Imagine that you are a developer wanting to knock down a much-loved heritage structure in your town – a covered market, say – to replace it with a modern shopping centre and 100-bed hotel. You convene a "key stakeholders' consultation group" consisting largely of people who support the plan, and keep everyone else off it.
You allow these "key stakeholders" to make some cosmetic changes, so they feel flattered and involved. But responses such as "leave the market alone" or "go away and stop messing up our town" are not allowed.
You hold a public exhibition of your proposals, more than a year before you apply for planning permission, and display a scheme substantially different from the one you eventually propose. Your exhibition is only open to the public for a total of 14 hours across two days. At this exhibition, you hand out questionnaires that claim, falsely, that the market is run-down.
You then claim "widespread public backing" on the basis of these questionnaires, though only 333 people filled them out and of those only 79 – about 0.01 per cent of the local population – gave their full support.
From an article by Andrew Gilligan DT 20/8/10
This has all happened, exactly as described, in the battle being waged by OMBC in their underhand scheme to remove our market from Tommyfield, string it in unspeakable bloody tents along our streets, then use the vacated land for yet another of their pet money grabbers, a car park.
What you have to realise is that these 'consultations' are really 'nonsultations': a cynical technique used by governments, local authorities and some businesses to provide spurious legitimacy or fake PR cover for a pre-determined decision.
All major decisions, and many minor ones – including planning applications – must now, by law, be consulted on. A vast industry has grown up to do it. The purpose of "nonsultation", however, is almost never to act on the public's views. It is to manage, manipulate, or suppress them.
DON'T SAY YOU WEREN'T WARNED!
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