So it is a year on from Putin's audacious perpetration of an obscenity in the Ukraine that impacts upon the world in ever unfolding ways. This was understood internationally at the time Russia invaded Ukrainian soil and challenged everything that the Ukrainian people hold dear. This diabolical and outrageous war persists despite predictions a year ago that it couldn't.
A cohort of Launceston's ratepayers sought Town Hall's support to fly the Ukraine flag on Town Hall in support of, and in solidarity with, the Ukrainian people and as it turns out Hobart's Council have been doing unrestricted by bureaucratic 'stones in the road'. Yes, Town Hall was lit up in the flag's colours but such tokenism in such times approaches being insulting. Whatever, it diminishes the perpetrators but somehow they just do not get it!
Launceston's 'Town Hall's' resounding NO that was the response from the GM/CEO and Mayor was and is palpable and it goes on and on.
It was pointed out to the good people of Launceston that before any such action could be contemplated the Ukraine's Embassy needed to sanction such an action. This was contested but to no avail. For whatever reason the City of Launceston's management flexed its POWERmussels and deemed that such a thing could not and would not be done – and indeed it has not been done.
It has to be assumed that the majority of elected Councillors willingly complied withe the GM/CEO 'expert advice' – albeit contrary citizen's requests and their expert advice. Every obstacle at the disposal of backroom decision makers has been deployed and the outcome is not on display for all not to see unlike in Hobart where other sensibilities apparently prevail and are on display – much like many Town Halls the world over.
So is this Launcestonian sensibilities on display? OR, is there something else at work here that defies the ordinary that one might reasonably expect to come across in local governance, placemaking and cultural landscaping?
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| LInk |
The acknowledgment of the sensibilities and sensibilities that shape and make 'places' is unquestionably a fundamental component of effective local governance. Moreover, the management cum administrative mechanisms 'governance' puts in place needs to to be something more than alert to such sensibilities and sensibilities.
It turns out that civic managerial breakdowns and ineptitudes trickle down into, and impacts upon, communities' wellbeing imperatives, It is no-trivial matter and ultimately when the negativity becomes intolerable, communities act sometimes rationally other times less so.
Currently it is a fact of folklore that within a every hierarchy, its member tend to rise to their level of incompetence. Sadly it is a prophecy that is fulfilled all too often. When the hierarchy evolves into a fiefdom any pretence of 'democracy' is hollow, unsustainable and is indeed it is a total fiction.
So, when Launcestonians want to acknowledge the grief, the fears, the decimation, the losses the Ukrainian people faced and are now experiencing daily, they are not only looking far way but also close to home – closer to home than might be comfortable with.
While flying a Ukrainian flag might be 'symbolic' its symbolism is deeply embedded in the realities of a cultural landscaping – here, elsewhere, wherever and it is non-trivial! It not anything that might be or should be the subject of a bureaucratic FOBoff!
It is not drawing too long a bow to call this littleSTORY as an exemplar of a bureaucracy that has become a self-serving fiefdom. Neither is it outrageous to claim that local governance in Launceston is well and truly broken along with indirect representational governance in most places in a 21st C context.
Below there is a compilation of images, images that we are bombarded with, images that witness distress, loss and most of all a class of depravity that is almost beyond belief in the 21st C given 'history'. They strike fear and loathing into people everywhere and if people in Launceston want express their solidarity with the Ukraine people it is not for an unrepresentative bureaucrat to SAY NO!
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