Friday 4 October 2024 – Confession
Confession takes courage, especially when what you confess reflects regrettable behaviour or an unpleasant character. It forces one to confront things hidden, from others and oneself. Facing up to self-deception one must also face the real consequences of one’s dire actions as well as the prospect of personal change.
Confession can, at the same time, be a cowardly act; a way out when confronted with evidence of the truth. It is cathartic to end the intellectual struggle of maintaining a fantasy that you have painfully constructed and want others to believe. To confess is to struggle to give up that fantasy world, succumbing to a higher intellectual source who saw through the lie.
For both these reasons, or else despite this dichotomy, in detective programmes on telly, these confessions are always elicited so easily by the antagonist. Presenting overwhelming facts about how and why they did it, the murderer breaks down and confesses, meekly holding out their wrists to be escorted away by the constable also in awe of the brilliance of the investigating detective. Poirot often brings the contained group of suspects into the living room for the big reveal. Jonathan Creek reveals the mystery in an understated monotone. Those pesky kids reveal who did it before they pull off the hood that ended over the perpetrator’s head when Scooby and Shaggy accidently captured him. John Taylor, aka Ludwig, having sussed out who killed the American Cambridge Tour Guide in the medieval church, brings the contained pool of suspects back to the church for the big reveal having solved what seemed to his nominal underling Detective Inspector like an evidence-free case. And in the case in the office block, on the construction site, in the manor house, in the Headmaster's office and, finally, around a hasty recreation of the murder scene in the police station. We all love a predictable formula. Of the case in the church, Ludwig explains that he has discovered three coincidences. Three is statistically significant, demonstrating that they are not coincidences at all. Her murder was linked to another, something neither the DI, nor the Chief Constable investigating the other, didn’t see. And one suspect, Mr Tate, is linked to both.
“Your connection to both events is a coincidence too far Mr Tate”, says Ludwig and this is all it takes for Mr Tate to confess. It is brave of him and at once cowardly. But these episodes always end so neatly. This is because, as another Ludwig said, in this case Wittgenstein, “The world is everything that is the case. The world is the totality of facts, not of things.” If all the facts of the case are present, that is everything and what else is there to deny? Well I don’t know what Wittgenstein was going on about because, when I have to do an investigation into endeavours made by a developer, the developer thinks that “everything" has little to do with the case and the facts that inform it.
The
developer of a housing estate on Hendon Broadway, Arish Living, fundamentally disagrees
with Wittgenstein and works on the premise that the facts of a case have very
little bearing on their reality. In my
second week of work at Barnet, with their development nearing completion, they
asked to have a meeting with me to discuss their employment and skills
contributions, or at least their endeavours towards making them, and have me
discharge them.
On 16 July, they sent me the email trail of what they had agreed with my immediate predecessor, A, as “an email trail and respective documents for your reference.”
I replied on 29 July confused. All the “local” residents reported weren’t Barnet residents. What exactly was this? It didn’t look like they’d delivered anything to our residents. I questioned it:
“On
apprenticeships, I see that A has approved the claim for [one candidate, R]
being a Brent resident because her predecessor, J, assessed that reasonable endeavours had been
made to otherwise advertise the opportunity to local residents and none came
forward, and [a second apprentice claimed, P] is also a Brent resident and [a
third apprentice, S] a Harrow resident.
None of the apprentices you have claimed are local residents?” Whether A’s sentiment might have been shared with
Lady Bracknell’s that to have advertised one job and not receive any local applicants
may be regarded as a misfortune; to advertise a second and third and not
receive any looks like carelessness and subsequently changed her mind about
accepting R as a reasonable endeavour in light of the results of the same
endeavours on the other two apprenticeships, she didn’t say. Let sleeping dogs lie. But no excuse has been provided, nor seems warranted, for failing to get any Barnet residents to apply for the remaining two apprenticeship opportunities when those from Harrow and Brent were so up for it.
