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Communication [ Back to Knowledges in Context ]Farmers sought advice about culls, from their vet, auctioneer, haulier, who in turn, were desperately seeking information from government agencies: So I tried all the other numbers that we had that I didn"t like to give out to everybody, but couldn"t get anybody [. . .] After that they did put the later hours on [because they had only been available from 9 to 5]. (Health and veterinary, interview, 2002)
Actually the decisions were altering all the time from up above as to what went and what didn"t go, [speaking of contiguous culling] but I was told that they were going to go, the sheep I was looking after. (Farm, interview, 2002)
A panel member who works in tourism spoke of having to deal with the public’s anger and frustration, as well as his staff’s feeling of inadequacy:I had to ring DEFRA for some definitive advice on paths which didn’t seem to be obtainable anywhere. DEFRA were unable to help really. They did get back to me in the end but I thought they were pretty slow at it. . . (Small business, interview,2002)
A small business person speaks about dealing with rumours and counter rumours about business grants:And I mean, there"s rumours going round, you know friends that are in business in different parts of the country, that are; ‘have you heard about this and have you heard about that.’ And I"d be on the phone to Business Link [agency offering advice and support] everyday after I"d heard a new rumour, and quite often they"d say; ‘oh I don"t know about that, I haven"t heard about that’. (Small business, interview, 2002)
Local organisations reached out to offer information and support: … we rang people up and we pushed all the information we could into the parish magazine because we couldn"t visit anybody. So that became a source of information for things like the Addington Fund [relief crisis funding] and all of those advice lines . . . (Community, interview, 2002)
Panel members spoke of local media, in particular local radio coverage as being more up to date, trusted and reliable: . . .the presenters and that they were all very much involved you see [. . .], and the presenters all lived in villages and all these villages all had fires, they knew what was going on. (Farm, interview, 2002)
Our interviews with local media staff, suggest that they worked at ‘translating’ what panel members spoke of as impenetrable ‘Ministry-speak’: . . .there was quite a lot of correspondence from the Ministry, but you just read the first page and thought this was written by a fella in an office and got sick of it… (Farm, interview 2002) [ Back to Knowledges in Context ]
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