Category Archives: media

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Barnet blogger row takes website hits to over 75,000:Twitter following tops 2000

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Interest in Barnet council’s appalling attempt to criminalise and censor Mr Mustard, a local blogger, took the total number of hits on this website to over 75,000 – they are now over 76,500.

 The blog attracted over 3150 hits last week – making it the second all time most popular blog. The only blog that has been more popular is one exposing how Tony Blair’s millionaire donors are now charging 6.5 per cent on their loans to the Labour Party – which has had 4258 hits. Thanks to local Barnet bloggers,Guido Fawkes, the Guardian, Liberal Conspiracy and the Taxpayers Alliance for highlighting the Barnet blogging scandal.

 The Barnet row even surpassed interest in the ever popular audit of Brian Coleman, Barnet councillor and chair of the London Fire Brigade, whose  greedy expense claims,   £100,000 plus council allowance payments and use of cheap subsidised housing has now attracted 2738 hits.

And  thanks to some 27 kind souls are now regularly subscribing free to the blog – so they can follow every word if they want to.

 Armchair audit is about to be revived – so watch for some new analysis of  the wealth of top people leading the charge to cut pay, jobs and services.  Meanwhile Twitter following has jumped over the 2000 mark – so thanks for that!

Barnet’s mad and bad plan to censor and criminalise the nation’s bloggers

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Barnet Council: Attempt to criminalize blogger Pic courtesy:http;// telegraph.co.uk

You couldn’t make this up. Barnet Council already facing trouble for illegally filming residents and bloggers coming to hear a council meeting on cuts, is now  seeking to censor and criminalize bloggers across the nation.

 The council has put in the most ludicrous complaint against a local blogger, Mr Mustard ( real name  Derek Dishman)  to the Information Commissioner claiming he has committed a criminal offence  under the Data Protection Act by not registering as a data controller  because he has made critical comments  about whether some of its officials have real jobs.

Using his right as a citizen he puts in regular FOI’requests to the council.  The row appears to have begun over critical comments questioning the council appointing a £50,000 change and innovation manager, Jonathan Tunde-Wright with  a remarkably verbose and tediously worded job description – for a job that seems to involve privatising everything. Phrases like ” delivery of  system thinking interventions” gives a  flavour ( see http://bit.ly/sQUmyA for full offending blog)

Now  Mr Tunde-Wright has his  personal website which contains his own creed for his work and  a commitment to “transparency and engagement “, ” community and accountability” and also a strong Christian belief :”  My quest to unravel the mystery of the cross of  Jesus Christ. That is a lifetime mission.” Nothing wrong with this ( Tim Montgomerie when at Conservative Home believed both in Jesus Christ and David Cameron). His website – with some interesting comments on council cuts following the recent BBC film is (  http://jonathan.uk.com/)

Now look at what Barnet Council did. On the day the Mr Mustard’s blog appeared they complained to the Information Commissioner seeking he had broken the law – and could face a £5000 fine- because he had ” processed personal data unfairly” and had no protection under the Data Protection Act.

 The council claims wrongly that ” the individuals involved do not refer to their employment with the council on their personal websites “( in fact Jonathan’s contains a link direct to Barnet Council) and ” views on the merits of their personal websites and blogs is not in the public interest.”

Initially rebuffed the council then came up with an extraordinary description of what Mr Dishman was allowed to blog without being forced to register or be prosecuted for unfairly processing data.

According to Barnet the only things bloggers can write about is their own personal data, their own family defined as people related by blood or marriage and their own household, anybody living in their house or flat.

Everything else requires registration and can be subject to legal challenge. The council even found an obscure Swedish case, involving a European Court judgement, against a member of the Swedish church  who released details of a number of local people waiting to be confirmed as why this must be done.

Luckily there has been an extremely robust response from the Information Commissioner.  They have dismissed Barnet’s second attempt with these words: ” If the ICO were to take the approach of requiring all individuals running a blog to notify as a data controller … it would lead to a situation where the ICO is expected to rule on what is acceptable for one individual to say about another.”

