10 November - The Big Society or Big Brother?
Six
weeks ago I attended an OFCOM sponsored meeting of London bloggers. You may wish
to look at this 52 second video by the coordinator of that meeting which neatly sums up what the OFCOM
meeting was about. He speaks of websites having “significant impacts on neighbourhoods and what the
implications are for local councils”. He says websites such as this one are bringing people together
and delivering on the government’s Big Society. Click the image to view the video.
Well ‘Bonkers’ has certainly brought people together but Bexley council’s stated wish to be
open and transparent is too far removed from reality to provide any optimism for an outbreak of honesty and
common sense in this neck of the woods. But it’s not all in vain, some of the ‘people brought
together’ are planning a website to complement ‘Bonkers’ that will cover the sort of
skullduggery that has been merely hinted at here. Whether anything will come of it I have no idea, I hope
they have a lot of spare time on their hands.
Something whispered in my ear suggests that
councillor Campbell has been active today and I suspect is busy
flouting the council’s stated policy on a particular subject. He is the man who doesn’t like Freedom
of Information applications and it is not hard to see why when he presides over so much wrong doing. With any
luck there will be more information leaking out - or maybe the police will take matters out of his hands.