Monday 8 June 2009

Political Posters


What is Political about this poster?
Apparently political posters can’t be displayed at council run community centres. So, what is political about this poster? No political parties mentioned, just a simple request to anyone interested to come along and lobby their MP. You have to ask the question where does politics end and where does manipulation start. I could not get to the bottom of who rejected our poster but it never got displayed. There are three possibilities.
1) local management of centre could be concerned about their jobs and never actually submitted the poster to higher authority for clearance,
2) Centre management committee chair or vice chair could have rejected it,
3) could have been passed to next stage line management for approval and he/she could have rejected it.

Question I am asking is who did reject it and why? Call me paranoid if you like but I have the feeling some slight of hand is going on here with vested interests against a clinic on Tanhouse site getting involved.
I’m asking my councillors to look into the issue. At least we can have the policy for displaying posters at the centre clearly published. If there is one I’d like to see it displayed clearly because a poster for another group I’m involved with has been removed and this was about activities for older people.
We didn’t do much canvassing really for people to come along and lobby their MP but I did talk to few people who I thought might be interested. There was the knowledgeable who said something like “sure it’s about time something was done on this side of the borough. The couldn’t care less who said something like narr mate it ain’t gunna appen here anyway. And then there was the nervous “I don’t know about protesting it’s not good for you” types. The best put offs I had were “I don’t know I might have to go to me brother in laws on Saturday” and “ the wife and I are not natural protestors” I had a few “off on me hols” and various social events but the not natural protestors won for me. Nought as queer as folk eh?



2 comments:

David Hosell said...

Hi Bob, I feel you might be jumping the gun with this blog, either that or you really are getting paranoid, the manager was using a little commonsence in making his decision, and I feel that there was no ulterior motive. If you feel his decision was wrong then i suggest that you write to the management committee and ask what the rules are?. As a member of that committee and also one of the councillors who attended that lobby I can assure you that the Tanhouse centre acts in the interest of the community.Further more I would like to thank the centre manager for allowing us to lobby Tom inside the building and so saving us all from the attrocious weather. Yours CLLR David Hosell.

Bob the Black Country Brummie said...

As I understand it Dave it was not the managers decision but I'm happy to write to the management committee. Paranoid perhaps, suspiciouse definately. There is a lot at stake here