Councils should open up their public meetings to local news 'bloggers' and routinely allow online filming of public discussions as part of increasing their transparency, Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles said today.
To ensure all parts of the modern-day media are able to scrutinise Local Government, Mr Pickles believes councils should also open up public meetings to the 'citizen journalist' as well as the mainstream media, especially as important budget decisions are being made.
Local Government Minister Bob Neill has written to all councils urging greater openness and calling on them to adopt a modern day approach so that credible community or 'hyper-local' bloggers and online broadcasters get the same routine access to council meetings as the traditional accredited media have.
The letter sent today reminds councils that local authority meetings are already open to the general public, which raises concerns about why in some cases bloggers and press have been barred.
For example Tameside Council has accredited professional journalists to report from meetings using Twitter. The decision means local bloggers, the public and even councillors are not permitted to tweet because they are not considered members of the press.
Eric Pickles said:
"Fifty years ago, Margaret Thatcher changed the law to make councils open their meetings to the press and public. This principle of openness needs to be updated for the 21st Century. More and more local news comes from bloggers or citizen journalists telling us what is happening at their local council.
"Many councils are internet-savvy and stream meetings online, but some don't seem to have caught up with the times and are refusing to let bloggers or hyper-local news sites in. With local authorities in the process of setting next year's budget this is more important than ever.
"Opening the door to new media costs nothing and will help improve public scrutiny. The greater powers and freedoms that we are giving local councils must be accompanied by stronger local accountability.
"We are in the digital age and this analogue interpretation of the press access rules is holding back a new wave of local scrutiny, accountability and armchair auditors."The letter also reassured councils that giving greater access will not contradict data protection law requirements following concerns over personal information. In the majority of cases the citizen blogging about how they see the democratic process working is unlikely to breach the data protection principles.
To read more visit the Communities and Local Government website by clicking here. The
website of Eric Pickles MP is worth a look at too. It is a good example of a well run constituency website.
The Guardian think Mr Pickles’ proposal is a good idea. I wonder what our local council Mafiosi make of it?
28 comments:
Tameside council has been getting some extremely detrimental coverage in the national press recently.
In a radio interview, Eric Pickles confessed to reading Communist literature when growing up in Keighley, West Yorkshire, in the 1960s.
He read the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital and even compiled a school project on Marx.
In a BBC Radio 4 programme discussing the impact of the fall of the Berlin Wall on political beliefs, Mr Pickles told interviewer Anne McElvoy: “I was a pretty serious young chap. For my birthday I got Trotsky’s History of the Revolution as a present — and devoured all of it.
“I was massively inclined towards communism. It was part of my upbringing. I do not think it is anything to be ashamed of”
ESTIMATED NUMBER OF VICTIMS OF THE WORLDWIDE COMMUNIST MOVEMENT IN THE 20TH CENTURY.
In the introduction to their book--The Black Book of Communism--authors Laffont and Courtois state that "...Communist regimes...turned mass crime into a full-blown system of government". They cite a death toll which totals 94 million, not counting the "excess deaths" (decrease of the population due to lower than-expected birth rates). The breakdown of the number of deaths given by these French academics is as follows:
65 million in the People's Republic of China
20 million in the Soviet Union
2 million in Cambodia
2 million in North Korea
1.7 million in Africa
1.5 million in Afghanistan
1 million in the Communist states of Eastern Europe
1 million in Vietnam
150,000 in Latin America
10,000 deaths "resulting from actions of the international Communist movement and Communist parties not in power."
Laffont and Courtois claim that Communist regimes are responsible for a far greater number of deaths than any other political ideal or movement, INCLUDING NAZISM. The statistics of victims includes executions, intentional destruction of population by starvation (Ukraine 1932-33, for example) and deaths resulting from deportations, physical confinement, or through forced labour.
The man-made famine that was the Holodomor, Ukrainian for "killing by hunger", killed 2.4 to 5 million Ukrainians according to the latest scholarly research. Some estimates give up to 10 million.
This Communist policy was directed against the rise of Ukrainian nationalism and therefore falls under the legal definition of genocide.
Every modern secondary school pupil has been thoroughly drilled on the Holocaust, I wonder how many have even heard of the Holodomor. Perhaps Mr Spielberg will make a film about it but I won't be holding my breath.
Quinn and Taylor will love this. Can you imagine the hilarity of bloggers in there filming these meetings.
Look at this link. I didn't know how much Tameside Council catered for minorities. We even have a Equalities Centre and Hate Incident Panel. Seriously, this will be costing us a bomb.