“Requiring all bloggers to register with this office and comply with the parts of the DPA exempted under Section 36 (of the Act) would, in our view, have a hugely disproportionate impact on freedom of expression.”

Thank God for some sanity. But what Barnet was really up to – to suppress freedom of expression, local comment  and intimidate someone who was using his right to ask them difficult Freedom of Information requests. By threatening to criminalize someone who in the ICO’s words writes a blog as a hobby, the authority is out-of-order.

If Barnet had succeeded it would have had enormous implications and costs for bloggers across the country. As Conservatives who are committed to transparency, the council should know better. They need to put up and shut up!

Barnet did not answer my questions about this. But I did contact both bloggers.

Mr Dishman said: “The likely response of the ICO if I needed to register would have been to invite me to register. I would have paid the £35 p.a. which is the only criteria to enable registration. If the council had succeeded in getting me fined £5,000 I would have paid it and then the blog would have become hyper critical and my work rate would have increased. What where they thinking? ”

He said he had no quarral with Jonathan Tunde-Wright or any of the officials named on his website.

Mr Tunde-Wright seems a bit bemused. “Speaking as a private individual it has felt like being caught in a crossfire somewhat.

” I think it is ironic that people like myself (and there are many of us in the public sector) who are truly passionate about public service and community empowerment appear to have been the targets of certain bloggers – talk of picking the wrong targets!

” I also do feel that by going beyond the Post to naming the Post Holder, referencing my personal blog and making particular comments, the said blogger may have crossed the line and placed myself and my family in this uncomfortable place of feeling harassed online.”

Barnet finally issued a statement to the Guardian today(tuesday):

“The council was concerned that an individual had used information gathered by the FOI process and linked this with other information to ridicule and abuse individual members of staff. The council consulted with the ICO as to whether this constituted a possible breach of the Data Protection Act.

 The ICO asked the council to make a formal submission, stating this was a currently a grey area.

It should be stressed that the individuals about which the council were concerned were not part of the council’s senior management team. The council does not tolerate the abuse or bullying of any of its staff.”

Why the Tories have only themselves to blame for not reining in BBC excesses

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Jeremy Hunt : Playing a blinder in making sure the public don't know too much. Pic Courtesy: The Guardian

Remember the great fuss from the Conservatives on how they were going to hold the BBC to account, expose those mega salaries paid to Graham Norton and Jeremy Paxman and make sure the taxpayer got the best value for their money from the BBC.

Well if you beleive  culture secretary Jeremy Hunt and Lib Dem culture spokesman Don Foster, it will be all happening from next year in the new cash frozen agreement to fund the BBC. He has spent the last year telling us about his success in allowing Parliament’s National Audit Office the right to launch any inquiry it likes into whether the BBC is value for money.

To quote him directly: “It is right that licence-fee payers have confidence that the BBC is spending money wisely, so I am pleased that the NAO now has the right to full access to BBC information. Its new power to decide which areas of activity to scrutinise will increase transparency while maintaining the BBC’s independence.”

In fact this statement is the worst kind of spin and churnalism. The hilarious fact is that the national papers that were critical of the BBC, the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph plus for that matter the Huffington Post website  ( see it here http://huff.to/vDq6y5 ) fell for the whole thing, hook line and sinker.

How do we know this to be true? Well reluctantly after both the NAO and culture ministry had refused to reveal it,  all the correspondence between the remarkably named Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, Jeremy Hunt and the Chris Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust and his predecessor Sir  Michael Lyons, were released under a  Freedom of Information request to Exaro News, the new investigative website I work for. You can see  the two detailed factual articles at http://www.exaronews.com/ .

What they reveal is that Amyas – the nearest person we have in Britain to ” Mr Taxpayer” was engaged in a bloody war of attrition with the BBC and Mr Hunt on behalf of you, the licence fee payer, to get proper unfettered access to the BBC and that he lost.