He replied 2 August to answer the query that I did raise:
“We have discussed this in the previous meeting with A regarding S who hasn’t started the apprenticeship because there were no slot available for him in the current year. He wished to be enrolled this September. While P wants to enroll the Second apprenticeship programme once she finishes her first. We have contacted so many training providers to provide us with the apprenticeship but most of the apprenticeship with our construction work runs almost 48 months and our construction programme is only 16-18 months. Please find attached emails communications for your reference. We even discussed with A that even the development is finished we will keep P working for us until she finished her apprenticeship as she is employed by us directly.”
Huh? I don’t know what tense this email is written in but it seems to be talking about when the apprentices will be employed. The correspondence attached is a further semi-literate exposition on the timing of apprenticeships albeit very vague on when, with what training provider or why. However, that wasn’t my question. What I was querying, rather clearly I think, was who the prospective apprentices are. They are not local residents as required by planning legislation. Planning contributions are supposed to mitigate the impact of a development on residents local to it, that is, in Barnet, not on Brent and Harrow residents who are not impacted. And A made no reference to these boroughs beyond the first apprentice, R, employed. This was my query and it has been, in my mind, conspicuously not answered or even addressed here. Also, it appears, contrary to their monitoring report listing apprentices employed, he is telling me that no apprenticeships have started yet because, rather unbelievably, the relevant courses hadn’t started since before the start of the construction of the development in 2022.
Confused, I replied 5 August asking the developer to submit a monitoring report with the names, postcodes and apprenticeships of those who had started just so that I could grasp the facts as they are as a starting point. Further, I conceded, despite being very sceptical that a professional S106 Officer would have done, “If A has made any other concessions to be included in the monitoring report, can you make reference to that correspondence/email” rather than attach reams of emails, unlabelled, saying that A has agreed to something unspecified without making reference to where in the attachments that agreement is or what the agreement was but let me read through all the junk and failing to find what he might be referring to?
He replied 22 August with the same monitoring report listing apprenticeships started of which he has already told me that they haven’t yet for good reason, as well as reams of more emails, some the same, some he hadn’t sent before, still unlabelled and no reference made to them in his email apart from the vague assertion that S and P have been employed into apprenticeships, even though he also says that they haven’t, saying this report has already been accepted by Barnet Council as evidence of reasonable endeavours to employ Barnet residents because they are Brent and Harrow residents respectively.
I struggled to follow this logic and, despite diligently going through the reams of email correspondence again, could find no such agreement from A and little reference to it from the developer because it was mostly about when the apprenticeships could start (with little explanation of why it has taken so long). A clearly did not acknowledge it.
I replied again the following day saying that I can see that R has been accepted, but no reference to S and P has been made.
"I’m not too sure what the attached emails are demonstrating”, I explained by reply, “because you have not referenced them. If you would like to make reference to what is relevant in your attachments”, I invited him one last time lest this gaslighting continue ad infinitum, “please do.”
He replied nearly a month later on 20 September with more reams of unlabelled email correspondence attached asking me to, “please find attached email we sent out to A after completing our meeting with her and goings through the employment and training schedule and our submissions.”
He then makes no further reference to those attached emails and proceeds to explain what was discussed in that meeting, for which I only have is word to take. Vague assertions were included such as, “We discussed…”, “efforts to procure the final apprentice…”, “…we have send out the advertisements…”, “…which was discussed with A and P was confirmed as our second apprenticeship.”
More specifically, he claimed that,
“We have approached Barnet & Southgate College whose Apprentice programme is starting 25th September and they will be providing few candidates for the apprenticeship position. We will provide you with detail of the selected candidate for your approval as soon as possible.”
