By Jonathan Jones

This week I had the dubious honour of being asked to go along to a meeting in town because the Chair of the local gay group I belong to was unable to go so. I was asked to attend instead in my capacity as Publicity Officer. The meeting was basically to discuss the various options open to the voluntary sector taking into account factors like the global recession as one example.

It was held in a hall within a local arts centre. There was tea and coffee laid on, cakes, biscuits and a buffet for afterwards. It was scheduled to start at 4pm and finish at 7pm with a chance for networking (I do loathe that word) when we'd finished. I went into the room, found a seat, got ready to take notes and waited for the proceedings to begin. I honestly cannot say I was bored. The time was managed really well and it wasn't unenjoyable either. What it was however was completely and utterly pointless.

The basic gist of the entire event was that it is far better for those in the voluntary sector to work together with others than attempt to go it alone because that way there's a more effective sharing of ideas, greater levels of support and of course, groups which are well organised look more attractive to funding panels. To get to this rather obvious summary, we had to sit through boring PowerPoint presentations by people with fancy job titles who felt it better to use massive long words strung into arduous sentences as well as talking for ages using wild animals and land masses as photographic analogies when a couple of short simple sentences would have sufficed and put the message across equally as well.

The room was then split in two and we were herded into other rooms for a small workshop. I couldn't help but think of the cost of all of this, as the entire upper floor of the building was being used. Once settled in the room the group I was in were directed to, we were to introduce ourselves, the name of the voluntary group we were representing and our role within that. And thus it began.

I thought to myself as each person spoke that these people are all well respected in the town in their various positions and supposedly have a modicum of intelligence but all I heard was a lot of verbal diarrhoea. Again, all these big words. "How can we more effectively strategise within our collected perspectives to accumulate and consolidate our contemporary financial situations?" In other words, "what plans do we have to get the money coming in and keep it coming in?"

A short time after, the woman who had been facilitating our workshop looked at her watch and it was time for us all to head back into the main room where a panel of local dignitaries were sitting. We were told we could ask questions about anything related to the voluntary sector. As usual, neither of the politicians present actually answered any question directly and instead ducked and dived for the length of time they were speaking. I was sitting next to a chap who had refused to ackowledge me the moment he found out I was there to represent a gay group and who I could quite have happily punched due to his need to incessantly hog the debate, first by telling us each and every time he spoke what his community role was as if we should cheer him and let off balloons and secondly, by asking banal questions couched in awful committee speak.

And then it was over. Outside lay the long awaited buffet before people found others they could latch onto and begin the networking. I couldn't help but again think of the cost of hiring the entire upper level of the centre, the food, the beverages, the setting up and taking down of all the paraphernalia attached to the event and for what? To inform us that it was far better to collaborate than go it alone. Judging by the people's faces as they milled around from person to person, it appeared the event had been a roaring success but I couldn't help thinking I had been given the keys, albeit briefly, to the asylum.