meeting in July, and on other occasions individually. We have done our best to deal with these but without a receptive response from the Council, who as yet have not recognised that we, as ratepayers and citizens of Cardinia Shire, are democratically entitled to make our views known to Council. At present, it appears there is excessive focus on acquiring assets, while the role of the Council as a provider of basic services to all sectors of the community is being neglected. Sale of community owned Shire land despite expressed disapproval of ratepayers is also a matter of deep concern.

In 2005 our major tasks will be to obtain adequate community access to the annual budget preparation details, to closely scrutinise the quantity and cost of consultants employed by Council and, of course, to identify and support genuine community based candidates who wish to stand for the November 2005 Council election. It will be a busy year! In the meantime, I would like to wish each and every one a peaceful Christmas season and a relaxing holiday break.

Gloria O'Connor, CRRA President.

This is happening over the spectrum of public communication - if communication is the right word - as any reader of Don Watson would know. Don Watson is the author of the best-selling Death Sentence, in which he laments the degradation of meaning in modern uses of the English language, especially in government and business. His most recent book is a glossary of "weasel words" beloved of spin doctors, those words that suck us in as they suck out meaning and make us think, usually without justification, that the speaker has our concerns at heart. The phrase "weasel words" is very appropriate. The meaning has been sucked out of the word "community". It is difficult to convince the users of weasel words to use plain English, mainly because obfuscation is a valued weapon of modern business practice, but we can at least ridicule this practice, and, like counter-weasels feed meaning back into the language.

Starting with the word community.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR
The Editor
CRRA Chronicle

Dear Sir or Madam
Your readers should make sure that they and Cardinia Council are reading from the same page of disciplined management practices. The open wallet policy applies to virtual communities and recontextualises positive engagement in the fabric of transitory deprivation.

However, I must add that the conceptual framework is rich in sub-text and usually leads to suboptimal outcomes.

I trust that this makes things clearer to your readers.

Yours etc.
(Sir) Humphrey Appleby

Letters to the Editor (max 120 words) should be addressed to CRRA Chronicle, P.O. Box 411, Emerald 3782. Deadline for next issue 15 February 2005.

ROAD RAGE: WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT OUR UNSEALED ROADS
Copies of a questionnaire seeking residents' opinions about unsealed roads in Cardinia Shire were distributed at meetings and through local shops during October. Over 100 completed questionnaires were returned, covering 4.1 km of roads, the majority of responses coming from Bunyip, Emerald and Ranges Wards. Although this represents only a small proportion of the 950 km of unsealed roads in the Shire, there was strong agreement that a severe problem exists with all aspects of Council's upkeep and maintenance of these roads. Around 80 percent of respondents rated Council's current maintenance efforts as "poor", with no improvement over the last five years, while the remaining 20 percent rated their efforts as "less than adequate".

COMMUNITY COMMENT
By Peter Weatherhead

Community has for a long time been one of my favourite words. It carries with it a sense of belonging, a sense of togetherness. In the modern world we need things which bond us with a common purpose to give us a sense of unity. As the philosophers say   "The whole is greater than the sum of the parts".

Community is a word that now permeates the language of government at all levels from local to federal. It ties together the Vision Statement, the Mission Statement and all documents through to local by-law. And in the process of being used as a buzz word its impact has been neutralised. It has become part of the comfort zone, the "feel good" vocabulary of government and business, no longer individuals like you and me bonding together for the common good.