How to lose friends and alienate people

The world will look up and shout "Save us!"... And I'll whisper "No."

One side note to yesterday's article. Before the group set off, I asked Cllr Alexander if she'd read the comments on the site about the tour. She said:

"Yes, and I got quite depressed! There were people saying that I shouldn't be wasting my time, that it was just a PR stunt."

This underlines that people read what you write and are affected by it.

With that in mind, we just want to take issue with a particular meme that has gripped some contributors to this site. The argument goes:

a) The Council don't do anything for me
b) There's nothing I can do to force them to do what I want
c) They're all useless

If a and b are true, then continually expressing view c is surely not the way to convince anyone to change. If you want things to improve, you have to work with people and employ a little empathy and courtesy.

There are those who will answer that they shouldn't have to be nice, they pay their taxes and the Council should just do a better job. Which, of course, is no answer at all.