Deadline to apply is Sunday 28 November. Partial blurb here-
Manchester Museum, at The University of Manchester, is in the midst of its most ambitious capital development in a generation – hello future. Driven by an unparalleled commitment to building understanding between cultures and a more sustainable world, the development is dedicated to establishing the most imaginative, inclusive and caring museum it is possible to encounter. hello future presents an unprecedented opportunity to transform Manchester Museum’s role, reach and relevance – to become more widely and deeply loved.
This newly-created position will play a key role in realising our ambition to establish and oversee the Co-working Hub for Cultural Environmental Action at Manchester Museum. To undertake exploratory and experimental work to develop new museum narratives and programming around care, emotions and action in response to the climate and ecological crisis.
Don’t read this letter to the City Solicitor of Manchester City Council below until you read THIS.
Dear Ms Ledden,
Re: Internal Review of Freedom of Information Act request 5790.
thank you for your prompt and thorough internal review, dated 15th November and received by me on 19th November. Thank you also for the apologies from the Comms team and yourself.
What the apology lacks – and what I am writing to you about – is an explanation of how such inaccurate information could have been generated and sent to me in the first place, and what is being done to make a repeat less likely in future. There is also no indication that any learning is taking place, and that such an occurrence could not recur in the future. I remain keen to avoid the complaints procedure if I can, as I was keen to avoid an internal review. I have the following questions, which I trust will be answered promptly and fully. 1. What was the staff level grade of the individual(s) who drafted the inaccurate reply?
2. Was the reply “signed off” by someone of higher grade before being sent? If it was, and that person was a member of the SMT, who was it?
3. Is there any formal process by which officers receive verbal or written warnings for providing inaccurate information to elected members or members of the public who have requested information either through the FOIA or other means?
4. If there IS a formal process, is it being/has it been applied in this case? If so, what action has been/will be taken?
5. If there is NOT a formal process, a) why not and is one planned?b) what action is being taken in response to this case.
6. How many apologies has the Comms Team been compelled to make in the last 12 months?
7. Mostly I am interested in what processes the Council (and let’s narrow it down to the Comms Team for now) has for actually learning from mistakes. I mean, an apology is good, albeit unexpected, but a real apology contains information about how the behaviour being apologised for is being made – systematically – less likely to occur in future. With relation to this particular release of inaccurate information, what remedial proactive/prophylactic action has been taken/is planned?
Manchester City Council has been forced to do admit that it released “inaccurate” information about the carbon literacy status of its communications staff.
The shocking admission comes after Manchester Climate Monthly requested an internal review of an earlier response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
The release of inaccurate information by the Council about the status of its own staff raises questions of whether citizens should trust anything the Council says. It also is a timely reminder that when citizens receive replies to Freedom of Information Act requests, they should read the replies they get very carefully and see what attempts are being made by the Council to wiggle and weasel.
On October 1st 2021 MCFly send a Freedom of Information Act request to the Council. It included the question
“Have the comms team received their carbon literacy training?”
Carbon literacy training is a day long training that is supposed to equip those who receive it to take action. The Council promised in 2009 that everyone who lived, worked or studied in Manchester would receive the training by the end of 2013. This did not happen. (1)
The Council responded on 18th October
“In-house Carbon Literacy training is a mandatory 3-part training module for all Council Staff. The full training programme has been completed by the majority of members of the communications team with the rest of the team either enrolled or partway through the programme.” (emphasis added).
MCFLy smelt a rat, and requested additional clarification, trying to avoid an internal review. But the Council did not reply or even acknowledge the request, so an internal review was requested.
Part of the reply reads as follows.
As part of this internal review, I have reviewed the information held regarding carbon literacy training and I can confirm the following information: For the purposes of this internal review, we have considered 50 members of the Communications Team – Content and Strategy. 11 of them have completed the full training and are certified. 39 are yet to complete the full training. The training is in two parts (plus an additional part being a film to watch before part 1 of the course), it is not possible for us to access numbers of people who have completed only part 1. However we have 28 members of staff who are currently booked to complete the course in the next month, it is at this point that staff numbers are recorded, once they are certified. Newer members of staff are yet to start the course are on the waiting list as training dates are released and become available.