At one stage he was extremely fed up.  In Whitehall language he wrote, ” “I am concerned that audit access that depends on continuing agreement between the government and the BBC rather than on statute leaves important matters unresolved and may mean that, in practice, the coalition’s proposals may not take things much further forward in terms of independent scrutiny of the BBC.”

In even more stark language he said:”“I am disappointed that it remains your view that my reports should reach Parliament via the BBC Trust and secretary of state.” “It raises the possibility that the BBC Trust or the secretary of state could redact material or, indeed, not publish the report.” You can  download all the letters at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport website See http://bit.ly/ujwp60 if you want to trawl through them.

The reason why this public official is so cross is plain to see. Why he might have the right to investigate what he likes, he is shackled by what he can find out. For a start all those BBC stars can protect their deals from public scrutiny because he has no statutory right of access and cannot override the Data Protection Act.  Even the Royal Household is not so well protected from this and the mega salaries, also paid by the taxpayer, and  the rest of Whitehall can be  scrutinised.

Also no other organisation  examined by the NAO can delay the publication of a critical report by running off to the secretary of state.

Hunt also rejected giving the right of the NAO to audit the BBC accounts – something I am told auditors find extremely useful because  throws up very quickly information when money is misspent.

  He told Morse: “I do not intend to give the NAO statutory access. “I am not persuaded that I should require the BBC to appoint the NAO as its external auditor. I do not consider this is a necessary step in ensuring that the government commitment on NAO access is achieved.”

 Finally he put a gun to his head: ” “If we do not reach agreement, the NAO will not have access to the BBC at least until there is another chance to review the agreement in 2016.”

Hunt has played a blinder over this. He convinced the media that he is Mr Good Guy when actually he is a baddie. The trouble is that  it is you, the licence payer, who have been conned. You could tell  him if you want to. His e-mail is jeremy.hunt@culture.gsi.gov.uk.

Berkhamsted goes live – community TV launched

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View of Berkhamsted's Grand Union Canal- Dee TV's HQ is alongside it. Pic courtesy http://www.localauthoritypublishing.co.uk

Today (Sun) sees the launch of Dee TV – a community web TV station- covering Dacorum – that for those who don’t know their Roman history- is Berkhamsted, Tring and Hemel Hempstead plus a host of Chiltern villages in Hertfordshire.

 It has been set up as a private initiative by mum and daughter, Lindy  and Mischke Weinreb, two of the more colourful people in the town, with local web and graphic designer, Alistair McDowall. Expect it to be an interactive TV station reporting on local events. Its initial site has lots of short films on it-  a couple from local schools, interviews with local artists and musicians and a report of a local rock concert on The Moor at Hemel. It also provides a lot of coverage for local charities.

 I have no personal interest in the site  – but am really pleased to see  more community activity and journalism in the area. So far it  is feel good rather than controversial but there’s room for everything. You can see for yourself at http://www.deetv.tv.

Back to the Future: David joins Exaronews Fleet Street’s first investigative news website

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From today I have started to put some of my investigations on a new City financed website, Exaronews.

For the first time in my long 40-year-old career I have started to work off Fleet Street in New Fetter lane and my local is El Vinos, where old hacks never die.

Fleet Street today more regarded as a heritage tourist stop where people reminisce about print and hot metal  will now become the venue for  a new cyberspace revolution-the rebirth of detailed investigative journalism on the web. The wheel is turning full circle with a site entirely dedicated to investigative journalism and detailed analysis of government,Whitehall, politics,foreign news and City investigations..

If you register for exaronews you will start getting,free of charge, stories from me examining Whitehall,  ( how £13bn of taxpayers money was qualified)local government  (the government’s plans for the Audit Commision)and the present dispute between the BBC and the National Audit Office. But there will be much more to come. Eventually there will be a charge -not all investigative journalism can be free!

