I travel to and from work on the train and yesterday I challenged a fellow passenger who was in the seat next to me.  It was because he left a load of rubbish on his flip down table.  I pointed out that there was a bin about 18 inches away.

 

He didn’t like it – but that’s perhaps no surprise.

 

I actually thought he was going to hit me.  Fortunately, that didn’t happen, possibly because of the presence of the young guy who dishes out the coffee.

 

Andrew Mason, who’s the chief officer for environmental services in my council, once told me that he couldn’t understand why people drop litter in the street when there’s a perfectly good bin nearby.  find that difficult to answer as well.

 

Interesting then that the most recent survey by the Local Government Association (LGA), which made the news in the last few days, found that most people want (among other things) bin collections and street cleaning ‘protected’ from cuts.

 

Bin collections I get – after all, someone has got to come and take away the rubbish, but street cleaning got me thinking.

 

Is it because people still want the ‘right’ to drop litter, chuck cigarette butts away or spill the contents of their stomach over the pavement on a Friday night and have someone else clear up the mess?

 

What annoyed me the most about Mr Messy is that he didn’t appear to be prepared to take any responsibility for his own actions.  He was the one who got on the train with a Cornish pasty, crisps and biscuits – they didn’t appear out of thin air and dump themselves on the table.

 

Perhaps, if people took more collective responsibility for their actions then we might not need to have colleagues out in the middle of the night clearing Park Row of empty beer bottles and two-for-one drinks flyers for instance.  Then there’s the issue of challenge.

 

OK, perhaps I was wrong to ‘tell off’ a fellow passenger (it was before 7.30am), but sometimes challenge is important.

 

Right now of course, our council, like many others, is being challenged about spending and being challenged to try and find more savings.  That’s the right thing to do because it could be argued (and I agree) that we have a collective responsibility to help get the country out of the place it finds itself in right now.

That brings me on to the project that I’m working on right now.

 

I – and several colleagues – have been tasked with developing a new model for communications in future.  At the very least it will mean better co-ordination of all our comms, PR, marketing and web functions/activities.

 

There are lots of people to tell about what we’re doing and we’ve deliberately chosen to set up face-to-face meetings and briefings.

 

It’s no surprise to us (and I’m sure you) that we’re being challenged about the project – the rationale behind it, the reasons why it’s necessary and about our brief to introduce a new corporate approach to communications.

 

We’ve had some pretty robust arguments in defence of the status quo – but as is often said ‘doing nothing is not an option.’

 

Eric Pickles, the minister for local government told the LGA conference yesterday (Tuesday) that he wants councils to share more services/functions and that communications should be one of them.

 

I think it’s a perfectly good idea and there’s no reason why we couldn’t merge with another authority’s communications team.  However, we would need to get our own house ‘in order’ before we could consider any merger ideas.

 

In ‘other news’ … I went to a meeting of political cabinet on Monday night to talk about what my team is doing and to update the leader and colleagues on the project I’ve just mentioned.

 

I’m pleased to report that they were very supportive of what we’re doing, but they were also quite challenging on a number of issues.

 

One is accountability.  The leader was keen that we do something which highlights the work of councillors and the democratic ‘framework’ they operate in.  The idea would be for the people of our city to better understand what councillors do and for people to better understand how they can be involved in how decisions are made.

 

Finally, we’ve had another ‘plug’ for our plain English work.

 

It was mentioned in the esteemed publication that is PR Week.  One of my colleagues was so excited that her photograph was used, she posted the link to the article on to her Facebook page.

 

So you don’t have to wade through my colleague’s birthday party pictures and snaps from her holiday to Malaga (I thought she was too old for that anyway) – to find the aforementioned link, it’s here for your convenience: http://www.prweek.com/uk/researchData/login/1013260/

 

More next week