So, 50 staff. Only 11 of them are fully carbon literate. But in response to my 1st October question about the carbon literacy of comms staff, the Council had claimed “The full training programme has been completed by the majority of members of the communications team.”
What next
MCFly will be making an official complaint to the Council about the original misleading information. Who drafted it? Who signed off on it? Who is ultimately responsible? It will also be alerting the Information Commissioner to the City Council’s egregious behaviour.
[UPDATE – actually, remain very keen to avoid complaint, especially since there was an apology. Therefore have written this. Am holding off on complaint to Information Commissioner, for now.]
Citizens need to be very very careful at taking ANYTHING the Council says at face value.
Citizens need to learn how to write Freedom of Information Act requests, how to read the answers closely, how to use the internal review system and how to go to the Information Commissioner.
Manchester Climate Monthly cannot, for reasons of biographical availability, assist with this. If you give a damn, please, I implore you, contact the folks over at Climate Emergency Manchester, on contact@climateemergencymanchester.net
If you
Footnotes
(1) The Council has also also repeatedly set deadlines for all its elected members and staff to undergo the training. It never hits these deadlines, but then moves them.
Location: Manchester (preferred) or London. Home (if Manchester based) or hybrid working: our flexible working policy requires everyone London-based to be in our east London office for 25% of the time as a minimum because building in-person relationships is important to us (that could be one week a month, or a day or two a week), but you’re welcome to be there more as many staff are. Salary: Starting salary of £30,690 pro rata (0.75 FTE based on NEON’s full-time week being 28 hours, equivalent to 4 days per week). Contract type: Fixed-term 12 months (Maternity cover) Hours: 8/8.30am to 4/4.30pm three days per week, 21 hours. Benefits: 7.5% employer matched pension after probation; flexible working; 15 days holiday per year (plus bank holidays and Christmas break). Reporting to: Head of Media Application deadline: Sunday 19th December 2021, 23.59pm, Interviews: For successful applicants, first interviews will be held week commencing 17th January 2022.
About the role:
The New Economy Spokesperson Network is a project to train up and substantially boost the number of progressive, diverse voices in the mainstream media. We have begun building our regional media presence outside of the national and London base, starting in Manchester and the North West. This role will be responsible for recruiting spokespeople and establishing strong media contacts across the North West region, implementing the lessons of our recent regional communications review, alongside managing this project.
You might have a background in journalism and a desire to branch out into campaigning and social change, or you could be someone with a background in social movements and campaigns who has had some experience in dealing with the media.
You will act as a Press Officer for members of the network, including identifying broadcast opportunities, being in regular contact with spokespeople to help them develop messaging on key issues and proactively contacting outlets to get our spokespeople into broadcast and print. You will respond to the daily news agenda, spotting stories in the morning and as they emerge throughout the day.
In short you will be both mostly a press officer, but also a media trainer.
Reader(s) of a certain vintage and geographical persuasion will remember a 1987 Midnight Oil song “Put Down that Weapon” which implored “Put down that weapon or we’ll all be gone.” And a couple of lines later
And it happens to be an emergency Some things aren’t meant to be Some things don’t come for free
It is an emergency, and we need all brain cells on deck. We need to make use of the past, so we don’t repeat it.
If we lobotomise ourselves, with those memory eraser wands from Men in Black
if we choose to ignore the long history of spasms of mobilisation (as distinct from movement-building), if we choose to wake up each morning as if it’s our first day in Punxsatawney, then we will continue to fail.
