If all has gone to plan - always a fairly brave assumption in publishing - readers of tomorrow's Lochaber Times will see an abbreviated version of this week's Wed-Head, my third 'electoral address', which I hope will feature a weblink (<https://bit.ly/3CyzWm0>) to the complete text right here including, by way of bonus, a postscript summarising "What 'Wednesday Headway' I've Made So Far" this year. You'll notice I got a bit unlucky with the link-shortener - that's a zero at the end, not a capital 'O' - but no doubt most folk will figure it out. In any case, the shortened piece did also mention that it was sourced from <https://DraytonMark.SubStack.com> (so the others should get here eventually), adding enticingly that my SubStack also features, in the guise of making 'Wednesday Headway' (see <https://draytonmark.substack.com/p/wed-head-i>), "many articles about the generational challenge of community empowerment." "Huh? Climate change, surely, Mr Drayton?" Well, that too. And yet... Reflecting on "the character of nations and the course of history" in 2014, Henry Kissinger warned that "each generation will be judged by whether the greatest, most consequential issues of the human condition have been faced." Our suicide rate here is high even by Scottish standards where, sadly, the picture is bad enough already. And that's just the tip of an iceberg of mental health problems we suffer from - just ask your GP. Empowered people don't take their own lives. Disempowerment, disagency and disillusion are, at present, just as great and consequential an "issue of the human condition" as climate volatility and, to the point, as I see things it's impossible to imagine our solving the latter without squarely facing the former. Yet people have prevailed in far worse circumstances: Mohandas Gandhi led the liberation of India, after all. And, speaking in 1956, Dr Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed that:- "It's not only rights that we are seeking. We not only have the right to be free, we have a duty to be free. And when you see freedom in sense of duty, it becomes greater than seeing it in terms of right, your right to be free. You have a duty to be free." Council-Tax-payers deserve a Bill of rights, for a start. And public service vouchers can and should replace the seductive but ultimately demeaning practice of grant-chasing in service provision, treating symptoms instead of causes. "Huh? What difference will THAT make?" These are deep waters but, by way of (oblique) answer, here is a quote from Vaclav Havel offering a psychological diagnosis of what went wrong in pre-1989 Eastern Europe:- "The essential aims of life are present naturally in every person. In everyone there is some longing for humanity's rightful dignity, for moral integrity, for free expression of being, and for a sense of transcendence over the world of existences. Yet, at the same time, each person is capable, to a greater or lesser degree, of coming to terms with living within the lie. Each person somehow succumbs to a profane trivialization of his or her inherent humanity and to utilitarianism. In everyone there is some willingness to merge with the anonymous crowd and to flow comfortably along with it down the river of pseudo-life. This is much more than a simple conflict between two identities. It is something far worse. It is a challenge to the very notion of identity itself." My forthcoming (mini-)manifesto will contain just a few further initiatives and proposals in a similar vein, none of which will require changes in law - any more than does agreeing to abide by a code of conduct. To make that same point in another way, neither of 'Glasnost' (openness, transparency) nor 'Perestroika' (reconstruction, rebuilding) actually needs to be legislated, as long as their thorough-going embrace is mandated by those in authority. Also forthcoming, by the way, is a fuller explanation of my 'second place' campaign stance (see my Wed-Heads of 10th & 17th November, <here> and <here> respectively). I shall have to say something more about that because a couple of people have asked me how second-place votes can possibly have any effect when only one council seat is being contested - a very fair question, and one I'll answer all-too-fully in the next few days. Finally, I don't like negative campaigning any more than anyone else but, if pressed, I will explain why there are cogent and compelling reasons not to vote for Mr A McKenna if you live in Fort William, nor to vote for Ms K Willis if you live on God's green earth (ironically). PS: What 'Wednesday Headway' I've made so far:- I became a community councillor two years ago on formation of the Fort William, Inverlochy, and Torlundy Community Council (FITCC). Some time around the middle of March 2021 I made a commitment to write, by way of a 'lockdown labour', a weekly column until (at least) the second FITCC AGM in June. (I keep promising myself I'll go bi-monthly to leave more time for other things, but it hasn't quite happened yet - give it a fortnight, maybe.) In early August I switched platform from <NextDoor.co.uk> to <SubStack.com>, migrating the archive (<https://draytonmark.substack.com/archive>) across a month or so later. Wed-Heads v, vi, xiii, xvii and perhaps xxi are the best introduction to my civic interests and concerns; the remainder of today's column goes into more detail about what 'Wednesday Headway' I made in 2021. The first topic I got my teeth firmly into was a Scottish Government initiative to consult publicly on the subject of Local Place Plans (in 31st March's and all of April's Wed-Heads). Despite having had something like ten week's notice, I'm sorry to report that FITCC utterly failed to rise to the challenge of submitting a response. (Indeed, one community councillor, VAL manager Flora McKee, later suggested that the nine-week schedule I had proposed was rather too tight, which might or might not reveal something about performance expectations in An Drochaid, who knows?) I myself found, however, that I could not in good conscience ignore such survey findings as "[in] 2019, only 18% of adults felt they could influence decisions in their local area, decreas[ing] significantly from 24% of adults in 2015" so I instead emailed my full-length draft submission to a Journactivist friend in Glasgow and we finalised it together over a long weekend just before the consultation closed on 25th June. It's probably the best sizeable piece of community-related work I did this year. In May (through to 2nd June) I kept close to the ground, writing mainly about the distasteful subject of dog fouling as well as upkeep generally, lack of car-parking in Fort William's Plantation estate and, in 12th May's Wed-Head, two of the candidates standing in that month's Scottish Parliament election - although even then I maintained thoroughly local focus. My 16th June Wed-Head stayed in Plantation, too. The three other June Wed-Heads, however, took in all of Scotland by way of 2011's Christie Report, ScotGov/COSLA's 2019 'Place Principle', and ScotGov's ongoing Governance Review. I hope it isn't too self-aggrandising of me to recommend that you read all three of those columns, but 'Summary' section of the second (23rd June's) is short and particularly pertinent. The second topic I took a really deep dive into (throughout July) was the third part of 2015's Community Empowerment Act, which instituted "Participation Requests" into Scottish Law. If you followed the recommendation in the previous paragraph you might remember the Place Principle stressing that "all those responsible for providing services and looking after assets in a place need to work and plan together." Part 3 of the 2015 CEA provides a framework for doing that, especially if (God forbid) the existing/statutory service provider isn't terribly keen on the idea. I worked hard to break-down and analyse the detail of this mechanism, and it's probably the second-best sizeable piece of community-related work I did this year. Wed-Heads from August onwards became rather more abstract (although 8th September's does explain in-passing why I'm not on Facebook), and from the end of August I have been largely republishing other people's writing - basically for want of time now that the lockdown is ending. Once the election is over I expect to write only once or twice a month unless something important is happening - we'll see. PPS: Oops - I nearly forgot:- Promoted by the candidate, Mr Edward Marcus Drayton of 6 Morven Place Ft Wm PH33 6HY, known as Mark Drayton, and (in part) intended to promote or procure success in the 2nd December Highland (Regional) Council by-election for one or more of the candidates in Ward 21. If you hadn't guessed that already.
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