Monday 19 February 2024 – Red Cards and Injuries

“You’ll never go broke appealing to the lowest common denominator” said Lisa Simpson (pronounced simp-sen, she/her), but how far can you dumb something down before you start to do damage?  “Brexit means Brexit” seems to me to be the dumbest of all appeals (see Spectemur Agendo and Living the Dream) and obviously caused a lot of offence to the 48% culturally (by separating us in body from the European mainland), economically (by separating us from European and international markets and supply chains and tanking our economy), and eroding our rights (legal protection from the worst abuses of the economic elites/kleptocracy – see What are People Thinking?- although, purportedly, someone else got some more sovereignty, but it wasn’t me, or anyone who now has to show ID to vote but doesn’t have any).

But, also, nearly seven years on, the term is offending us intellectually.  “Brexit means Brexit” is now being used by junior footballers as a battle cry before sliding into internecine tackles designed to crock the opposition player on the ball, despite probably hurting oneself physically, as well as your own team by getting carded.  The Urban Dictionary in 2022 defined “Brexit means brexit” as “when somebody hits a massive slide tackle and usually sends them flying and it hurts them servely [sic]”.  “Brexit means Brexit” has been repurposed by, in this case, 10-year-olds as an excuse, in the way that comes naturally to 10-year-old-boys, to brain each other.  But the choice of term seems precocious; quoting something the Prime Minister said when these 10-year-olds were 3 or 4, until you realise just how sophomoric it was in the first place.  These children are satirising what enough dumb adults were willing to accept in 2017; 42.7% of us to be precise voting Conservative, and the phrase now adopted by children to replicate them by doing something satisfying at a base level but ultimately self-harming as well as harming everyone else around them.  How did these children recognise this and boil it down so succinctly and singularly when 42.7% of their adults responsible for them couldn’t?  And still don’t since neither of the two leading parties dare address re-entering the EU lest we call treachery?

That children are celebrating their adults’ destructive behaviour by duplicating it rather than mocking it in a lamentable way just reflects that they are 10-year-old boys in want, almost as an exclusive goal in life, of decking each other.  I’m being careful to say that this impetus belongs exclusively to boys and not girls (and the article about slide tackling is about boys’ football only).  Lucy Mangan observed that, “Boys are bellicose little bastards and girls are not.  This is a cruelly reductive generalisation, and absolutely true.”, Hopscotch & Handbags: The Truth about Being a Girl, 2008.  In a competitive and hierarchical world divided into winners and losers, the haves and the have-nots, those with status, boys “have things relatively simple.  They wrestle (literally) for dominance throughout childhood and the one who ends up the biggest/tallest/most heavily muscled/sexually experienced adult wins.  Boys admire superheroes, footballers and aeroplanes – things with measurable, visible, concrete, indisputable, universally recognised talents.  This is why they collect comics, Panini stickers and Top Trumps, and this is where the relationship begins and ends.  Where is a girl to look for idols and heroines?  Overall, however, I think we can agree that while life as a girl has its problems and its pitfalls, it still beats being a boy by a comfortable margin… at least you will never have to… spend your entire life trying to communicate through the medium of hitting and Top Trumps.”

Lisa Simpson and her substitute teacher, Mr Bergstrom, watching the playground antics of her brother, Bart, in his reductive campaign for class president.

There is a point to my saying all of this about boys; after all Theresa May was a girl.  Perhaps expropriating her “Brexit means Brexit” was an evolutionary advancement in articulation by boys, but, given that men are limited in their learned media of communication, essentially, competition between men is little more advanced and complicated than trying to thump each other.  But, in a world with real outcomes combined with corporate business structures eliminating any chance for democratic institutions of decision-making, where dominance is determined by posturing and pugilism, winners must simplify the competition being played of, say, Economic Development, to a proverbial slide tackle complemented by some phraseology they heard some mindless politician say.

But how dumb can my boy-managers at work make the game?  “Be ambitious” our dear Leader told the Assistant Director for Economic Development.  What does this mean?  What muscle does he flex to turn that into an action?  Who does he have to beat?

Everyone, came back the pre-determined answer of your typical alpha male.  “All contributions from new developments lead to economic development”, he eventually determined.  He must harness all planning contributions made by developers of commercial properties such as towards education, roads, transport, housing, culture and health he tells us in the Economic Development Management Team meeting (EDMT) back in April (see Back to Basics). 

“Other services manage those contributions”, I inform him in the meeting because he seemed to be pointing this, what seemed to me to be an accusation of not doing enough, directly at me.  "They are not under our control.”