Two and a half years ago – at what I suspected at the time was the height of the climate issue (1) – I wrote a piece called A bluffer’s guide to #Manchester environment & #climate organisations, old and new. Various people got in touch to say it was useful, and it did well (it’s all relative) on the stats. Now, at what is very likely the end of the “issue attention cycle” – or at least the mass public mobilisation around climate (2) it’s worth revisiting these organisations to see how they fared. I’ll follow it up with some observations on why it has turned out like it has (because, spoilers – many of the much-publicised and vaunted organisations turned out to be… um… “not quite as resilient as they thought” (3)), what needed to be done differently, what needs to be done differently from now (main thing – be honest about how shit our side is and take steps to make it less shit), why it almost certainly won’t be done differently (that’s where the shoddy “MASTABATE” retronym comes in), and what, therefore we can reasonably expect (4).
So, to recap the graphics from last time round, from 2018 and then 2019
And now? I’d say this.
Those groups
Group
Pandemic/now
Campaign against Climate Change
Thinks that a few hundred people in the rain is “magnificent”. Can’t do anything that isn’t placards. No website (infamously it has a banner with an URL to a site it hasn’t had for a decade-ish [Update 19 Nov 2021- See third comment below- The URL now redirects to a Facebook page] ), no Twitter. No clue. God help us all
Disbanded after helping to win the defeat (permanent?) of the anti-fracking activists
Friends of the Earth (Manchester branch)
As anyone would expect, saying nice things about Andy Burnham, despite GM’s utter failure to cut its emissions. That’s about it.
Green Drinks Manchester
Dead? Held a poorly attended event at Patagonia recently. No website or Twitter activity. Seems dead, but may stagger on. Was in deep shit before the pandemic, in any case
Green Party
Has had a councillor for six months, not that you’d know it particularly from their website. Councillor has not forced his way onto the Environment and Climate Change Scrutiny Committee that Labour kept him off, even though that would have been a winnable (or at least worth-fighting) fight. Or taken the fight to the Council on its bullshit. So it goes.
Greenpeace Manchester
Still doing things that national Greenpeace wants done (that’s the model).
Manchester Climate Monthly (aka MCFly, from when it was Manchester Climate Fortnightly, 2008-2010)
About to wrap up. Didn’t do terribly much during the pandemic because was busy with CEM stuff.
SERA
Dead, in Manchester at least – replaced by new outfits that think a Green New Deal is The Answer
Still publishing. Extensive if uneven coverage on environmental issues – less so of Manchester City Council.
“New groups” (as they were in May 2019)
Climate Emergency Manchester
Doing okay. Had a good pandemic. Solid core group, recruiting more people to do stuff, holding the Council to account, learning new skills [Full disclosure – I was in the core group until a week ago]
Extinction Rebellion
Functionally extinct (clinging to a local campaign for mutual sustenance is not going to force the British State to decarbonise everything by 2025)
Fridays for Future
As good as dead- A small number of people stand outside the Central Library on a Friday, handing out flyers to passersby and holding a banner that has a website that hasn’t worked for about 10 years.
GM Climate Action Network
Dead.
GM Unite the Union Community Branch – climate group
Dead
Rising Up! Manchester Families
Dead
Youth Strike for Climate
Dead
What needed to be done differently
Better meetings
Better strategy within groups
A commitment to capacity building and retention within groups and between them. Required trust and imagination. Nope.
Even an inkling of an understanding that repeated mobilisation is not the same thing as movement-building.
Explaining the perils off the smugosphere and the emotacycle, and how they are feel-good dead ends. Finding out what people WANTED to do, and what skills and knowledge they had. Talking about the gaps, and coming up with ways of them developing skills, knowledge, relationships.
Focussing on the importance of morale, and fake morale boosters versus real morale boosters.
What needs to be done differently
James Baldwin said it well – “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
Until “we” as a “movement” in Manchester face the fact that there was a moment when hundreds of people (thousands?) could have been helped to be dedicated, skilled, long-term activists in holding local power to account (not just the Council, btw – there’s far far more to be done than just that), but that the opportunities in that moment were squandered, spaffed against the wall, then nothing can be done to take advantages of the (lesser?) opportunities to come.
But if we persist in wishful thinking, and vacuous out of date hopey-changey cheerleading of failed groups, and of the latest bunch of Labour leaders who have already shown that they are not interested in thinking or doing anything differently, then, well, we will continue to MASTABATE (see title of blog).
