Wednesday 14 March 2012

Fair Tactics ?



Sometimes they tell you things they don’t believe themselves, a practice which has a name I’ve temporarily forgotten. Other times they repeat something they’ve heard so many times from dubious colleagues that they actually believe it themselves. Now chaps I say is that British?

An example on Monday evening from a Blacka Moor meeting.

I’m becoming something of an expert at identifying phoney consultation tactics. In this case I had complained, yet again, of post-it note consultations. Why not simply discuss things, I innocently enquire. They (there’s more than one of them) come back in the now tired and predictable way feigning compassion for the weak in society “Yes but some people are not confident and don’t like speaking up among other people.”

They are saying what they would like to believe because it’s convenient for themselves. They hate scrutiny and hate being asked to answer for their own actions and statements.

As I say, I’ve heard it before. It’s usually trotted out by those who themselves burble on with mountains of management babble swamping other people’s attempts to get an intelligent discussion going. They have no shame. They just don’t want to submit their nonsense to scrutiny. And cultivating the meek and uncritical is part of a strategy to marginalise the well-informed whom they identify as a threat to them. As I’ve been told recently from an insider, there are dark forces at work in the conservation industry and it’s not helped by the fact that the mass of the general public have given them an easy passage over recent years under the impression that anything claiming to be a wildlife charity must be inherently saintly.

Unfortunately anything that gets accepted uncritically and without scrutiny becomes a splendid habitat for the cowboys and tricksters in society. As we know he must be above reproach because he is a priest, a policeman, a banker,.....or a conservationist?

Responding to this evasive tactic needs equal cunning without descending to the same level. What about purchasing a bulk order of post-it notes, filling them all in and sending them off. Postage expenses? Must be possible to do this electronically.

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