Incredible Invisible Sustainable Saga

Sustaina- who? Sustainable what? Babble babble babble!

The story of the Sustainable Communities Act 2007 is an achingly slow-running, and scarcely believable saga of people struggling against the odds to get some kind of input into alleviating the hideously bloated and bureaucratic systems that are ineluctably crushing the life out of us. Not surprisingly, given the weight of vested interest on the side of the mighty apparatus, very little has actually happened in practice since 2007, when the Sustainable Communities Act was passed into law.

It is as if a tiny mouse were talking to a massive mountain, asking the mountain, very politely, to move.

Now that Nick Hurd, the very same Member of Parliament who shepherded it through the House of Commons as a Private Members Bill, is a Minister - Minister for Civil Society no less - with a government that has been talking the talk of decentralisation, the language of 'Smaller Government' and 'Bigger Society', you might be forgiven for thinking that the powers that be could get around to walking the walk and that something could actually get done to implement it in practical terms, wouldn't you?

Barkingside 21 is one of those precious few who have patiently but determinedly stayed the course, starting with this post in February 07, and regularly updating readers since then on the frenzied official inactivity that has accompanied the Act at every stage.

Here is the latest episode ... 

Strategic Incompetence

Top tips for bureaucrats, from the Yorkshire Ranter:

"Incompetence is as effective a barrier to freedom of information as secrecy - in fact, it's arguably better. There are no legal bounds to incompetence."