where members and invited guests can have their 3 minutes of uninterrupted (and unanswered) questions, comments and opinions.
The Mischaracterisation of Scrutiny…(or ‘When your colleagues, their friends and their families hate you more than they want to do the right thing’)
It’s very hard for some people to see criticism as anything other than a personal attack, and unfortunately, once you’ve done it, your chips are cooked. However rational, fact based or evidence driven your points are, some people will never accept that they got it wrong, and instead will see you as having some kind of vexatious, personal vendetta, which gives them every right to attack you right back.
Councillors and staff who don’t know enough, don’t care enough to find out, or who think that they know enough already, make errors and try work arounds in a system which has several rule books, laws, acts and governance checks.
Unfortunately for them, this means that people who have taken the time to read the standing orders*, legislation and laws can easily see when the council has not, or is trying a work around.
People of a certain character type, will not accept that they got it wrong, will hate that someone noticed and pointed it out and will attribute motivations to the person doing it which will closely resemble their own world view (ie people only point out problems when they want to attack you personally, hate you or want to destroy you).
So, some councils, some councillors and some officers get stuck in long, protracted breakdowns with their electorate and colleagues, because they have massive, fragile, easily hurt egos, and are hugely arrogant, grandiose characters who defend against people who criticise by attacking, disparaging and belittling them. They refuse to back down and search out ways of avoiding having to admit their errors, all the while making the other person evil, bad, petty and vicious. Thus giving themselves permission to behave badly, arrogantly and self righteously on their ‘powerful’ platform while accusing others of bullying them.
*read them and understand them
CIVIC 