Don’t get me wrong, it’s fine to MASTABATE – at least it’s sex with someone you love, right? But it’s not politics.
Why it almost certainly won’t be done differently
It would require painful reflection on past failure and a change in expectations, theories of change and possibly the end of some friendships. Easier to stay in the cosy smugosphere. So incumbents will. And there just isn’t the external pressure (from “the state” or the niches) to force the incumbents to behave differently.
Basically we lack numbers, we lack strategy and we lack emotional courage to face up to the fact that we are so deep in the smugosphere that we’re like goldfish in water who don’t even know that water exists. We allow ourselves to be tugged along in emotacycles. We are shit at recruiting and retaining people (not everyone can be retained of course, nor should be, but our numbers are lower than they could be, than they need to be).
What to expect
Trouble. And not in the generative, hopey-changey handwavium Donna Haraway sense. Trouble trouble. I will do a separate post on gazing into my crystal balls. Betcha can’t wait.
Footnotes
(1) It gives me no pleasure to say I was right. (Oh, bullshit, of course it gives me pleasure to say I was right. I love it when my guesstimates are right, they let me think I know what is going on. It’s a bit of an effort to forget all the (many more) times I’m wrong, but I pay myself for that effort with gloating when I’m right – amirite?)
(2) Issue attention cycles tend to last 3 years or so – or they have for climate, anyway. Within them, the media is interested in covering the issue. But when they’ve done all the stories they can, and editors and readers are bored, the caravan moves on. IACs in the past have ended with a big international conference (Rio, Copenhagen) and there’s a non-trivial chance Glasgow will be a similar punctuation. Back in 1992 and 2009 people said “oh, but it’s different this time, because everybody now knows, and corporations are taking it seriously, and governments have policies….” In a year or so we will know if it IS different. In any case, as this article has hopefully made clear, I’m more interested in the local than the national/international.
(3) They were shit, worse-than-useless shit. But if I put that in the main body, then somehow I’m a bad person. I don’t make the rules…
(4) This bit is probably not worth reading. I am no better a Nostradamus than anyone else. Spit-balling futures gives you the illusion of foreknowledge, the illusion of some control. So it goes.
What do we learn comparing “peak climate” and post-COP26?
The wretched putrid culture of “activism” is strong. It expels many, “rewards” a tiny number.
That if you don’t have a website, that you’re going to update, you should fuck off
That if you’re not going to try to spread the skills beyond your own group, you should fuck off
That if you stick to one repertoire (especially if it involves licking the genitalia of one party, then don’t expect applause)
Lots of groups say they believe in learning, in networking, but when push comes to shove, they simply don’t do it.
Groups die, and if we aren’t willing to say why, then the “movement” tanks with them.
This was all entirely predictable, and, yes, predicted
If people won’t even tell the truth about their own actions, why should we trust their analysis of others’? Or their trustworthiness, competence etc? Serious question. And silence is complicity, btw.
Still, here’s a very lightly annotated list of a tiny proportion of the hot takes. I have even wasted time I don’t have on a kind of matrix,
But it could have been done before COP finished. Why?
Because, COP26 – like others before it – was a Rorschach (inkblot) test ; what you saw depended on what you expected to see, and what your vision of a “reasonable” response to the climate emergency might be. After each shitshow there are some who for ideological, career or psychological reasons want to say “well, THIS bit was good, so NEXT year you should pay me/pay me attention to go to wherever it is and report on the slow progress.” In the language of the con, it’s known as ‘cooling out the mark’. Then there are other people who say “it was a shitshow, we’ve been betrayed.” Which is fine, but why the (mock?) surprise. After 26 go-rounds, aren’t you a little, um, naive? Meanwhile, most people on this planet have only the dimmest awareness it was even going on… Lucky blighters.
BBC journo Matt McGrath “Seen in that light, the agreement reached here after extended negotiations looks like a limp sticking-plaster for the deep wound that’s threatening life on this planet.”