Not to mention the quango, T3SC who enforces "cohesion" on our neighbourhoods. I refuse to say communities because it has become a word tangled with socialists wanting other peoples money to boost their little egos.
It depends whether or not the bloggers are mature enough to actually cover the meetings accurately. At the very least, journos do have NJC recognised qualifications and a registered place of work. In comparison, some bloggers probably have paperwork from their GP and temporary residence at the local mental health unit.
There is some serious nutter shit going on in the blogging world that devalues what somebody like TC is doing.
You honestly think journos are mature enough? They answer to their paymasters who hand over thousands in advertising each week.
Allowing bloggers to attend council meetings brings people such as TC out into the open, where they can be identified. This may be the purpose of this new initiative by Pickles.
Local councils and the police despise website blogs because of the potential for whistleblowers to expose corruption.
In London the Metropolitan Police were desperate to identify a blogger who was one of their own officers. When they finally identified him, his family were threatened and he had to shut down his blog.
What do you think TC?
Jonny Reynolds and Taylor couldn't wait to start blogging once the council meeting was over. It isn't just anonymous bloggers who spout shit via Twatter, you know.
Labour's 'Tory cuts' monomania is their substitute for coming up with any policies of their own. One look at the brainless, talentless shadow cabinet or any Labour dominated council chamber will tell you why.
Kieran Quinn's got a letter in the Advertiser saying he expects them to be demonstrably against the cuts (i.e Conservative policy) as they are bad for Tameside. This is a public letter from a council leader asking a supposedly independent newspaper to be manifestly and openly poitically biased. Thanks councillor, you've 'Advertised' your true colours for all to see.
I'm writing to Eric Pickles about Quinn's letter which, in my view, is disgraceful.
Today a last minute donation from the National Heritage Memorial fund has saved the papers of computing genius Alan Turing, (1912-1954), for the nation. A total of over £213,000 was raised.
Turing is famous for his code-breaking work at Bletchley Park during World War II, playing a crucial part in creating the Bombe machine, the progenitor of the computer. This highly complex and innovative machine was years ahead of its time and cracked messages enciphered using the German Enigma code. Churchill described him as 'The man who won the Battle of Britain.'
This brilliant and significant man should be remembered and celebrated entirely for his genius and achievements, but in the last few years he's been adopted by homosexual pressure groups as a martyr because of his personal life and suicide, caused by depression over his conviction in 1952 for having a sexual relationship with a man.
Such groups and individuals have their own agendas which have nothing to do with remembering and apppreciating the qualities, achievements and contributions of a great Briton.
Uganda population:
1991: 17 million.
2011: 33 million.
2021: (projection) 66 million.
2050: (projected) 130 million.
Fertility rates (number of children per female):
World: 2.7
Africa: 5.1
Uganda: 6.9
Pakistan: 3.17
Europe: 1.51.
You don't need a degree in mathematics to work out where things are headed unless something is done.
'It's basically over for Anglos'
Excellent link to the Texas site. I can see some American states seceding from the union in the next few decades. Parts of New England, the mid west and the northern states such as Dakota, Wyoming etc.
The alternative will be to end up like: New York city; large parts of the south east, i.e. Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi etc with their chronic unemployment and crime ridden and expanding ghettos; or the south west, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California, the latter with LA and its exploding gang culture.
In all these places the white race is being ethnically cleansed and massively outbred.
The only country with a higher birth rate than Uganda is Niger, the fertility rate is 7.9 children per female.
50,000 Niger women would produce 395000 children,
50,000 European women would produce 75500 children - a gap of 319500 (bear in mind significant numbers of the European figure will come from foreign immigrants, particularly Muslim and sub-saharn Africans who have massively larger families). The difference is therefore 525%.
For 250,000 women the figures would be,
Niger: 1,975,000,
Europe: 377500, a gap of 1,597,500.
As Europe's birth rate falls the sheer number of people of breeding age in sub-saharan Africa, Arabia and the Indian sub-continent (including Pakistan and Bangladesh) will massively widen this gap. Even a hypothetical small fall in birth rates ( extremely unlikely as they are projected to increase exponentially) would result in only a marginal slowing of the massive discrepancy.
Unless drastic action is taken soon we in the west are headed for oblivion.
Anglos will go the way of the dodo bird. Not from disease or climate change, but from political correctness. A species that is too stupid, i.e. too politically correct to fight for its survival is doomed. We can thank the Jews of the Frankfurt School(Fromm, Horkheimer, Adorno etc) for giving us political correctness.
