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Yes, I confess, the proposed press release was a spoof. Thankfully my ruse has been spotted because it prevented my next email this evening which would have announced to the list that the statement had been released and picked up in the lead editorial of the Norfolk and Goode Evening Echo! The spoof statement was sent to the list as a piece of theatre intended to stimulate thought and discussion in anticipation of our forthcoming CPUK gathering in Edinburgh and for, to quote Rhona, "facilitat[ing] interaction amongst the 3 parallel workshops on the Thursday afternoon - media & press management; our online community; and developing our collective voice....[and to throw] into relief all of these issues and how they intersect - who are 'we' as a community? How does/can an online community function and make decisions? To whom are we accountable? And what relationship do we want to have with the media?". As a list and as a network, we have issued a number of public statements since our last conference. I suspect that the themes of the forthcoming CPUK conference - the relationship between critical and community psychology (day one) and mental health in our communities (day two) - might cause us to want to make our voice heard once more... In my spoof press release I sought to issue a statement to the list that would contain factual inaccuracies, ideological inconsistencies and an underlying oppressive discourse (both in terms of relationships within our network and in terms of our network's relationship with those outside of it) but to contain sufficient linguistic snares to make enough of it appear plausible enough to enough of us. The intent was to raise some issues in relation to how statements are generated, agreed and released by our network and to give us a glimpse, through a grotesque characterisation of what our network might do, of what our network might be. Now, to point to one of the statements we collectively(?) agreed(?) upon and which I was responsible for generating, agreeing and releasing and which was not done in jest - the statement of support to the Seroxat User Group. Here is a reminder of that statement: "“The Community Psychology UK Network (CPUK) supports the work of the Seroxat & SSRI User Group (SUG) in their efforts to protect public health from any inadvertent harm caused by the pharmaceutical industry and the medical and allied professions. CPUK support SUG's aims to ensure UK health regulatory bodies have sufficient remit, responsibility and resource to guarantee public health and to ensure that those harmed by the products of psychopharmacy are given the support they need to seek justice and get well." With the best of intention, our network produced a statement of support that was, at best, asinine and, at worst, undermining of the work of SUG - our use of the phrase 'inadvertent harm'. This phrase suggest that the pharmaceutical industry unknowingly caused harm to public health. This is not the case. SUG and others have accumulated compelling evidence that the harm is caused knowingly (and this evidence has been 'proven true' in legal action taken against GSK in the US). So, a message of support, though gratefully received by SUG, was not as helpful as it could have been - some list members (but not enough) pointed out to me at the time their disappointment with the inclusion of the phrase 'inadvertent'.. I say all of this as the author of that statement having gone through the process of seeking a collective voice from our community (our network) through our online community (our list) that could be publicly released (our voice). p ___________________________________ COMMUNITYPSYCHUK - The discussion list for community psychology in the UK. To unsubscribe or to change your details visit the website: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/COMMUNITYPSYCHUK.HTML For any problems or queries, contact the list moderator Rebekah Pratt on [log in to unmask] or Grant Jeffrey on [log in to unmask]