Edie (business website) “7 takeaways” – good piece
All these pieces above are worth skimming. But ask yourself why you are spending your finite time and energy on that, when there are local councils that YOU could be trying to influence, getting away with spin and nonsense. My reason for reading all these was because I have a professional interest these days. Without it, I would not have bothered. Local. Local. Local.
First off, that’s a clickbait headline. Sorry. Anyone who knows this website, or my perspective, knows what is coming.
COP26 means absolutely nothing. It never did, and anyone who told you it did, who told you that it was somehow going to put a fire under the Labour Group (which has 94 or the 96 Councillors), or convert the elected and unelected leadership to an understanding that their economic model of endless growth was “sustainable”, OR that COP26 was somehow going to create a climate “movement” in Manchester was either an idiot or a liar OR BOTH.
COP26 was always going to be a corporate-friendly shitshow with real politik watering everything down, and a massive spin effort to make the next one (Egypt, since you ask) seem like the place where Glasgow’s “success” will be ratified. It was always going to end this way, the clue is in the name (twice) COP. And 26.
The task for locally-focussed activists was always, regardless of “triumph” or “disaster” or some in-between imposter, about having the stomach, spine and muscles to do something about the local realities.
Manchester City Council will have spent a lot of money (how much is the subject of a FOIA) attending and trying to do what they ALWAYS do – turn the fate of the planet into an inward-investment marketing exercise. They’ve been doing that since 1992.
Various well-meaning activists will have exhausted themselves and others, and taken up bandwidth with stories to tell about their own importance and martyrdom.
To quote a former Prime Minister, “nothing has changed.”
Manchester, as a city, has still burnt through 6 million tonnes of its 15 million tonne for-the-rest-of-the-21st-century budget in the last 3 years.
The Manchester Climate Change “Partnership” is still made up of organisations treating it like a circular fig-leaf/stabvest, and not saying boo to the goose that is the City Council and the so-called “Agency”.
Manchester City Council is still made up almost entirely of craven, (self-)whipped ignorant councillors, some of whom can even quote Gramsci (so smart, so effective). There is a tiny handful of councillors who understand what is at stake and who haven’t offered up their brains and their spines in supplication.
Manchester’s activist scene (not a movement) is still made up of well-meaning people who have unexamined “information-deficit” models of social change, who continue to confuse access with influence, thinking that the latter relies on the former, who tell them stories of changing the system from within, who are swimming in the smugosphere, and keep riding the emotacycle. Manchester’s activist scene, with a tiny handful of exceptions, fail to understand what is at stake, and have offered up their brains and spines for … well, I’m not sure what.
What is to be done?
Oh, the usual –
building organisations that can sustain themselves, by recruiting and retaining individuals.
building organisations that resist co-optation, capture and repression
building organisations that can link with other organisations to do meaningful movement-building work.
Without these, all the other necessary stuff –
drawing the links between climate catastrophe and the endless yet escalating assault on ordinary working people (welfare cuts, worsening wages, terms and conditions),
drawing links between the ideologies of control and extractivism that have given us spiralling carbon emissions and patriarchy and racial capital, and all the other social, environmental, economic, political and spiritual ills that ail “us”
is just a woke parlour game and virtue-signalling exercise.
And if we don’t examine the failures of the last three years, in meaningful and astringent terms, then we will continue to fail.
Future generations will pay an enormous price for our past failures. Let’s at least have the common courtesy to make them not pay a price for our current failures.
Over the coming days and weeks you’ll find on this site
a) some links to decent analysis of COP26 (but you shouldn’t bother to read it – it really does not matter)
Our "leaders" are going to keep making empty promises. It makes them feel good. It gets the activists to act like zombie kittens. If you want to have some self-respect and perhaps make a difference (actual facts may vary), then find a functioning group that cares about your skills and knowledge - what you have, what you want.
One useful group might be www.climateemergencymanchester.net - you can email them on contact@climateemergencymanchester.net
manchester climate monthly 