The resignation of Hazel Blears reminded me again that this nation’s government now has a “Department for Communities”. Letting that phrase pass my lips without implied quotation marks would be like vomiting into my mouth without washing it out.
Thanks to Kevin Harris’s “neighbourhoods” blog, I can sample a little of that department’s output, a review document called “Empowering communities to influence local decision making“. Brace yourself:
Local practitioners are a crucially important resource in developing this agenda [PDF, 571KB] and bringing it towards fruition.
It is important that government clarify the objectives of empowerment and give a sustained commitment to an agenda that may take a while to deliver notable successes.
These simple messages imply the need for developing accessible, inclusive and facilitated strategies for empowerment. The community and voluntary sector and specifically community development techniques have an important role to play here.
What in the name of Orwell is a “a facilitated strategy for empowerment”?
I’d resign too, rather than sign off on prose like that.
[UPDATE: via Andreas’ Blog, Gordon thanks Hazel for “driving forward the community empowerment agenda”.]
While I now tend to second-guess my initial impulses to shout “stop waffling” on seeing such blather… is it telling that the passage you quote seems to think “empower” is an intransitive verb? I’d like to know who or what one’s supposed to be empowering, whether facilitatedly or otherwise.
Anyone wondering why ’empowering local communities’ is a bad idea, need only look at what has been happening in south Belfast. It will institute NIMBYism and the postcode lottery in all public services. This is the core of David Cameron’s agenda and it is already being adopted by the New Labour.
I was going to say that the best way of “Empowering communities to influence local decision making” would surely be to, erm, just let them make the decisions? And cut out all those middlemen with their offices, lease cars, laptops, and pensions…
But then I remembered that “communities” is government-speak for “chippy self-appointed minority spokesmen”, so probably those are the last people we want making decisions.