Harwell Village News and Gossip

Since this site has been up and running, which is over five months now, there have been only three people who have offered any sort of defence of June Blisset's position, and no one has offered any support for the other members of the Parish Council that have been named and shamed on our site.

Of the three people who 'rushed' to her aid, one sent a partially illiterate email, the second sent a well constructed email that could be part of a good debate, and the last sent an email that has actually made me question my assumptions.

It is this third email that has interested me and a nice debate broke out in the White Hart in our group discussing it. The email starts by offering assistance to the Harwell Village web site, but goes on to say “I could never trust anything where I do not know the author”. What a great statement, and I suspect quite a naive statement.

If this statement was true, then one would have to question his understanding of 'trust'. I suspect for example, that the author of the email 'trusts' documents issued by banks – the statement of your account, what the cash point tells him, letters from the branch and head office. None of these items has an author to which he is aware, and yet largely (apart from some cursory review) the information provided is taken as given.

So if trust is given to computerised and automated systems, does that imply that the author of the email trusts computers more than people (and therefore trusting the person/organisation who programmed that computer)? Perhaps it's the logo or the format of the paperwork that makes us trust it?

If we were to take the example further, train timetables, bus timetables etc are usually taken as a given. These could be fobbed off as statistics, but they have been written by someone, and I would suspect that one would never question the timetables (although one may question if the bus/train is on time).

So trust could also be given to statistics? Should we not question the information provided to us anyway?

Again, playing devils advocate, if the statement were true you would have to live in a world where newspapers, pages of information on the Internet, general public information (such as that on the Harwell Parish notice board) would all be irrelevant, as the sources of this information, the owners of the companies/organisation that produced them, or the editor that manipulated the words would all be unknown to you, and the information would have to be considered non-trustworthy.

Clearly, this is an extreme as we do trust some information. The big debate and question to examine is “What makes us 'trust' information provided to us?”

This month its time for the General Election in the UK where we vote for our member of parliament. The next Prime Minister is decided by these elections. This month's blog has been provided by villager emails and have not been edited.

"k - i can understand where ur site is comming from. u r in a tory area with a good margin, but the last tory we had defected to labour. i have seen a lot of labour posters about and no tory ones. u will again have to rely on old people and r stuck in the past."

Reply: Perhaps you are right. It is true that the majority of the Conservative Party are 50+ and I'm sure that must sway the direction of the Party line, but I don't think that the cumulative knowledge of the senior generation should be thrown away and ignored. By the very nature, this group of people have 'been there and done that'. Their knowledge is important and they help reduce any momentary 'fad' or 'whim' from changing our society and political base radically. This is a good thing and brings us stability.

"it must be difficult 4 ya as the labour party has certainly taken the traditional centre ground leaving u with nowt but radical moves backwards."

Reply: Tony Blair does seem to occupy the centre right ground to people - specifically in his explanation of policies - but the stealth introduction of socialist ways will continue to damage our country. I think this 'Conservative' facade that Tony Blair uses will be destroyed when Gordon Brown gets closer to power. His clear and open socialist approach will be too blatant for middle England and the Conservative party will gain the lead back quickly.

"gordon has done so much for the country. he has put our economy back on track and we are seen as leaders in europe. he is clearly the leader of the future and someone that most people now trust. how do the conservatives think that they can be trusted following years of corruption?"

Reply: Gordon Brown has benefitted from John Majors time at the top. He initiated financial policies that have seen this country growing. Gordon Brown has funded his additional spending by stealth taxes - lots of them. Anyone working hard to achieve a good working income is taxed harder and harder. The money I earn is spent on local goods and services, it goes to supporting our economic growth. Why should it be taken in ever increasing amount by Gordon Brown to pay for a bloated government with high beaurocracy and low delivery?

Ed Vaizey took the Wantage seat for the Conservative Party with a significant majority. Here are the other candidates.

Ed Vaizey - Conservative
Adam Twine - Green
Mark McDonald - Labour
Gerald Lambourne - English Democrats
Andrew Crawford - Liberal Democrats

There was a 11.4% Conservative majority in the last election.

We feel sorry for Parish Cllr June Blissett, Parish Cllr Jim Mulford, and Parish Cllr Stuart Lilly. All three are verbally very active against this site. They cannot put anything in writing as we would hold them accountable for their words. So for the moment they rely upon unaccountable talk (as we have said many times before - cowards).

The Parish Council did attempt to close this site down using legal action.

The Parish Council did not contest the facts on this site (as they are true), but instead were worried that the site damaged their reputation.

So if I get this right - we paid our money into the Parish Council's pot of money. The unelected Parish Council then used this money to prop up their reputation. Wow - that's very bad. I wonder where the meeting minutes are discussing this?

The Parish Council won nothing from this action, we are stil here, our words have not changed, and as some have said, "their reputations are still in tatters." What a waste of our money.

One good thing did come from it though - the Parish Council aimed it's legal action at a member of our community. At the time he had nothing to do with this site, but he is now a keen supporter and sponsor.