Watch this space and enjoy government, politicians, senior civil servants and City people being brought to account by forensic examination of their policies.The link is http://exaronews.com

The unflattering media coverage of Britain’s Muslims

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Tabloid image of 2 million Muslims?: Pic: Courtesy Daily Mail

Far from me to add to journalists’  woes in the middle of the Hackgate scandal but a pretty damning book recently out gives an unflattering  picture of the media’s coverage of the Muslim community.

Pointing the Finger: Islam and Muslims in the British Media  edited by Julian Petley and Robin Richardson, chair of the Campaign for Press  and Broadcasting Freedom and ex director of the Runnymede Trust respectively (http://bit.ly/qh4TCv ) , does not make comforting reading. I discussed it  this week on Epilogue an English language arts programme put out by the Iranian state TV, Press TV(see    http://www.presstv.ir/Program/189749.html )                             ).

Much of the analysis – with one glaring exception I  am in agreement. The  book, has a wide range of contributors including my old colleague, Hugh Muir, now the Guardian’s witty diary editor. It provides a forensic analysis  showing  much  of   the media coverage of the country’s two million Muslims equates them with terrorism or extremism  or portrays Islam as a dangerous or irrational religion.

Equally damaging is a forensic examination of tabloid scare stories (both Daily Express) showing that Lambeth Council had abolished  the term Christmas lights  or a museum in the Cheddar Gorge had banned Before Christ to appease Muslims were fabrications. Worse than that, when the authorities tried to correct such ludicrous stories, they were ignored. The broadsheets were not exempt – a story claiming the Archbishop of Canterbury was backing the introduction of Sharia law for everyone -was totally misrepresented by The Times. ( he wasn’t he had raised the issue in a theological discussion distorted by that paper)

Where I part company with  the authors is their attack on John Ware who produced a controversial programme on hidden Muslim extremism in Britain for BBC’s Panorama. His main point was that leading Muslims working with the UK government on a moderate agenda were using Arabic websites to support extremism including suicide bombers. This coincides with a similar warnings from both ex Observer journalist Martin Bright and Nick Cohen, the Observer columnist.

The book gives a lame excuse for this behaviour. If the same people give different versions of their views to meet the needs of different audiences – in this case Palestine and the British domestic public – that’s all right because all politicians do it. But I am afraid it isn’t -either leading figures should tell the Palestinians they sympathise with their cause but don’t support the bombers- or tell the Brits, they do support suicide bombers in the fight against Israel. They can have their cake and eat it. And Ware was obviously right to pursue them over this.

 That aside this book is important -including fascinating interviews with Muslims who are journalists and how they were treated by their news desks -some being  “used” to infiltrate extremist groups. As one put it: “I am a professional journalist not a professional Paki”.

Given the present climate of mistrust and the concerns about society being distorted through the prism of the media, there are valuable lessons to be learned. We need more responsible  and diverse coverage or this will be another reason why the press is dying and becoming increasingly irrelevant to more and more people.

What it does not discuss is the increasingly vitriolic and unbalanced stuff in the blogosphere – from all sides. But if the media doesn’t do its job properly and spends much of its time attacking  or fabricating stories about Muslims or indeed, any other minority,  it  is playing with fire  by creating the climate for even more vicious blogs and racial tensions.

BBC bosses: Squandering £160m of our licence fee

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Broadcasting House: Part of the BBC's wasted £160m Pic Courtesy:vam.ac.uk

Update: Since this blog was written Chris Patten, chair of the BBC Trust, has decided to curb the very high levels of executive pay at the BBC – a first step to deal with the problem. But he will need to tackle how the managers control non journalist spending – such as IT contracts and property moves which cost licencepayers £160m.

Don’t get this blog wrong, this is not  an attack  on the BBC for wasting licence payers money on programmes. It is an attack on how the BBC has wasted  tens of millions of pounds by not controlling the money it spends on the boring bits – the money spent on property, studios and digital equipment that go to make those programmes possible.

