Over on Our Society, Your Square Mile founder Paul Twivy has posted a response to questions posed by Julian Dobson. He includes a couple of rather odd statements.
'Our role is as the citizen voice.'
What can this mean? Was it deliberately intended to sound so incredibly arrogant, or did it just come out wrongly? On what basis can you attract large-scale funding and head off into people's neighbourhoods proclaiming 'we're here, we're here at last, sorry you've been waiting sooooo long, and you with such needs...' (A citizen's voice: 'Well, welcome, nice to meet you. Er, who are you?' YSM: 'We're the citizen voice.' CV: 'Er, I already got one mate. Are you saying I'm not a proper citizen?')...
Wait there's more:
'YSM is about enabling people to make the changes they want to see in their area in their way and not about us imposing ideas from the outside.'
Really? So what are you doing there? Were you elected? Do you have taxpayers money to allocate to services? Were you invited in? And if so, by who?
As with big society and coalition government, we're seeing an insensitive officer-class attitude towards ordinary people in their neighbourhoods - from telling them what to do, through savagely cutting their services in ways they can't defend against, to telling them that important people have come to help them make changes. And expecting to be applauded for this peculiar form of imperialist behaviour. I'm tempted to ask, do you have a flag?
One wonders who's next for the Grand Tour for Saviours of Low-Income Neighbourhoods.
