The City Speaks Back About Rubbish Students and Tesco

I’ve obviously touched a nerve with City Hall. In one morning I get an e-mail from ASB Officer Ms Spencer Fischer-Harrison kindly telling me that they will be passing my request for a rubbish bin onto EH department, that they sympathised with my situation, they will be flagging up this issue with the Police Safer Neighbour team and contacting First Bus Co., and is keeping me up dated. I was impressed and grateful. The other was, well, a bit unprofessional. I’ll just post the whole thing (without editing) and see what you think:

Dear Ms. K,

O.K., O.K. you want a dustbin, I have noted your request and will pass it on to the relevant department which takes action. I appreciate this issue is important to you but please appreciate that I have to prioritise my own duties so I can't attend to every request immediately and I don't as a Councillor have the authority to order a bin to be placed just like that.

I am well aware that a lot of people don't want Tesco on the Unthank Road. I am also aware that quite a few people do, only they feel too intimidated to speak up in public, people have spoken to me on the street and in private to say they want Tesco. However when the Planning Committee considers this we have to do so in the light of Planning law and guidelines. When Officers recommend acceptance as they have, the Committee has to think carefully before refusal to see if it could be justified at appeal.

 It will be an extremely difficult decision for the Committee because although the strength of local feeling has to be an important factor we also to have to weigh up the rest of the facts in the case. When this issue first arose I remember advising that objections must be lodged not in terms of emotion but closely related to planning legislation and local plan guidelines and traffic issues because these ultimately provide the foundation for a defensible decision to refuse which you and the majority of my correspondents clearly want.

Regards

Cllr. Felicity Hartley

O.K., O.K. lets review the facts (I won’t even start on the patronizing tone of the letter.) I originally wrote to my councillors 7/10/07, only one (NOT Felicity Hartley) even responded a week later with a “see if anything can be done”. I heard nothing. I know for a fact that my neighbours have contacted councillors with the same request even before I had.

Last week after a blatant bit of littering then learning that the council looks to let the Tesco in, I wrote to them once again and made them aware of this blog. Suddenly I have a response! Funny that.

Let’s touch on the tone of this letter. Is Cllr. Hartley a bit touchy and defensive because I criticized the councillor’s ability to represent the people’s will? So in defence she comes up with this shady group of victimized Tesco lovers too afraid to speak their forbidden love of Tesco Value in the face of our organized, intimidating, anti-Tesco syndicate. Seeing that I live on Unthank Road I think I have more contact with the people that this store directly affects then Cllr. Hartley who lives two miles away. Let me tell you about the majority of the people I’ve talked to that wouldn’t mind the Tesco – they are apathetic. They don’t care. They think “Eh if there’s a Tesco maybe it will be open later, if not? Eh.”

No one in their right mind can be thinking “Oh Unthank Road! You don’t have enough convenient stores!” There are two that you can actually stand and see each other from and the Tesco would be across the street from one of them. Half the reason I’m fighting Tesco is not emotions but simple logic.

The people that want the Tesco want convenience. Convenience breeds apathy, apathy is a way for government to control, to say… start wars in our name – but let’s stay with local government for the moment.

So Cllr. Hartley is the brave solider trying to give a voice to those poor people too afraid to say “I like corporate conglomerates that cause negative and environmental and economic problems world wide as appose to a local Co-operative because they’ve got better beans.” (For example) It so nice to have a modern politician doing what they think the people want – not because it’s what the people loudly say they want but because what the only people only they met supposedly say. It’s that kind of listening that reminds me of my President.

Ok, Ok. I went off on a rant and I do realize that Cllr Hartley isn’t actually saying there should be a Tesco because she’s talked to some people that do; what she is really saying is that you can’t in government vote solely on emotion. But I say, why not? Isn’t government representing the people? Don’t people have emotions and logic, and when their logic is affronted they show their emotions? Shouldn’t the government vote for what the people want? Isn’t that why they are there? This is a bigger debate then I have the space for.

You see part of me at heart is apathetic. Its just after four years of living with drunk loud students littering, breaking glass, (then picking broken glass out of dog’s paw), and even pissing in my garden you get to the point where you have to do something. Something tells me that if Cllr. Hartley had to deal with what I do – or if I say gather the rubbish (which would consist of at least ten bottles, three cans, bus tickets, bank receipts, broken glass, a subway sandwich, and various detritus) from in front of my and my next door neighbours’ yards right now and put it in hers she might…do something. Something like writing a letter, or even, Lord Forbid, TWO letters! In TWO months! (THE SCANDLE!) And this kind of hippy, revolutionary, civil disobedient behaviour might get me a rather snippy reply but hell, it might even get me a rubbish bin.

If you are curious my reply e-mail to Cllr. Hartley went like this:

Dear Councillor,

 I do actually have knowledge of rudimentary government thank you though for prioritizing your duties to explain them to me. Sorry I thought you would be interested in my views as my elected official.  I apologize for trying to be an active citizen and I’m sorry if my two requests to better this neighbourhood with the monumental task of one litter bin took up your time or annoyed you.

Sincerely,

 ~Kate K