me on the campaigning trail, over the next few months. I will keep you posted on what it’s like to approach MPs, do the rounds of governmental departments, deal with real people and field the blows, from a lay-person’s perspective. It is a work in progress which will culminate in about 20 years or so, if I’m lucky.

 

 

I own Shane Meadows' scooter
Monday, 28th September 2009 - 08:22

Mike Mounfield, an OU alumnus and member of the Platform Community Group, blogs about his quest to ride a motorised scooter and his brush with a BAFTA-winning film director...

 

I recently took on a temporary job as motorcycle project officer in the West Midlands. Most of the people who are brave enough to take to two motorised wheels in the West Midlands use small machines to get about and to have fun on. The riders of these scooters and small motorbikes are generally young. We know this because 60 per cent of the people who get hurt on ‘powered two wheelers’, as they are known in the anodyne language of the statisticians, are under 25 and riding machines of 125cc or less. I am not under 25 and there’s not much I can do about that. But I can do my best to see what they see, feel the bumps they feel, and be as scared as they do (if not more so!) when they ride around Birmingham and environs. So I decided to get a scooter.

 

My time spent with the OU studying art and philosophy gave me an appetite for good design, the mellifluous blend of form and function, and I see that exemplified in the Vespa scooter. A visit to a specialist dealer in Birmingham had taught me that, unless I wanted to reacquaint myself with my spanners and screwdrivers on a regular basis, I needed to avoid the allure of the classic Vespas and Lambrettas of Roman Holiday fame, and settle for a modern, twist-and-go equivalent.

 

I couldn’t quite fall for the rather angular looks of the current series of Vespas, produced under the aegis of the Piaggio motorcycle behemoth, so I decided to look for an older ET4 model.  I’m an occasional eBay user, so it seemed the obvious place to look first. And soon I had something quite special in the cross-hairs: a very pretty 2001 model in silver, allegedly dent-free, and currently living near Nottingham, ironically my home until March this year. I knew from watching for a while that this little beauty should go for anything between £900 and £1,300 and decided to watch and wait, my usual eBay tactic. In the last couple of hours I leapt in with a bid, was out-bid, bid again, out-bid and so on, until I was faced with £1,220 with minutes to go. I jumped. And became the proud owner of my very first Vespa ET4. Then the fun began.

 

The seller got in touch with me and started to make excuses about not having the V5, what used to be called the ‘log book’. Now, a V5 isn’t proof of ownership, as any trader will tell you, but if you steal a car or motorcycle you don’t generally find it in the glove box or under the seat, so it’s reassuring that if someone sells you a machine with a V5, they probably haven’t nicked it. If they say they have a V5, and then after you’ve bought it start making excuses about not being able to find it, the alarm bells should be ringing, or you should get your hearing checked.

 

This is what ‘Shane’, my new friend from Nottingham, was now telling me via email. To be fair, he offered me the chance to pull out of the deal, and said he would re-list the bike. I nearly took his offer, until he said something intriguing: “It’s not really in my interest to sell you a nicked bike.” He was reluctant to elucidate, but eventually admitted to being a film director. Yeah, of course you are mate, and I’m Roman Polanski (though that would imply that I’m sitting in a Swiss jail as I write, awaiting extradition to the US for doing naughty things with young girls, so perhaps not). 

 

Then he admitted that ‘Meadows’ comes after ‘Shane’ in his particular case. I decided to trust him, but not before looking him up on imdb.com to make sure what he looked like. After a quick jaunt back up the M42 my girlfriend Millie and I found ourselves in a sweet little village on the outskirts of Nottingham (no, I can’t tell you) and knocking on the front door of a well-kept double-bay Edwardian house with the Vespa sitting outside. The man whose picture was on imdb.com answered the door.  “Yep.  You’re Shane Meadows.” I don’t meet Bafta winners every day; I wasn’t working to a script so give me a break.

 

He invited us in and was the most genial host. We were there an hour, mostly talking about him and his films.  Millie’s son is a major film fan, especially of the modern English genre, and she came away with a signed DVD copy of Once Upon a Time in the Midlands. He was most apologetic about the lost V5 and knocked £20 off the sale price for our petrol. It was fascinating to speak to a creative auteur; he freely talked about his next project, his favourite from his work to date and the background that pushed him toward making the early 21st century version of ‘kitchen sink’ drama. We parted with each other’s mobile numbers. He hasn’t rung yet.

 

So that’s how I came to be riding around Birmingham on Shane Meadow’s scooter. And a lovely scooter it is too.