Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 November 17

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November 17

Cold War question

Why was Africa more of a Cold War battleground than Asia? --SolliGwaa (talk) 08:00, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

I think you may have the question backwards.

There's no overstating just how bombed Laos alone got, nevermind Vietnam and Afghanistan. Not to say Angola, Namibia and the rest weren't bad, but the casualties were way lower. InedibleHulk (talk) 08:59, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

SolliGwaa -- I'm not sure that the premise of your question is correct (see the Korean war, the Vietnam war, the "year of living dangerously" in Indonesia, etc.). The only direct proxy wars in Africa that I know about, where the U.S. and USSR very closely supported the contending sides, were the Angolan Civil War and the 1973 Arab-Israeli war (the second only peripherally African). (In the Somalia-Ethiopia conflicts, the two sides probably would have fought regardless of superpower alignments, which were in any case rather variable.) AnonMoos (talk) 09:05, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Well, we consulted the community, and ...?

Hi all, I've often heard politicians and the like telling us that some new program or other is the result of extensive consultation with "the community" (scare quotes intentional). Yet I've never heard any examples of them telling us exactly what they learnt from the community. Sure, if you put a road through a school, you're going to have to ask lots of questions about how people are affected, but that is a big, clear example. What about for vaguer processes like new legislation (eg. road safety, workplace relations etc)? It seems specific representative groups would know particular problems that would arise, but "the community" would be rather vague and diffuse, and have much less of an idea. Does anyone know of a case when the politicians etc. got back to us about what the community actually said? Thanks, IBE (talk) 09:19, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

You seem not to realise that the new politicians' meaning of "consult" is "tell". HiLo48 (talk) 09:24, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Very funny, but I've come across cases where it's more about saying "we have already consulted the community" to avoid bothering with a problem, even when it seems to have little to do with their own opinions. I'm trying to avoid discussing specific gripes, though, so I'm just hoping to hear when they have actually got back to us with some content. IBE (talk) 10:03, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

If "us" is part of "the community", they should already know what they said. If "us" is a separate community, what the other said isn't important, at least in local politics.

Anyway, after consulting with the janitorial community, Jim Eglinski says he learned that Canadians don't want to take up "those" positions.

"Eglinski understands that Yellowhead is a large region and has nine major communities, approximately 15 smaller hamlets and roughly 150 community halls, but reassures constituents comments will always reach his ears." (Emphasis mine.) InedibleHulk (talk) 11:46, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

No idea who this is, by the way. Just happens to have an election today and he used the right Google keywords. InedibleHulk (talk) 11:51, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

In the interest of fairness, Ryan Heinz Maguhn will not only assure, but "ensure that voters in Yellowhead have a strong voice to represent them in Ottawa on important issues. I look forward to engaging residents in our communities, and earning their trust, over the course of the by-election campaign.”

Eric Rosendahl, even if he loses, will "“wake up the next morning, and keep working; I’ll keep driving the bus. I’ll keep doing what I can to support and fight for our community in whatever way I can." So there's absolutely no need to actually elect him. InedibleHulk (talk) 11:57, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Dean Williams is independent, so his opinion doesn't matter, but he calls "this" pathetic politicking. InedibleHulk (talk) 14:06, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

IBE, I think you're in the UK. You could simply ask your local authority to tell you about some recent consultations that have been carried out. On planning issues, they would, for example, need to bring the results of the consultation to the meeting of the planning committee where the decision is made. The interesting thing is that despite there being a lot of mechanisms in place supposedly to ensure that "the community" is consulted - and consultation exercises costing the public money, the authorities still seem to end up doing what they intended to do all along. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:49, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

In the London Borough of Waltham Forest, there was a programme of introducing "resident only" parking (in London, the only place to park your car is often in the road outside your house). In at least two areas of the borough, the consultation resulted in the residents rejecting the council's proposals and the scheme wasn't implemented in that area [1]. So local consultation does work, at least sometimes. Alansplodge (talk) 13:47, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

They normally put letters on lampposts, and for major changes, in some of the local shops, or even through your door. There should be a public meeting a school/churchhall etc, but they are run by spin-doctors. ---- CS Miller (talk)

Australia's Department of Education had some questions for Armadale, Geraldton and Fremantle. Here are the answers.

Josh Matlow doesn't say why this consultation was cancelled, but looks forward to delivering a new flyer soon. In the meantime, he offers the old flyer online.