Huh? They have already told me who the prospective candidates are: S and P, but claimed them as if they had already started. Is this deliberate obfuscation or am I missing something? Obviously there is something missing from the developer’s discourse but I don’t know if he sees that, whether we are talking at cross-purposes or he is deliberately writing contradictory gibberish to confuse the issue and beat me into submission through some battle of attrition of patience by the medium of nonsense prose. If the latter, having more stamina than he might have hoped, I replied again expressing confusion. “I’m not sure what point you’re making below” I told him before expounding again on that I needed written confirmation from A that she had accepted apprentices employed who are not local residents in lieu of the S106 apprenticeship target, something he has not clearly explained why she would agree such a thing but, much more pertinently, attached that written agreement which he originally told me he had, rather than badly describe what he insists A agreed to in an otherwise unrecorded meeting. He replied,
“We had discussed this with A and because of our construction programme was very short we had an approval that our sub-contractor will keep the apprentice with them till they have completed their apprenticeship.”
Ok, he has no intention of sending me any agreement, probably, I assumed, because there never was one. I replied acknowledging that his report included no local apprentices employed against a S106 target of three.
But, on 27 September, he doggedly replied again insisting that, despite there not being a written agreement as he had previously told me, the council has accepted P towards the S106 target attaching a written timeline explaining the course of events. “All relevant information was shared with A, who approved this selection during the Teams meeting… and subsequently her employment was mentioned in our quarterly report to the council.”
“Subsequently” and “quarterly”? That’s a leap from the pidgin English previously used in their emails to me. I think they’ve got a solicitor to write this. If so, a solicitor should know better than to claim that an unrecorded verbal agreement, especially one that makes no sense whatsoever for the agreeing party, isn’t worth anything. However, A happens to be a friend, so I just called her. No, she said, she did not agree this. She agreed Barnet residents could be accepted as apprenticeships given their late starts. That doesn’t strictly contradict the S106 agreement so didn’t bother putting it in writing.
The facts of the case are in and have been reviewed ad nauseum. They lied and are lying. If the world is the totality of facts, not things, then, in the real world, they have to pay the £158,447.71 financial remedies.
Virtually speaking, I brought all the suspects into the living room by emailing the developers and presumably their solicitor all together to explain to them the facts:
“We last agreed that you would provide me, by today, with the correspondence you said you had from the council’s Economy and Skills Officer, A, confirming that the apprenticeship targets had been satisfied.
"I note here that you have not done that. Otherwise, we have no record, either emails or recorded Teams meetings, of what you describe below… being agreed, nor an understanding of why we might have agreed it in contradiction to the clauses in the S106 contract.
"Separately, I have been given to understand by A that Arish Living told her that, in addition to R (a Brent resident previously accepted by the council), two Barnet residents would be employed into apprenticeships but not until after practical completion but that she agreed with you that their late employment would be considered reasonable endeavours in the circumstances. You have reported another Brent and a Harrow resident being employed instead.
"I will notify Planning of the S106 outputs I have been able to verify as achieved.”
Game over. Or at least, if this was an episode of Ludwig, or Poirot, Jonathan Creek, Morse, Columbo or Scooby Doo, under the weight of facts and in the real world as opposed to their own fantastical construction, the perpetrator would be spilling their guts by now. But, Wittgenstein take note, in the real world, that just doesn’t happen. Sense, logic and facts have little bearing. Our world is post-fact. Truths are relative to the teller, usually the capitalist resisting government, tax and contributing to wider society. Demagoguery is our world now. I bet Wittgenstein didn't see that coming! The developer replied,
“Dear Paul,
"Pursuant to my previous email I once again confirm with you that P second apprentice is still working with us and we have appointed her in our company as an assistant accountant. This appointment has been carried out with an approval from A, Employment and Trainning (sic) Officer of Barnet Council.
"Thanking you once again.”
I picture that final thank you with a deep bow from on stage for his performance of the play he just staged for me. It took courage to construct and perform it, more so than confessing to reality, staying true to the fictionalised and absurdist plot and character throughout, right down to the nonsense language, not knowing whether it would be accepted by the audience. Personally, I found it exhausting. I will be sending them a bill for £158,447.71. Maybe that, if not admission and self-reflection, will change their behaviour in future.
Comments
Post a Comment