Council hokum http://www.sustainablescotland.com

Our local authorities boast about their openness and accessibility to the electorate; about their desire for consultation and cooperation with the community and local groups; about engaging people in the lifestyle changing actions that genuine sustainable development entails; about their desire to communicate effectively about what they’re doing and what they propose doing. And so often they fail to do all this as well as they could because of the language they use for the titles of their staff, departments and policies. I feel a rant coming on!

Let’s start with what I seem to remember (or maybe I made up the phrase myself) being called “titular aggrandisement”, which refers to the way local authority job titles get longer and longer (and often less descriptive of the job), often by the addition of buzzwords like “community” and “development”. So we have Arts Development Officers and Path Development Officers and a whole plethora of Development Officers through every service of local authorities. There is nothing that my local Arts Development Officer does that her Arts Officer predecessors did not do. It does not communicate her function any better to the public. Almost every “development” job description is unnecessary. And that applies to the “community” job descriptions as well. They are of plague proportions - Community Recycling Officer, Community Traffic Warden (yes - unbelievable but true) etc. Don't we know that these people service the community? Are there local authority officers not serving the community? Why is my Arts Development Officer (she works for Stirling Council and she does an excellent job!) not my Community Arts Development Officer – is she not working for the community?

My stimulus to write this piece came from an short article in my local free sheet the Stirling News about the Comfort Partnership Scheme (know what that’s about? – more later!) and how more information could be obtained from the council’s Strategic Corporate Asset Management Service. Say that again! Well actually, don’t! Do strategic and corporate mean anything at all in this context (and in most council titles)? So erase them and we’re left with Asset Management Service, but that doesn’t mean anything either. What kind of assets are being managed? What this department is about is Property Management – that means something to most people, SO WHY ON EARTH, BEJASUS, DON’T THEY CALL IT THAT (or something equally meaningful).

Corporate. There are quite a few “corporate” officers about in the weird and wonderful world of local government, such as Corporate Communications Officer – that of course is just a Communications Officer. Such officials work of course for Corporate Services (which means a lot to the average council tax payer). There was a notice recently outside the world's second-largest granite building which proclaimed "New Corporate Headquarters for Aberdeen Council" - now, to council functionaries, corporate may mean something, but it means nothing to most of the public and that should be the point. It's a "New Headquarters," that's what it is. (And the granite building is the magnificent Marischal College).

Comfort and Joy. “Stirling Council is asking businesses and communities to be part of a new public toilet initiative called Comfort Partnership Scheme.” That’s the start of the article I alluded to above. This may be a worthy initiative (OK, it is just that.) but what on earth possessed whoever thought that this is a sensible, meaningful title for it? Is there anyone at all, even the most senior council officers, who have ever referred to a toilet as a “comfort station” or used the term “comfort break” – unless knowingly and ironically mocking this usage. So what should this be called? Obviously a Toilet Partnership Scheme – that’s what it is; toilet is the word most commonly used and universally understood for the facility in question. It is a perfectly respectable word. Comfort means a lot of things but only very rarely does it refer to toilet things. Incidentally the Councillor involved in this area is “Stirling Council’s Portfolio Holder with responsibility for Economy, Tourism and Finance”. Need I say more?

Services. Local authorities are structured into services and often we have a confusing Russian doll structure of services within services (and some of these services have very odd names indeed, like “Services for People” which don’t tell you anything about what they do). Nothing as plain now as “department” or “section”, words which everyone understood.

Finally, and while I’m still reasonably calm, cool and collected, I’d like to introduce you, if you have not previously had the pleasure, to one of the most ridiculous, nonsensical, totally meaningless terms to be encountered in local government. Now there’s a bold claim! I refer to “Single Outcome Agreement”. First I would like to quote a passage from the Scottish Government (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Government/local-government/SOA) (Don’t switch off; the best is yet to come!).