`Or… has it joined 
A few days ago, or maybe it was longer – time goes so quickly when you are enjoying yourselves! We posted the following: Probably best not to read it as you may lose the will to live!
Well the answer in a nutshell is? We do not have a Daft Cultural Strategy! – However, what we have is hundreds of pages of gobbledygook, a delightful Cultural Officer called “Charlotte” and a lot of very confused borough councillors! Who… don’t know whether they are “Metroculturals,” “Commuterland Culturebuffs,” “Dormitory Dependables” or “Up Our Street.” Or fall into one of the other dopey Audience Spectrum categories into which all our residents fall, and for that matter most of the rest of Surrey/Sussex and Hampshire.
Consultants employed by “Your Waverley” have been paid a load of dosh, with money collected from developers through their 106 agreements, in other words, money collected from planning permissions granted!
At least most councillors at the recent Community Overview & Scrutiny Committee were honest enough to admit they hadn’t even begun to wade through the report prepared for them by the delightful “Charlotte,” so claimed they couldn’t really begin to “properly scrutinise.”
But having now debated the new Daft Cultural Strategy that is there to underpin The Daft Local Plan, when thousands more houses are built, a few interesting facts were revealed.
- Bramley is a cultural desert. Why,? Because it was not even included in the Daft Cultural Strategy, which has really upset By-pass Byham, because the council’s culture officers have By-passed Bramley, altogether. Which is probably the only way it will get a By-Pass.” The strategy doesn’t even mention our library, a large private school, how on earth was this data collected,” asked BPB?
- The borough’s residents are totally confused, only slightly less than “Our Waverley” councillors.
- Farnham is totally pi***d off because the DCS has revealed that it is less “cultured”than the village they describe as “poor old Cranleigh.” Could it be something to do with the affluent over there smelling the effluent that turns them into “Commuterland Culturebuffs?” All 61% of them compared with Farnham’s 31%. How dare they!
- Councillor Jerry Hyman admitted he obviously wasn’t a Farnham “Culturebuff” because he couldn’t understand the methodology included in the document, so he would probably need to be included in the “Philistine ” category, because he didn’t know his “Arts from his Elbow.”
- Some said they couldn’t understand why Sport had been included at all in the DCS. Others said why shouldn’t it be included. They would rather watch a cricket match than a concert any day!
Everyone agreed there were lots of nice words in the huge document, but it was a bit “ambiguous” and they couldn’t quite get a handle on what it was trying to achieve? Said Christiaan Hesse, “If it is to be a workable management document then it needs “an awful lot more work!” Awful lot, you bet?
Despite further debate councillors couldn’t decide whether “Sport should be in or out, but all agreed the document was: Too wordy, needed to be more succinct and readable, and reminded those responsible for it that they were “spending scarce council resources.”
However, our Elsey, who can always be relied upon for a few words of Wisdon (as in cricket bat) said the Culture Officer was doing a “marvellous job” and in her usual Lamonic Bibble – reminded everyone that Waverley didn’t have a theatre? and that residents’ had to make do with what we have got.” We wonder why Elsey?
As for our Waverley Web webcast watchers verdict : They said they were “Totally Conflambulated,” and couldn’t wait to turn the webcast off!
So our advice. – Please don’t watch it or there could be blood all over the borough!