I never want to hear about another 'consultation' again

So, there's to be a big consultation? Well, count me out
    • The Guardian,
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Now that I'm elderly I tend to flake out in the afternoons, especially in hot weather, so I lie on the sofa with the TV softly burbling away. Bits of it filter through, like a dream, but on Tuesday I thought I heard my least favourite word, over and over again: consultation. Which was horrible for me, because by the time you reach my age, you'll probably have endured scores of consultations, and you're not just slightly cynical, you're bursting with rage and hate and want to slap the next person that suggests one, so I lay there hoping it was only a daytime nightmare. But it was real. Sure enough, within minutes Rosemary was on the blower, raging about it.

She's still smarting from her borough's library consultation. What did everyone want? They wanted more books and the magical storytelling librarian, who had entranced schoolchildren once a week for years, to remain. They got fewer librarians, more machines and scanners, and the storyteller moved to shelf-filling, to increase her range of skills.

Fielding also has bitter memories from his years at the chalk-face. Staff sat on their chairs, along came management and consulted. How did the staff feel? "You're treating us like shit and we're all having nervous breakdowns," said Fielding and his colleagues. It made no difference. Management did as they pleased. They hot-desked the English department, threw away all its books, and sacked the union members, consulting all the way. I whisper the word consultation to Fielding, and his blood-pressure rockets. Years ago, I was more positive. I went to a council focus group. "What do you think of the way we give you information?" they asked. "Do you like our monthly glossy brochures? Or do you prefer information on this one plain sheet of paper?"

We all preferred the sheet of paper. The magazine goes straight into our recycling bin. We never read it, or answer the questionnaires inside, each one a mini-consultation. Never done, never heeded. It's a huge waste of money.

What did we get? The glossy magazine. If this big consultation is on, I'm going back to my sofa. Don't wake me up till it's over.

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