Two recent reports from the National Audit Office – the body that on our behalf examines whether our taxes are spent wisely –  make very disturbing reading. They are into the BBC’s handling of some £2 billion of cash that is being spent on moves from  London  to Salford and Glasgow  and back to Broadcasting House in London and into cutting edge digitisation of  TV. I have written about this at length in The Journalist – the National Union of Journalists magazine  see http://bit.ly/mCekbZ .

In a nutshell they show that up to £160m was wasted on these plans because of delays, a botched private tender and exposed a  bad management attitude at the top.

As the auditors, not known for colourful phrases, said on people handling the  studio move to Pacific Quay, Glasgow :“It was sometimes difficult to engage senior staff in decision-making about their area as some seemed to either not fully understand their responsibilities or take them seriously enough.”

To put in context the money lost was enough  to run both BBC News Channel and BBC4 – or in radio terms the entire cost of running Radio Three and Four – for a year. That bad.

The reason why it matters is that the BBC is now having to make cuts to meet the government’s spending targets. Journalists are going to be sacked, programmes and parts of the BBC World Service , radio  and TV channels closed down. It can ill afford to make mistakes in its boring  bits.

I don’t mind paying a licence fee to hear Jim Naughtie and John Humphrys confronting a less than straight politician on the Today programme or  see  Ian Hislop and Paul Merton take the piss out of  Boris Johnson on Have I got News for You? I certainly am keen on Panorama exposing scandals in private care homes. I like to be entertained by comedians like David Mitchell or the lewder Russell Howard on Live at the Apollo or dramas like Case Histories, Waking the Dead etc.

I do mind paying a licence fee for some useless manager to spend millions giving IT contractor  Siemens a monopoly tender  to digitalise TV which then falls apart. Or giving some  property company £46m extra cash because  BBC managers can’t get their act together to move back to Broadcasting House in time and have to extend their leases at Bush House.

So I think it is time the corporation got a grip on this. And what are they and Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, doing. Trying to bind the hands of the very body exposing this waste from doing its job properly.

Over a  year in government nothing has been done. The head of the National Audit Office who has the wonderful name of Amyas Morse wrote to Mr Hunt last September trying to get three basic things done on behalf of viewers and listeners.  He wanted  unfettered access to information to the BBC, the right to decide what he wanted to investigate and the right to publish his findings when he and not the BBC wanted.  Hardly revolutionary stuff.

Not granted yet. So how about some interactive reaction. If you think the man from the audit office should get  his access on our behalf –  send him an email at  enquiries@nao.gsi.gov.uk  marked Amyas Morse ( as it says on their website). You think  the BBC Trust is blocking this email trust.enquiries@bbc.co.uk or contact its chairman Lord Patten at pattenc@parliament.uk .

Finally you could remind Jeremy Hunt that he is supposed to have sorted this. Try jeremy.hunt@culture.gsi.gov.uk .  It is time the BBC had a metaphorical bomb put under it so it  gets its act together and doesn’t waste another £160m.

We filmed bloggers and Barnet residents for Tory council-Private security chief

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 Update: Barnet bloggers have called for full independent public inquiry into Barnet Council’s handling of the MetPro contract.

They say:

The only way that trust can be restored in Barnet Council, following the MetPro debacle, is to hold a full public inquiry. We the undersigned call on Nick Walkley, CEO of Barnet Council, and Lynne Hillan, Council Leader, to immediately engage an independent investigator, enjoying the confidence of Barnet residents, to look into the relationship between MetPro Rapid Response/MetPro Emergency Response and Barnet Council. We demand to know what Barnet Council asked MetPro Rapid Response/MetPro Emergency Response to do and what Barnet Council has done with any information about residents it has had access to as a result of MetPro’s work. Contact for more details: Vicki Morris vickimorris@btinternet.com

Did Barnet authorise the filming?

