Creating Community Conversations - Gallomanor

Code of recommended practice on local authority publicity - A consultation

It's a fairly important part of the DCLG White Paper Consultation process for CivicSurf. The Code of Practice on Local Authority Publicity has been blamed by many as a major obstacle to helping councillors use blogs. This consultation is a chance to make your views clear on the matter.

I'll be reading this over Christmas and posting some thoughts and responding in the New Year.

[Cross posted from CivicSurf]

And that's why we need FOI

From an article in The Guardian.

A minister apologised to parliament yesterday for telling MPs that 70 police officers were hurt during a climate change protest, after the Guardian revealed that most of the injuries were inflicted by insects or the heat. Vernon Coaker, the Home Office minister, told MPs at Commons question time yesterday: "I was informed that 70 police officers were hurt and naturally assumed that they had been hurt in direct contact as a result of the protest. That clearly wasn't the case and I apologise if that caused anybody to be misled."

The apology followed a freedom of information request from the Liberal Democrats, which showed that no officers in the £5.9m police operation at Kingsnorth power station in Kent during August had been injured by protesters.

Instead, police records showed that their medical unit had dealt mostly with toothache, diarrhoea, cut fingers and "possible bee stings".

Shock Horror - Positive Youth Media Coverage!

Wiltshire Times Headline
Originally uploaded by gallomanor

It's not often that young people get positive media coverage, and it is even rarer for Skate Boys to be seen in a positive light. That's why this needs to be shared.

Original Story.

Councillors, even better than your Dad!

The I'm a Councillor evaluation report for 2008 is now ready. Topline results for this year are that councils were busier than ever before. The average number of questions asked per council is 331, by an average 203 users. Compare that with 111 questions asked, by 126 users in the average council in 2004 and you can see the huge growth there's been.

This is partly due to great work by councils and teachers. Thanks! But another reason, we think, is that schools now have much better ICT facilities. And teachers and students are more computer literate. So it gets easier and easier to engage schools using a project like this.