Thursday, 12 April 2007

This morning, I emerged from the house to find that I had a flat tyre so first had to get this fixed.

I still managed to be in Stevenage before 9:30 for a HCC event “Toward a Safer Stronger Hertfordshire” where I met several other voluntary sector people and also Emma from WBC’s LSP. The event had three streamed workshops on community cohesion, crime and volunteering. All the voluntary sector people were assigned to the volunteering workshop, which betrays a rather narrow and dismissive attitude to the sector. Anyway, I rebelled and went to the community cohesion discussion.

At lunchtime, I headed off to Watford where everyone seems to have coped effortlessly with my week-long absence. Ouch. I spent the best part of the afternoon catching up on a week’s correspondence, but there were no major problems or imminent deadlines. All in all, rather easier than I feared.

The end of an era

In the 1970s, Racial Equality Councils were almost as common as (say) Citizens’ Advice Bureaux. But funding and fashions change and today they are few and far between: Watford Racial Equality Council is the last remaining for a considerable distance around Hertfordshire.

But this evening, WCVS hosted WREC’s dissolution meeting. WREC has been a feature of Watford’s voluntary sector for several decades so there was a natural melancholy and a reluctance to let go. Participants in the meeting had a thorough discussion of options and at length took the decision (inevitable under the circumstances) to dissolve WREC.

Whatever the current fashions, there is certainly a need for a prominent local champion of equality and diversity. WCVS is working to ensure that there wont be a void for long.

After the WREC meeting, I spent some time configuring a new laptop for Saud and I finally left the office about 10:30.

Rather a tough re-entry to the world of work. But the blow was softened by listening to much of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. One of my all-time favourite lines: "She spat at him, playfully".