This deflates his "ambition" pomp.  He declares such policy must be rewritten.  The economic development planning policy that I wrote when I first started at the council is too narrow.  It only talks about economic development.  It doesn’t take into account ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT.  It isn’t ambitious.  “No offence, but you’re not senior enough to write policy” he tells me in front of the Management Team.  Offence taken.

Instead, he passes the instruction onto his lieutenant, the Head of Strategy.

Nothing much comes of this in the intervening months.  Strategic Planning officers send me planning applications asking for the economic development heads of terms to include in the S106 contract, I take them from the existing policy that I drafted and justified, and all is well.  Then, in November, a mere seven months of coiled energy later, the Head of Strategy springs into action.  "What we need to do", he surmises, "is have more meetings".  Eureka!  He arranges regular monthly meetings with Strategic Planning to discuss with them what contributions we want from major developments.   “We must be ambitious” he instructs them in the first meeting.  They look a little put out to be told what to do by an Economic Development officer.  "What does he know about planning?", they think.  He continues talking but no-one quite knows what he is saying.  Their eyes glance towards me imploring help to interpret the words and meaning coming from my fellow Economic Development officer, but I don’t know either.  I doubt he knows what he’s talking about.  There’s talk of “place-making”, “inward investment”, “tech jobs” and “added value”.  They politely let him have his say but they have nothing to say in reply.  So the agenda progresses to specific upcoming major planning applications: Earls Court, sites in Hammersmith Town Centre, Ravenscourt Park Hospital and the BBC Media Village in White City.  In retaliation for being lectured, on the mention of the hospital, one of the Strategic Planners takes the opportunity to give the HoS a lecture on what place-making is because the HoS clearly has no idea; he just heard the term somewhere and mistakenly tried to spout it back at people that do this for living.

Beyond wanting the planners to arrange a site visit at Ravenscourt Park Hospital for him and the AD at his boss’s request so that they can see for themselves what place-making might look like, he doesn’t have any asks to confer on them at this juncture, ambitious or otherwise.  However, BBC Media Village is an important development for the Leader’s ambitions, he tells the attendees of the meeting, and he will get back to them on what our Heads of Terms are when the policy is rewritten.

Strategic Planning continue to ask me for Heads of Terms on other developments based on the existing policy.  I tell them.  Contributions will be made.  But not on BBC Media Village.  For that, the assigned planning officer must wait.  The planning application is delayed.  The Local Planning Authority has a statutory duty not to hold up applications and development on pain of having our planning authority taken away by the Government’s Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

The January meeting comes and goes with more vacuous instructions to strategic planners that we must be ambitious that goes down like a lead balloon, as well as another review of the same upcoming applications.  How much major development does the Economic Development Team think is going on in our small borough?  There’s no word yet on a new policy.  We might get an external consultancy “to write the evidence base” to justify the economic development contributions we can ask of developers, the HoS tells the group.  “What will these asks be?” a planner asks.  “We don’t know yet” but we will know their justification first.  Genius.  In the meantime, the strategic planning officer for BBC Media Village and his applicant must wait to hear what the Leader’s ambitions are for the site.

In this meeting our AD turned up to see how his ambitions were progressing.  We have been having “cuddly meetings” with the Earls Court Development Company he brags to the Assistant Director for Strategic Planning in retaliation for being shamed by him for not knowing that negotiations for all planning contributions had started in September (see Living the Dream).  “We discussed the residential/commercial split in their application”.

“This is not a reflection of anyone here”, the AD for SP lied, “but we have regulatory obligations on the capacity of residential development for any application and we wouldn’t want to be giving mixed messages to ECDC.”  Our AD just got told off for discussing what he thought was economic development with a local business, albeit diplomatically, and told to step back.  This meeting was starting to put a bit of a dent in his ego not to mention the Leader’s ambitions for which he had been given personal responsibility over everything: education, roads, transport, housing, culture, health.  Could Paul have been right that it’s not up to him, but other departments manage those, and he should stick to the day job, whatever that was?

I continue to send S106 Heads of Terms to Planning on new, smaller applications.  In the meantime, the planning officer and applicant for BBC Media Village continue to sit on their hands while Economic Development thinks about how to rewrite their policy.  In the February meeting today there is, to the visible frustration of the planners, talk from the HoS of the need to be ambitious.  Still no policy, though.  Maybe we’ll lose our planning authority.  There’s no sign of the application progressing.  Even if we knew what the scope of ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT was, and we knew what we wanted to ask for, we’re not going to get any if the thing doesn’t get planning permission.  This is a lose-lose for everyone since the Leader told our AD he must challenge those in control in the game.  But he was shouting “Be Ambitious” when he came sliding in. 

Estragon: “Let’s Go!”

Vladimir: “We can’t.”

E:        “Why not?”

V:        “We’re waiting for Godot.”

E:        “Ah.”