In 2012, the Dyfed-Powys police did a 56% good job. Residents there want police to be visible, behaviour to be social and crime to be unrelated to drugs. InedibleHulk (talk) 16:12, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Nowadays, they recruit Ceredigion Dogwatchers to keep an eye on the local scene. Anything suspicious will do. They say you can remain anonymous, but offer a free fridge magnet and keychain "advertising the scheme". Also a free "blinking" collar light. Their quotes, no idea if it actually blinks. The other three counties have no such program, or are better at staying incognito. InedibleHulk (talk) 16:31, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

To give examples from NZ, see e.g. the consultations by the NZTA [2]. If you look at the closed list, and click on some of the older examples, you may find a summary of the consultations. E.g. [3]. Others ones aren't there even though the consultation long closed and perhaps the page even says there should be a summary available. (Not all of these are directed at the general community although I think it's rare you'll be rejected although you may be ignored.) You could try searching, or failing that, emailing. It does seem to be that case that although there's a list of the consultations, there isn't one of the summaries. That said, since we're talking about a governmental agency, it may be sometimes the summary is intended more for politicans rather than the community anyway (although in most cases you can still get it, unless they claim there is a good reason to hide it, e.g. by making a request under the Official Information Act 1982). You can find other examples, e.g. [4].

The second example was actually local government, of sorts. To give a recent complicated example from local government, look at the stuff relating to the Auckland Unitary Plan such as [5] and [6]. You can also look at the submissions themselves [7] (I think because of complexity, these at least have standards forms that were used I believe). You can see a far simpler example here [8]. If you want more info, you can look at the reports submitted to council [9] (from that, you probably realise you want to see attachment 1 [10]). Actually as another commentator mention, I think you'll often find the info, or at least find out what to look for, in the various council and committee meeting reports etc, e.g. [11]. Many of these are mostly held in public.

If you're talking about parliamentary legislation, you'll get a select committee report e.g. [12] (from [13]). The submissions themselves are often available.

As an aside, you do sometimes get submissions with limited formatting, no use of caps etc which I find funny at time. I couldn't find great examples but e.g. [14] [15] [16] [17]. I initially was looking at a different place but although I did find these mildly amusing particularly the first one where the file was a copy [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28], none of them seemed that bad, perhaps because most submitters were teachers. I then moved on to an famous internet bill, although as shown I didn't really find anything that bad. I've definitely seen some with basically no caps, and like a typical email some people send, I suspect parliament is helped by the fact it is parliament and also that you need to send a file rather than simply an email.

I had more of a look, I didn't quite find that but I did find [29] [30] (the second one is formatted fine but it I'm not totally sure if the person realised they were making a submission which would be published). For BLP reasons, I won't name any specific examples but some of these and some I saw but didn't include were IMO a bit wacky. I'm sure you'll find far sillier submissions if you look.

P.S. I can't comment on the specifics elsewhere, but you'll notice from some of these and further examples like [31] and [32], that the consultation is not necessarily with the community depending on the specific issue being consulted on. Also while some of these are fairly wide ranging, none of them are as wide ranging as those examples you mentioned. While such consultations may happen on occasion they're generally far less common that the more everyday run of the mill consultation so aren't so easy to find. Perhaps [33] is not so far from your second example, but it doesn't have any review yet. Well I think a report will be prepared, but I'm not certain. As said on that page, that's for the regulations, the bill itself will definitely have a select committee report although it's not available yet [34] [35]. Actually looking at the earlier example, although it's in a form I did come across [36] which is a sort of an example I was referring to earlier.

Nil Einne (talk) 02:46, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Keep those links coming, but thanks to everyone. I'm downloading and working through some of these things, because you've generally turned up a gold mine. So the politicians are much clearer than I was expecting, but it seems unsurprisingly like a lot of it is very vague and fluffy, eg. in Geraldton, they want a school that "provides programs that cater for all students’ abilities and interests". Every single student? There are many ways to interpret something like this, and claim that a concern has been addressed. Not that I want to get into those polemics, just wanting to let you know it's engaging me in exactly the way I was hoping. IBE (talk) 03:25, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Speaking of schools, I also came across a community consultation report from a school here [37]. Edit: Actually I see you're referring to something similar. This clarifies some confusion as I had thought that the "provides programs that cater for all students’ abilities and interests" was a random comment made by someone during consultation (in which case, while it may suggest the consultation wasn't that useful, it isn't exactly the schools fault, except perhaps if it's suggested they didn't have sufficiently structured consultation). In a case like [38] where it was one of the specific questions asked, it obviously is the responsibility for whoever doing the consultation. Nil Einne (talk) 03:36, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

After consulting with Elections Canada, I can declare with some degree of certainty that fewer than one in five of you care about who rules Yellowhead. Voter turnout "could near" a historic low, one in five community members. Whether Eglinski considers the other 80% eligible for his Always Reach My Ears Plan or focuses his meetings on the 20% with political interests (or the 10+% with Conservative interests) to cabalistically ensure what reaches his ears reverberates in Ottawa, to mix with the other 99.7% of MP power, remains to be seen.

Whether Eric Rosendahl indeed woke up and kept driving the bus today is also unclear. What is clear is Canada is now one small step closer to universally poor foreigners, modernized forests and an anonymous omniscient overlord to replace the one in our national anthem. InedibleHulk (talk) 17:28, 18 November 2014 (UTC)