Why?

There have been two major stories in this paper over the last couple of weeks: the tragic death of Sara Sharif and the debt run up by our council.

Listening to chat over coffee it was difficult to distinguish which story was being discussed when the words were Why? Surely someone knew? It had evidently been reported but why was nothing done?

On this page for 25 April I commented on the death of John Bond, which had been reported in this paper under the heading of “Outspoken critic of council debt”.

Oh that he had seen this day! Everything he warned about has come to pass. Why was he not listened to? He was a councillor. An Independent councillor. If he was not listened to, what hope have the grass roots of society to be heard?

Remember the song “you promised me, green grass, not to tell what you heard.”

In this case that's a pity: the grass roots need to be listened to because they were muttering about the way the council was being managed – mismanaged – years ago.

There have, of late, been many letters from concerned residents on this subject.

We might have expected a pithy comment from David Stevens of Goldsworth Park, regular contributor to the letters page of this paper – and also of The Times but he, has sadly, died.

I very much agreed with what Sandra Simkin, ex-councillor for Brookwood, wrote on the page last week which gave considerable insight as to working with the manipulative Ray Morgan.

One of the very many comments on the disastrous running of Woking Borough Council has been that councillors had a lack of curiosity.

It was on this page for 21 September 2023 that I naively asked a few questions under the heading "What are local councils for?"

I do understand that you may not have a copy of that page to hand, so allow me to enlighten you as to what I wrote:

“What are local councils for? Surely not enlarging a property portfolio? Surely not for investing in vanity projects? Being me I looked it up. I discovered the duties of the council are:

Representing the local community.

Delivering services to meet local needs.

Striving to improve quality of life and community wellbeing.

Developing and evaluating the policies and programmes of the municipality.

Determining which services the municipality provides.

Ensuring that administrative policies, practices and procedures and controllership polices, practices, and procedures are in place to implement the decisions of council.

On that basis, how should we mark Woking Borough Council?”

I then went through those points, one at a time. Interestingly my first point was:

“Representing the local community. Well, if Woking was not on the map it certainly is now, and for all the wrong reasons. Its disastrous debts have made it a talking point, even in Parliament. Perhaps another question I should ask is: What are the duties of auditors?”

Another point I made then was:

“Ensuring that administrative policies, practices and procedures and controllership policies, practices, and procedures, are in place to implement the decisions of council. Does that sound like councils being allowed to mark their own exam papers? Statutory responsibilities include the obvious licensing, development control, building control, environmental health, street parking, traffic regulations, housing, and waste collection. Those things should be set in stone.

I did allow the council a small pat on the back for waste collection, for which I awarded a good mark “particularly when you consider the problems of residents elsewhere in the country with numerous waste containers into which they must sort their rubbish."

I also put in a word of praise for the layout of Jubilee Square with the amphitheatre look which comes into its own when the community gets together for public occasions.

Unfortunately some of the things I praised WBC for are no longer on the cards: public loos and well looked after public gardens, Party in the Park, Food Festival, the Amazon play area in Woking Park.

The council have failed with no reasonably priced car parks and not only a lack of diversity of shops with a mixture of wares, but lack of shops. Full stop. A rather a large and final full stop.

As teachers everywhere tell pupils, if you don't understand, ask!

Well, perhaps we are not asking loudly enough.

Remember the council is not in a position to hand out detentions, or even lines. Perhaps we should be handing those out to them. The nearest the WBC has to a head teacher is us – residents of this poor town. We really must force WBC to "try harder”.

I wrote that on this page back in 2023 and make no apology for repeating much of it here. No one on the council contacted me as a result.

And I am still unclear as to the duty of an auditor – a least in the case of WBC accounts.

Closing the Book

When I was diagnosed with cancer I resigned my place on the Open the Book team, based at St Andrew's in Goldsworth Park.

Open the Book is a project that shares Bible stories with children in schools.

I first came across the project at a family service at St Mary's in Horsell when a leader gave a presentation. It sounded like a good idea: acting out Bible stories at school assemblies.

