Community

Through the eyes of a citizen…or…how to pass the hot potato

/ Pauline Roberts / Leave a comment

Wednesday 5th September 2018 and it’s started already. The very narrow cul-de-sac in which I live is packed full of cars trying to edge their way around one another, some are parked on the corner of the junction, most are parked on pathways, some are blocking the road completely and most annoyingly…… some are in our private driveways. The woman next door has already had one argument today with someone who refuses to get off her property and this has been going on for years. It’s got worse lately though. The school, at the other side of some woodland at the end of our cul-de-sac, has had a lot of policing regarding parking recently and now, instead of going to the front gates, parents come in round the back of the school, via our cul-de-sac, instead.

Isn’t it fenced off, then……… your street? I hear you ask. Well, yes, it was until the parents pushed the fence down to make a pathway through the woods to the school.

Every school day I see a near miss. Every school day I see children nearly hit by cars. Every school day, there is an argument.

It’s Sept 10th 2018 early in the morning and I get a text from a neighbour who asked someone to move down the street a little so she could pull out of her driveway. After being given a mouthful of abuse she is now frightened to be in the street alone. Out into the street I go……….

We’ve tried everything to date, contacting the school, police, council, local Councillor, we put traffic cones on our drives. This is what happens to the cones – they drive over them:

We’re on to about our sixth set of cones now. The abuse gets more regular, the entitled aggression of the parents more troublesome and at least five neighbours (men and women) are too scared to come home between 15:15 and 15:45 because of the chaos that will be in the street and the abuse they will be given when trying to park on their own private driveways.

So, I decide to try again, via the channels available to us, to make some progress towards getting this nonsense sorted out. I spoke to the school first, not least because the girl next door was trying to park on her own drive and had her tiny baby with her, only to be met by abuse from a man, who, with his 5 year old, tell her to ‘f**k off’ and they’ll park on her drive if they want to. Yep, a grown man and his kid – both at it. I’m told the chap at the end of the block moved out (he wasn’t there long enough for me to get to know who he was), after being punched in the face and the woman across the road and her neighbour had their car tyres slashed. The school absolutely don’t want to know. There’s nothing they can do, so they say. Their advice – call 101.

Weds 12th Sept, 2018 and I receive another text from a neighbour after yet another altercation. Yep, another car won’t get off her private drive. I call 101 and log it. We’re graded ‘standard’ and promised a visit from a PCSO. It never happened. We had a phone call and I was later visited by a police officer. We raise the issue with the local Councillor also, who passed the hot potato back on to the police.

Thursday 13th Sept 2018 and another neighbour tells me that their wellbeing is being seriously impacted by the debacle in the street twice a day, five days a week.

The police advised me to contact ‘parking’ at the council. So, I did. I emailed and contacted them via twitter. I know they can’t do anything about parking on private driveways, so I also mention the inappropriate dangerous driving in a narrow street, the double parking, parking on junctions and parking side by side and blocking the street completely.

Friday 14th Sept 2018 – I get a response from ‘parking’ at the council – it’s nothing to do with them. Contact ‘highways’ and the local Councillor…….so I do.

And now, taxis have started to use this tiny cul-de-sac to do their drop-offs – it’s mayhem.

Weds 26th Sept 2018 and ‘highways’ come back to me. They tell me that stationary parking offences now lie with ‘parking’ and the hot potato does the rounds again. They tell me that school gate problems happen all of the time………but we aren’t at the school gate…we’re at the back of school in a very narrow cul-de-sac where parents park on private drives, block the road completely and have pushed our fence down to beat their way through the woodland and through to the back of the school. Highways proceed to tell me that no parking restrictions work. Well I never! We call it a ‘fix that fails’ in my world! To stop non-resident cars using the street they would have to raise a Traffic Regulation Order but  they won’t do that because it is a, ‘lengthy process in its entirety and also costs several thousand pounds to incorporate the necessary design work, public consultation, advertisement in the press and the obvious physical works.’ I get a lengthy breakdown of costs…because, you know, they are more important than the safety of people in the street, including the school children, who have no paths to walk on (because cars are on them) the street is blocked and there’s mayhem with a number of cars all trying to do ridiculous manoeuvres around each other every day. They also said, ‘If motorists are specifically obstructing access to these spaces they are already contravening existing highway law that the local police teams can and do enforce, as such I can only suggest that you contact the local policing team who will be able to advise motorists of their responsibilities, ticket said vehicles or as a last resort tow away the vehicle to an impound.’ We should call them. We have, they haven’t! The Council closed the call out saying it was logged as a private parking issue. I say they’ve logged it incorrectly and don’t accept that it is closed. Of course, absolutely nothing is done.

 There’s been damage to the driveways by the cars. This is my neighbour’s drive – that hole is just the size that a child’s foot could go down it………

 And this one is sinking

 

Thursday 27th Sept 2018 and its brown bin day. We pull the bins out…………but the school bullies arrive and throw the bins in the woodland so they can park their cars on our private drives….again. I get the registrations and it’s another call logged on 101. We’re told to keep reporting it to the school…..and the hot potato does the rounds again. ‘Are you in a bad area?’ I hear you say. No, we are in one of the most affluent areas of our city.

I emailed the council again to request they consider resident parking only and I email the school again, as advised by the police.

