Attention Conservation Notice: MCFly editors Marc Hudson and Arwa Aburawa have been banned – without any explanation – from attending a three and a half hour meeting that pretends to be a stakeholder conference. Someone has forwarded the latest email from the Steering Group about the conference, and it makes us semi-grateful to be outcast.
The self-selected, election-cancelling Steering Group, (which meets in secret, and refuses to release its minutes), is at it again.
Basically the only thing that the Group is asked to get right each year is the holding of a Stakeholder Conference. The stakeholder conference is there (and we quote the official Manchester A Certain Future document) to “review progress, consider changes and improvements and agree targets for the coming year.”
But look at this communication with attendees. How are invitees supposed to do “review progress” on each of the five themes if there is no written report on what has – and has not – been happening in the last year? How are they supposed to be able to advise on obstacles and opportunities if there’s not even any links to summaries of the discussions at last year’s shambolic conference.
How are invitees supposed to connect with the new sub-group chairs, who are supposed to be taking up their posts (but aren’t, it seems – see footnote) imminently. No email addresses, no biogs, nothing.
Our prediction: This conference will be another pointless waffle-go-round, exactly like last year’s, only even worse. And it will further damage the Steering Group’s already zombie-level credibility.
Why is this happening?
Because the Steering Group, yet again, didn’t get its act together to organise the conference, with everything being done at the last minute (see front page of MCFly January 2013 for a hair-raising and stomach-churning interview about this.)
What is to be done?
Ask the questions. Demand better. And if you are sick of demanding, and think anyway that the Group you are demanding of has neither the intellectual nor political capacity to do what is needed, then, do it yourself.
Footnote
(1) The Steering Group asked for volunteers to put themselves forward as sub-group chairs in November. It seems that nobody did, even after repeated begging for people to come forward. MCFly asked for information about the sub-group chairs in late December. After a certain amount of blocking and waffling, a commitment was made – at the beginning of January 2013 – that information would be forthcoming on the official website. This commitment was, of course, not honoured.
Curiously, the latest blog post on the website is an account of the February Steering Group meeting. Lots of fine promises about forthcoming Wonderful Things. Nothing on the sub-group chairs. Has the idea been abandoned for lack of volunteers? What does this say about the Steering Group’s attractiveness and credibility? A few more questions that attendees at the conference might like to ask.
Also, nothing on the official website about the “fringe events” that were supposed to be happening. If you go the the events tab, you get told about things that were happening… last August. What a shameful farce this is, isn’t it?
manchester climate monthly 
I keep getting slag off, here in Hulme as I point out that MMU’s (Manchester Metroplitan University) Birley Fields campus is neither green or, as they claim, ‘zero carbon, zero waste, zero water’. I have nentioned alternative energy sources other than biomass incineration (their first choice) and natural gas, their chosen energy source. Also that the building standards they are working to, are below the standards of Northern Europe. Unfortunately, this is a higher education establishment, which is their to educate future generations, but believes in business as usual. And this is the problem with the British general public, for years they have accepted the sub-standard, as the norm. This is a situation, that will not be changed very quickly.