I was particularly interested when I learned that the group took their stories into Beaufort Primary School in Goldsworth Park as my granddaughter was in reception class and I liked the idea of having an involvement with her school.

I went along to see the group in action. It looked quite easy: no RADA training required and the performances only took about ten minutes.

I was particularly receptive to the idea as I had been considering getting back to helping with Sunday School: I had taught at Sunday School at Christ Church in my teens.

But Open the Book is different. Children who attend Sunday School tend to be from families of churchgoers, whilst taking the Bible stories into schools meant meeting children from various religions and none.

The stories to be acted out are carefully chosen for such groups. The way I looked at it was that I would be doing missionary work without having to hack through dense jungle or across vast deserts to reach the audience. So I joined the group.

Shortly after that St Mary's started their own group but I was by then enjoying seeing my granddaughter listening to the old stories.

When she left for secondary school I stayed on for by this time her sister was in reception and I thought I'd stay with the team until she left for the next stage in her education.

I had told my team leader, Karin Rayner, I would be leaving the group at the end of 2025 when I would have run out of granddaughters apart from the one living in the Netherlands.

But then I was told I had cancer and so had to resign a year earlier than planned. Not only because I did not know how I would react to treatment but chemotherapy was on Wednesdays – Open the Book Day.

I felt bad about letting the team down: by this time we were doing two performances for Beaufort in the morning and then another performance at Sythwood Primary School in the afternoon.

The team sent me two lovely presents: a photo album consisting of 24 colour pages thanking me for “all the wonderful memories. As a team we had a heart for a mission – just not a desire to travel too far from home or be uncomfortable in any way, yet over the course of 12 years we were able to tell thousands of children and hundreds of adults the same amazing stories from the Bible – in ways that we hope they will remember. God Bless You!”

What's with the red gloves tipped with yellow? That was for the story of Pentecost, or Whitsun, when the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles in the form of tongues of fire.

And then they gave me Me – all twelve inches of me, made by Ruth Kirtley who makes, alters, adapts, and creates, some of the OtB costumes.

Her version of Me is carrying my Open the Book Bag and in it is a paper listing the various characters which I have played over the years from One Of A Crowd to Fearsome Religious Leader, Occasional Narrator (a part usually filled by Ruth) to the Voice of God.

A veritable cast of thousands acted out by a team of half a dozen!

Big Bert

I understand the naming of storms is to make people more aware of them – they are not just heavy rain or strong winds.

They are given human names, alternating female and male through the alphabet. The next bout of nasty weather is due to be named Conall.

Reading the list of proposed future names it is hard to see the gender of them with names such as Darragh, Eowyn, Floris and Gerben. Pre Bert it was Ashley – which sounds rather gender fluid to my ears.

But Bert? It is a name to be preceded by Uncle, or something else equally convivial. As with Mary Poppins' chimney sweep friend Bert.

Surely such a bringer of chaos should be named for Ivan the Terrible? Or if it must start with B, how about Bruce Almighty? He did, at least, meet God, though I don't think they discussed weather.

We were terrorised by forecasts of Bert bringing snow, ice, rain, floods, hurricanes and, quite likely, the appearance of Four Horsemen.

Local media underlined these possibilities so grimly I thought that, perhaps, I should pump out the air raid shelter for it was obvious we should need it.

Then I noticed another line in the local media, along with the dire warnings, was the note that Surrey was the only county, at the time of writing, not to receive a yellow warning from the Meteorological people.

Nevertheless, RHS Wisley closed its doors last Sunday “due to worsening weather conditions” and I heard that something may be in danger of falling onto Victoria Way.

When, on that day, we crossed Jubilee Square a strong gust of wind almost had us off our feet, but the Christmas tree stayed resolutely upright.

I have always thanked my lucky stars that I live in a place where earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, deadly wild fires and biblical floods tend to miss this bit of Surrey.

I am happy to be able to merely complain of a bit of cold or dampness.