It’s the weekend and people have better things to do than read blogs and it’s
a good time to relax and write something that needs almost no research, like answer some of
the questions that have arisen this month.
Tempting fate I suppose, but I have still not been taken to task for publishing
this site but I do seem to be attracting more comment from people who believe it could be done better.
Why not publish council good news stories too?
That’s the council’s job. They have links to News on their website front page
and the Conservatives have their own websites. The latter is where you will read
about Bexley having the lowest parking charges in SE London, that Bexley has
among the lowest council tax rates in outer London and that Labour councillors
don’t know that there is a railway station in Bexleyheath. If the best they can
do is lie it suggests they can find nothing good to say about their achievements.
Actually Bonkers is not all bad news. A councillor giving a genuinely warm
welcome to members of the public at a meeting won’t be overlooked and chairmen
who acquit themselves well are given suitable credit.
A
couple of weeks ago someone at Bexley council asked me if I could pinpoint
areas close to where I live which flood after rain. I suggested they look at a
drain cover which stood proud of the road surface in front of a bus stop so when
it rained a puddle formed around the drain hole and anyone waiting for a bus got
a good soaking. Last week that problem was fixed. That will be Tony Hugh’s
department on the ball again.
I collected a neighbour’s Blue Badge from Erith Library two weeks ago and
everything was handled very efficiently.
Forty eight hours after I pictured the
overflowing paper bin
a very pleasant young man came out to tidy up. He told me
that the plastic lids of milk and fizzy drink bottles can now be recycled but
preferably detached from each other when placed in the bin. Whatever happened to
the recycling guidance books
that used to be sent out? A victim of the cuts maybe?
Is Bonkers a Labour party site?
It must be because it criticises Bexley council and local Conservative websites but
not Labour’s, or so I am told. Bearing in mind their meagre representation on Bexley
council, Labour councillors have come in for more than their fair share of stick. To
criticise website design for being “awful” seems to be a little below the belt, despite
me sometimes looking at the underlying code and recoiling in horror at the complexities
employed to achieve very little. But if you insist…
Labour’s websites are the worst offenders. One of their sites still thanks voters
for their electoral support 18 months ago and the Links page takes you to a six month out
of date blog, to a school and a church site neither of which exist (404 errors) and to a
site which Teresa Pearce MP abandoned six months ago and circulated an announcement to
that effect. No sign of them rebutting the Tory lies. Maybe that’s why people suggest
Bonkers is Labour’s on-line opposition to the Conservatives.
From reading the local press I think it is more than likely that Teresa Pearce
is the most active and effective of our local MPs but giving credit where it is
due does not make Bonkers an off-shoot of the Labour party.
Is Bonkers connected to the British National Party?
I can only guess where that suggestion comes from. Quite a lot of my reports are based on information supplied by Michael Barnbrook who in January 2009 stood as the BNP candidate in the Welling by election and came within eight votes of winning. Mr. Barnbrook is no longer a member of the BNP. My own association is limited to reading their 2001 general election manifesto and chucking it away.
What is the connection to the Bexley Council Monitoring Group?
I’m never quite sure. I meet its founding member for an hour or so most weeks and compare notes; that’s about as far as it goes. I have also been known to solve the odd problem he might have with his website.
Why has the contact telephone been disconnected?
Because I was getting too many calls that should be directed to a solicitor or Citzen’s Advice Bureau and whilst that is not in itself a problem, 20 from the same source in a week takes up far too much time.
Why does the site banner keep changing?
Because it can. The website is designed in a modular fashion and it takes about two seconds to swap modules and change the banner. The Home page content changes approximately weekly because slightly more than 50% of blog readers enter the site via the Home page and for it to always be the same would get boring. The Craske based Home page is used more often than the others because when it is there the Google ranking is better. I don’t know why.
How many hits does Bonkers get?
The
perennial old question and you will never see a counter like this on a Bonkers
page, not even if the errant apostrophe is removed.
As indicated in today’s opening remarks, weekends are always lower than Monday
to Friday and school holidays always see a drop too. Ignoring school holidays, page views rise by between
4% and 6% each week but with the number of pages increasing that is not so
very surprising. What may be surprising is the number of visits coming in from
Northern Italy and that whoever set up the Thames innovation Centre’s server
managed to get two spelling mistakes into those three words.
As for 73,135 hits in 13 or 14 months. I’d be keeping very quiet about that if it was me.