You arrived at this page by selecting:Citizen Power is not dead yet!
This week I thought I would write about citizen power. The government says they like to promote citizen power. However, I am not so sure. I recently had a letter from a lady who has been having trouble with a neighbouring works, which is producing all sorts of smells, pongs and rats even. She has been complaining about it for years and has got absolutely nowhere.
She has been to the highly official government body that is supposed to sort these things out. It has a jolly official looking title with nice website and probably a jolly large marketing budget too. There's nothing these people don't know about rats and pongs but whether they are doing anything about it is another matter. It seems they are not and this poor lady is tearing her hair out in frustration. Maybe they should re-invent themselves as the Office of Rats and Pongs (ORP) instead.
Personally I am not very surprised. I see this all the time. The problem is that the powers that be see citizen power in terms of setting up official bodies to sort things out for us. The unspoken assumption is that citizens can't or won't sort it out for themselves, maybe because they think we are too stupid and need a helping hand.
What citizen power means to me is that if I have a problem with big organisation A, I should be able to sort it out with them on my own. If I have to go to another big organisation to help, then that's not empowerment it's dis empowerment. I am now just dependant on the goodwill and competence of big organisation B and is that any better than being dependant on the goodwill and competence of big organisation A who is causing me the problem?
There will be some people who think that these helpful organisations and bodies are a good thing and will sort things out for them but more often than not they don't and ordinary folk believe there is nowhere else to go. Well sometimes you will have more success and a speedier conclusion if you did take matters into your own hands, through a solicitor of course, not literally. I recently handled a case for a couple who had bought a new house and was swamped with raw sewage. After getting nowhere with the NHBC who are meant to protect owners from shoddy building works they came to me and we got a conclusion.
Luckily my correspondent's tale has a happy ending too. She has kicked the ORP into touch and is now taking the miscreant company to court all on her own. Good for her. The truth is that most of the time if you look in the rulebook closely enough there is some procedure somewhere where you can do this. But naturally the bureaucrats are not keen to tell you that. If too many people started helping themselves then why would we need an ORP at all? Now there's a thought.
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