Attention Conservation Notice: This is a detailed post about how little information is ever released by officialdom without persistence persistence persistence.  It is not inspiring, but rather depressing; so is best left unread if you need to maintain illusions about Manchester’s preparedness for the challenges ahead.

In response to persistent requests from Manchester Climate Monthly, the Steering Group will be releasing answers to “some” questions about its new sub-group chairs, and perhaps – if we are very lucky – the “democratic” structures that are to be in place for its next conference in March (1) .  The website – manchesterclimate.com, has had a chequered history. After four blog posts in the month of January 2012, it then fell into complete silence, with posts being put up in August, October and December. This is despite the fact that the chair of the group, at the last meeting for which minutes have been released (Dec 2011) “suggested that in future Steering Group members could produce a live blog in order to improve MACF communication.” (2)

In early November 2012 an email circulated asking people to nominate themselves to be chairs of new subgroups.  The deadline was late November, because they wanted to confirm all the chairs at the December full group meeting.

A couple of weeks later a rather plaintive follow-up email went out…

Last week MCFly wrote to the person who sent the message out.  We asked –

could you please supply us with the names of the chairs of the five subgroups for

Buildings
Energy
Transport
Green and Blue
Sustainable Production and Consumption

and supply answers the following questions

a) were there any posts for which no applications were received?
b) if so, how was this dealt with, i.e. were specific people asked to nominate themselves after close of applications?
or if any posts are vacant, what actions are being taken to fill them?

c) for which of the five groups – if any – was there more than one applicant? In that case/those cases, what decision/election mechanism was used?

Further, what are the arrangements for the elections to the Steering Group due to be held at the Stakeholder Conference in March 2013.

yours sincerely

Marc Hudson

The reply came thus today

My apologies for the delay in getting back to you, but I do not officially return from maternity leave until later on this month.

As regards the questions detailed below, the process for the appointment of the chairs of the five subgroups is not yet complete.  Therefore I cannot supply you with the names at this point.

Best wishes,

[x]

Which was, we felt, somewhat unhelpful.  So we replied –

Thanks [x] for getting back to us.

The emails that were sent out asking people to apply for this stated that the intention was to ratify the selections at the December meeting.

The question still stands – were there posts for whom no candidate came forward? If so, which ones?

And the new questions are
a) what is the cause/are the causes for the delay?
b) what impact is this going to have on the plan for five “themed” meetings and the Stakeholder Conference in March

And to re-iterate the other question I sent through –

“Further, what are the arrangements for the elections to the Steering Group due to be held at the Stakeholder Conference in March 2013.”

All best wishes

Marc Hudson

Well, we know have had the following email from the chair of the Steering Group himself, Steve Connor.

Marc

[x] is still on maternity leave. I will attempt to answer some of these questions on the MACF blog.

We look forward, as I am sure you do, gentle readers, to the answers to “some” of these questions, in due course.

Marc Hudson
mcmonthly@gmail.com

(1) See here for more – or is it less – detail?
(2) Here’s a screengrab.

The irony is that the “request for agendas and action points” was from one of the MCFly editors.   The response from the Steering Group was not to post ANY minutes in 2012, despite having posted the 2010 and 2011 minutes.  That’ll teach us for asking, eh? This, apparently, is how democracy and transparency is done in Manchester…