Friday 28th Sept 2018 and the woman who owns the house next door is cutting down the trees. She couldn’t get onto her drive yesterday because the parents were blocking it and refused to move. Another altercation……

The police advise us of the phone number for victim support……FFS……..it isn’t victim support we need (yet another sticking plaster) we need this looking at systemically and some initiatives that reduce the need for cars to take kids to school implemented. We need safety in our street.

They also advise us to ‘come along to the community meeting’……………..now I’m really getting cheesed off.

Parking services come back to me, ‘at this point we would advise you to contact the Police on their 101 number’ ……..hot potato…here, catch!

I respond and tell them about the hot potato game…..anyone else want to join in?

 It’s now 24th June 2019 –  the hot potato game continues. The abuse continues. The impact on residents continues. The Councillor was out in the street this week, at our request, but still refuses to do anything. I ask what is being done on a more systemic level to tackle issues like this across the area? I’m looked at quite literally like I have two heads and told ‘nothing!’ The Council won’t budge and refuse to put in any controls. The residents are hiring a private firm to ‘police’ their area………….but the cars still come and the verbal abuse still occurs. Two incidents were logged with 101 again today. The Coucillor….well, he agreed that the street is ‘bad’ but as far as the council are concerned it’s ‘safe’. Know why? Because no-one has been knocked over or hurt here yet. Computer says ‘safe’…………………

 

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Systems thinking – ‘live it – share it’ – using our collective systems thinking skills to broaden horizons, expand our communities and welcome contributions from all practitioners, not just the dominant few

/ Pauline Roberts / Leave a comment

In 2017 there was yet another influx of practitioners, newly qualified in systems thinking in practice from the Open University (and indeed other Universities), into our environment. A diverse and competent bunch with a wide range of perspectives and skills. They join the many who are out there already and, from my observations, a huge amount of practitioners are actively sharing and encouraging the use of systems thinking in the workplace and beyond. Some are forming their own mini communities of practice, whilst others chose to ‘go it alone’.

In my experience, the longer standing members of the systems thinking communities are vital for helping to develop and support these newer practitioners. However, there are often differences in context and opinion between the very experienced practitioners and the new adopters and also between those who have experience of practical application of systems thinking and those who are more academically orientated. Bringing those contexts and opinions together to produce a community which is useful to as many as possible can be at best real fun but at worst challenging and somewhat volatile.

As systems practitioners, we might expect intellectual challenge; we do not expect personal attacks and bad behaviours. We might expect some practitioners to be more vocal than others; we do not expect dominance by a few at the expense of others. So, what about attempting to move some of our focus towards sharing and appreciating the social capital of the wider community? How about strengthening the psychological bonds between us? How about focussing on the interdependencies we have and building upon those connections? Our social capital as a group could potentially be a key element of our ongoing survival and development as systems practitioners. This doesn’t mean that we all have to get along or agree with one another. It does mean that we should have respect for one another’s opinions. It does not mean that only the long-standing ‘experts’ should have the only voice. It does mean that all practitioners could be encouraged to seek diverse learning and develop whenever they can.

Why don’t we start trading the problems of our differences for possibilities? Consider what new conversations we want to occur? Help all practitioners to understand their own power to act and improve? Declare our possibilities? Define what future we want to “live in to”? Have inward bonding but also build bridges outwards to other complimentary communities?

But, how? And where do we start? It’s within all of us to make it happen. We can focus on the gifts and capacities we have to give to one another. We can capture and share our quality interactions. We can create possibilities for practitioners to engage more with one another. We can instigate different kinds of conversations so that we create something new together. We can make new, joint declarations of possibility by identifying what we find useful/ important for our development. We can replace stories about the past for possibilities for the future (whilst still appreciating the learning from the past, of course). We can create new ways to listen, speak and communicate meaning to one another. We can create new context, instead of trying to ‘solve our problems’. We can create opportunities to deepen accountability and commitment to development through supportive engagement. And, we can adopt and ‘all voices have value’ ethos.

We can identify what needs retaining for the future, share our stories, identify what we could create together and encourage restorative conversations about possibilities.

In my opinion, we are perfectly able to make our boundaries more porous and encourage a wider range of practitioners into the fold and build bridges with other communities.

Our future, as a systems practitioner community, may have a better chance of being regenerative if we create a wider, more diverse, culture. If we use our questions as a pathway to new wisdom, rather than as sticks to beat each other with.

But, how do we manage the high degree of competition to enable us to be more collaborative, learning and sharing? I, for one, have personally experienced the collaborative learning as a new practitioner. But, as I’ve become more experienced I’ve encountered more of a ‘push back’ from those who once used to teach and share. How do we regenerate as a whole? How do we nurture ongoing social cohesion? And how do we develop a culture of collaboration if some only allow this to happen if others ‘know their place’? How do we evolve towards increasing diversity if we don’t allow the diversity to flourish?

I wold love to see our systems thinking communities (and other complimentary communities) start to focus on the benefits of the collective whole of those communities. Maybe we should take a leaf out of our own text books and start to really understand the underlying dynamics of the different systems thinking communities and how those dynamics can be manipulated for greater benefits?

After all, ‘the world will be different only if we live differently’ Manturana & Varela, 1987. In my book that means co-creating a new and different narrative for the development and wider application of systems thinking, that isn’t constrained by egos and individual wants and needs.

I’m feeling hopeful that 2018 might push us along on our journey, in the right direction.