 

Or did the private security firm do it?

A former director of  a security company now bust with £400,000 debts – has  admitted that he equipped his security staff with security cameras so he could film protestors,bloggers and  residents – who came to Tory Barnet council’s meeting which approved cuts.

A scoop by Georgia Graham – a reporter on the Hampstead and Highgate Express  –  following up exclusives on this site and by Broken Barnet -(See this link to Broken Barnet for the latest story http://bitly.com/i13ngn )  got an admission from Kevin Sharkey, one of  the directors of MetPro. See http://bit.ly/frWGO1

In an interview today with me, he said: “Our staff normally wear clothing  with cameras so we can document what is happening for both sides. It is normal practice at football matches and where there are large crowds.” He said he was doing the filming for people’s safety and for his own staff’s safety to make sure nobody was hurt.

” In this day and age nobody would act without authorisation and we were asked to do this by Barnet Council. We were preparing for the worst but hoping for the best. In the event nothing happened unlike at Camden and Haringey councils.”

 He  said the main reason why people could not watch the meeting was because they had arrived late and said that he knew people who were there were up ” tricks ” to get other people into the chamber which would have breached fire regulations.

” We know what tricks people got up to like saying they were going to the toilet to free a place and then coming back.”

He also amounted an extraordinary defence of the ” dire state ” of his company – saying he was an employee not a director – despite being registered at Companies House as a director.

 He put the blame for the collapse on his partner Luigi Mansi saying ” he  was running the company and he is going to have pay back a lot of money for a long time.”

 ” Me, I haven’t got a penny to my name and I am living in rented accommodation. I am part of the community myself. I was working 130 hours a week to keep the company going but it owed a lot of money in tax.”

Barnet Council yesterday insisted that it had not ordered MetPro to do this. In a statement the authority said:

“MetPro has gone into liquidation and the council has terminated its contract.  At no point has the council ever authorised security staff carrying lapel cameras. 
 “Unlike some other London boroughs, the setting of the budget in Barnet at cabinet and council was held with the public present and at the advertised time and place. Every resident who arrived at Hendon Town Hall by the start of the meeting had a place in either the public gallery or the overflow room.”

Whoever is right this is a damning indictment of local democracy at Barnet Council. They have employed people who are equipped to film people at a public meeting. They have banned bloggers and residents from filming, tweeting or recording their own council against the  advice of Eric Pickles, the communities secretary. They also have paid over £275,000 to a private security firm that has ended almost owing all that in unpaid tax. They either don’t know what they are doing or don’t care.

Private security firm that banned bloggers goes bust

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gone bust Pic courtesy MetPro Rapid Response Ltd

The row over  Barnet Council’s ludicrous decision to defy Communities

Some of the fine lads working for MetPro, the blogger busting co. Pic courtesy: Reasonablenewbarnet.blogpsot.com

Secretary Eric Pickles and ban bloggers and film makers from covering their cuts meeting has taken an extraordinary twist.

In order to enforce the ban the Tory council used MetPro Rapid Response – the council’s main private security contractors – to stop some residents and bloggers from entering the public gallery to see the council vote through cuts.

See footage on Broken Barnet website here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ3CsC7wrNg

Full story on Broken Barnet website. Link is http://bitly.com/i13ngn Mrs Angry also reveals that the company may have done covert filming of residents and may be monitoring Barnet bloggers and this blog. The council says it is ” not aware” of any blog monitoring.

The company  has received £275,889  for work from the  council taxpayer according to Barnet’s documents released on the Openlylocal website.  See http://bit.ly/eitGCW

It has also  received glowing tributes from the council. On MetPro’s website they quote Barnet Council as saying: ” MetPro has removed all of our safety worries at work thanks to their rapid response officers here in our building.”

 But now the company has just gone bust and is being run by a Liquidator, Mike Solomons, who according to the law firm handling the liquidation, Beavis Morgan, has put Barnet’s security staff contract up for sale.