Hi, just found your blog. Here's my view.
Everybody says there is this RACE problem. Everybody says this RACE problem will be solved when the third world pours into EVERY white country and ONLY into white countries.
The Netherlands and Belgium are just as crowded as Japan or Taiwan, but nobody says Japan or Taiwan will solve this RACE problem by bringing in millions of third worlders and quote assimilating unquote with them.
Everybody says the final solution to this RACE problem is for EVERY white country and ONLY white countries to “assimilate,” i.e., intermarry, with all those non-whites.
What if I said there was this RACE problem and this RACE problem would be solved only if hundreds of millions of non-blacks were brought into EVERY black country and ONLY into black countries?
How long would it take anyone to realize I’m not talking about a RACE problem. I am talking about the final solution to the BLACK problem?
And how long would it take any sane black man to notice this and what kind of psycho black man wouldn’t object to this?
But if I tell that obvious truth about the ongoing program of genocide against my race, the white race, Liberals and respectable conservatives agree that I am a naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.
They say they are anti-racist. What they are is anti-white.
Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white.
Rebecca from Texas,
As a colonist, could you pinpoint your mother country, Great Britain, on a map?
I notice how you don't try to contradict any of the points I've raised, instead you just resort to name-calling, which means I've won the argument.
Great post Rebecca.
Some idiot who made aeroplane gestures in a video from Crawley Town has been charged with a criminal offence for upsetting Manchester United supporters yet when a bunch of Muslim animals in London burn poppies on remembrance day in London nothing happens to them.
Over paid, over stupid and over here, you call Rebecca stupid but fail to contribute a reasoned counter argument to her points.
What with links like that from our friend in Texas and the convulsions in the Maghreb that are sending hordes of young Arab men in our direction, here's hoping that the Ostrich approach to these matters will no longer be tenable.
Why is it that journos require the assistance of a press officer next to them? Darrell Beck, Nicola Smith and Mike Pavasovic all there to oversee that the local media don't step out of line.
What`s Renolds up to now ???
sounds like he wants a Council ??
to eradicate another piece of Our
natural environment for more commercial profits.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde, Labour)
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what powers are available to local authorities who wish to revoke the conservation area status granted to particular areas.
Bob Neill (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Communities and Local Government; Bromley and Chislehurst, Conservative)
Local planning authorities have powers under section 69 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 to designate conservation areas and to vary or cancel any such designation, subject to giving notice to the Secretary of State and English Heritage.
...................................J.Hall
J.Hall
Anonymous Anonymous said...
What`s Renolds up to now ???
sounds like he wants a Council ??
to eradicate another piece of Our
natural environment for more commercial profits.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde, Labour)
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what powers are available to local authorities who wish to revoke the conservation area status granted to particular areas.
Bob Neill (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Communities and Local Government; Bromley and Chislehurst, Conservative)
Local planning authorities have powers under section 69 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 to designate conservation areas and to vary or cancel any such designation, subject to giving notice to the Secretary of State and English Heritage.
...................................J.Hall
J.Hall
01/03/2011 12:42
Last December I was leafleting for the BNP in Bagley during a by-election there. We had just finished our leafleting session and we were walking down a main road when a car pulled up beside us with 3 men inside. The driver was black, the front seat passenger was Asian or mixed race, and the thug in the back was black. The Asian wound his window down, poked his head out and said, "if you ever come around here again we'll f***ing kill you". At this point the one in the back got out of the car and waved a knife at us and said, "let's waste them right now". We then made a quick getaway.
Now about 10 minutes later I called the police and an officer showed up after about 1/2 an hour. I told the officer what had happened and he was very keen to apprehend the guy with the knife. He took down all my details and asked to see the leaflet that we had been distributing (at this stage he didn't know we were from the BNP). The leaflet was actually a Christmas card with a calendar on the back. It said simply: 'Happy Xmas from the BNP' next to an image of the virgin Mary. On the back was a calendar.
Here's where it got surreal because once the copper saw the letters 'BNP' on the card, his whole persona changed. "Well what do you expect", he said. "If you received a happy Eid card from Al-Queida, you wouldn't like it would you?". So I said, "No, but I wouldn't use a knife to threaten the person who posted it". And the officer said, "but the point is: you wouldn't like it". He then drove off leaving me stranded and fearing I may bump into the 3 thugs in the car.
Now a close friend of mine is a serving police officer in Tameside. He said had it been the other way around, ie, a BNP activist threatening an Asian with a knife in similar circumstances, GMP would have deployed helicopters and put up roadblocks to track down the offender.
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