Wednesday, 15 October 2008

After yesterday’s car accident, I took Jackie to work in her own car and then drove on to Watford. I was late for my 8:00 meeting about the Sunflower Centre website and found my visitors in the doorway sheltering from the rain. The meeting went well and I think the site is now much simpler and more accessible.

I learned that Mohamed Fawzi will be the new manager for our Youth Connexions contract. This is Good News: he understands the work and will be a great champion for it.

I took a call from Ange Jones of the Women's Resource Centre in London. She had seen my comments on social exclusion and kindly called me to say that the Women's Resource Centre will soon arrange a course in the East of England on Human Rights - tackling inequality and social exclusion. This was of course very pleasing. Thank you, Ange; I do hope the event is near Watford and not miles away in Ipswich or Norwich.

Spurred on by Eliud Matindi of the Herts BME Partnership, I again investigated The Mystery of the Community Cohesion Monies. Watford has been awarded monies from the Government’s stupidly-named Tackling Violent Extremism fund (who thought that up?). We have heard persistent rumours that Watford has also been allocated a sum of money to spend on “Community Cohesion”. But no-one in Watford seems to know anything about any such allocation, and no-one outside Watford seems able to provide details on how much has been allocated to Watford, how it will be paid and what the money is for exactly. Today, thanks to Eliud, we achieved a breakthrough. The money is approximately £150,000 over three years, allocated by the DCLG and the contact in Watford is my good friend Emma Gadsby. I spoke to Emma and she knows nothing whatsoever about it. But still, it’s progress of a sort.

I tried to track down Karin Robinson (Barack Obama’s “Regional Campaign Organiser” for London) as she was to address a meeting of the Watford One World forum this evening but hadn’t been in touch for a few weeks. I eventually put Sha-Lee Worrell-Miller on the job and she used her magic to establish contact but the news was disappointing … Of course Karin was very apologetic and had tried to find a replacement and juggle things but people had flu and it is the day of the final Presidential Candidates’ Televised Debate and Karin is hosting a big fundraising event in London and ... she promised to try and make it up to us.

Part of my afternoon I spent issuing (rather embarrassing) e-mails announcing the cancellation of our high profile meeting. Fortunately we hadn’t invited the TV cameras.

In an uncharacteristically political moment I said I would forgive Karin if she helped get Barack Obama elected. As an afterthought I suggested that when President Obama visits England, it might be nice if he paid a visit to Watford. One never knows …

Although he is very impressive, I am not completely sold on Barack Obama – my cynicism runs deep and although that sort of sincerity is hard to fake (just ask Tony Blair) it can be done. What most attracts me to the Obama campaign is the alternative: McCain seems pretty decent but his running mate is the embodiment of: everything I detest / gung-ho fundamentalist stupidity / pure evil (delete to taste).