Closer investigation of the MetPro has revealed some extraordinary facts. Its two directors, Kevin Sharkey and Luigi Anthony Mansi appear to have run a  string of companies which have gone bust before.

 The address of the firm until recently was a rented  multi million pound mansion in Totteridge Lane, Barnet owned by the  brothers Cyril and Edward Frey, aged 86 and 89, and a former lawyer from Finer and Company predecessor of Finers, Stephens, Innocent ( the firm defending the Wikileaks founder). The Land Registry entry confirms that the three owners can be contacted through them, though the law firm which handles multi million pound estates, says it does not manage the property.

Contrary to the glowing references from Barnet, its staff have received libellous comments on a security officers chat site. They are not surprisingly  hardly popular with a string of Barnet bloggers.

All this suggests that Barnet Council may  have more to answer than banning bloggers – and some explanation is required about what is going on and how this firm got the contract in the first place.

A Council spokesperson said: “Barnet Council is urgently reviewing MetPro Rapid Response’s position and will be liaising with the liquidators involved.”

Praise be Pickles: Pity about your party activists

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eric pickles- the bloggers friend; Pic courtesy cyclingsilk.com

 

Lynne Hillan- Barnet Tory leader- Queen Canute rather than Iron Lady. Pic courtesy: Barnet Times

Normally I don’t approve of the judgements of Eric Pickles, the  communities secretary, the man Westminster jokes is so much larger than life that he can be spotted on Google Earth. However in a  blog for Conservative Home last week http://bit.ly/i1cKAV the scourge of local government  bureaucrats penned an article backing the idea that councils should open the doors to bloggers and citizen journalists who should be able to tweet and film  to their heart’s content. He of course cited outrageous Labour councils who had banned this. He also praised the work of Maidenhead and Windsor council .

 He wrote: ” Conservative-run Windsor and Maidenhead recently decided to allow members of the public to video local meetings. This week, I wrote to councils encouraging them to follow suit, opening up public discussions to all forms of multimedia. Citizen journalists have as much right as anyone to attend and to share their views, and council ‘monitoring officers’ shouldn’t hide behind bogus concerns about ‘data protection’ or ‘human rights’.

He goes on to describe this new freedom right back to the Blessed Margaret Thatcher who introduced the right  of the press and public to attend council meeting way back in 1960.Isn’t it then doubly ironic that tomorrow night (March 1) Barnet Council, whose citizens returned the former Tory leader to Westminster, should be doing the very thing that Eric Pickles deplores.

 This Tory controlled council has banned videos by the public of the public council meeting saying it is ” against the council’s constitution” and I am told people can be ejected if they are caught tweeting , even though councillors are free to do so.

Indeed bloggers are not welcome at all. Lynne Hillan, leader of the council,  told the Barnet Times:

“The only thing we will do is consider responsible media requests, and they are the only thing we would allow at this stage. If we had a request I would expect an officer to approach me about it. I do not think we would consider a request from bloggers . Only respectable media would be considered.”

This dinosaur attitude from a Queen Canute  is breathtaking. Her ignorance about how the modern world works is absurd. Presumably her next step as Barnet leader will be to table a motion condemning Lady Thatcher for allowing the public by law to attend council meetings.

The best riposte to her comes from the mouth of Eric Pickles himself. ” When councils make these sorts of petty decisions, at best they look foolish and out of touch; at worst they look like they have something to hide.”

 Need I say more. You can. E-mail her with your views at leader@barnet.gov.uk or phone her direct on 0208 359 2059. Her fax is: 020 889 7464.

Update: Barnet kept its word in blocking bloggers and filming at the council last night by employing some rather heavy looking security guards to limit who could get a seat to hear the council introduce cuts and higher parking. According to Mrs Angry, a blogger who did get in, they appeared to be able to overrule local police officers. See her report and pix of  the heavy bouncers employed by the Tory council on her blog at http://bit.ly/i13ngn