This week Plymouth City Council banned Councillors and staff from using council computers and mobile phones to access social networking sites and applications such as Twitter.
The ban was introduced after Labour Leader Cllr Tudor Evans upset another politician with comments he had published on Twitter.
Plymouth Council’s Chief Executive wrote to all Councillors and staff saying the use of Twitter was now restricted to the council's corporate communications team.
How daft can you get? If public bodies and those who work within them want to engage with the public they need to do so through the media the public uses.
I have a website where I publish my activities in Parliament, write an occasional electronic diary (blog), invite comments on the issues of the day and promote Torbay to the world and his dog who might be reading my pages. For the record mine costs under £10 a month out of my own pocket.
I also use the free of charge social networking sites Facebook and Myspace and as a consequence attract questions and casework from people who would not otherwise have contacted me.
It’s about reaching the parts you might not otherwise reach in order to offer as inclusive a service as possible to all constituents.
Plymouth City Council should be doing the same in order to engage with those it is supposed to serve.
Of course insulting language or comments should not be communicated by anyone and when found to do so it is their access through a council’s computer that should be blocked, not the entire workforce and political management of a local authority.
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Now that all the MP claims for expanses and allowances have been published the independent auditors can start their work. They will be looking into every claim form, receipt, invoice and piece of correspondence. They will check these against the rules at the time and spirit of the rules today and will have the power to force repayment and call in the police if necessary.
The issue is far from over but it is good to report that reforms are already in place with further fundamental changes to follow that are aimed at cleaning up the system once and for all.
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In the Devon County elections a majority of voters did not want a county council dominated by one party, but the electoral system gave it to them once again, just as it had four years ago when the Lib Dems won an overall majority but not a majority of the votes.
This time the Conservatives won 66 per cent of the seats, taking complete control of the authority, despite polling less than 42 per cent of the vote.
Electoral reform is the way to give the voter the power to influence the result they wish to see. Many people across all parties are debating how to modernise and reform our democracy although one of the main Party leaders has made it perfectly clear he would be happy to take complete power on a minority of the votes.
So long as he can count on opponents splitting their votes between different candidates rather than the one best placed to challenge his Party, he will win a disproportionate number of seats against the will of the people.
In the wake of recent events a fairer voting system is one of the top reforms we need in order to renew our democracy and restore faith in our Parliamentary system. Sadly, it’s the one change David Cameron has set himself firmly against.
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In 2001 I asked the Secretary of State to publish the amount of funding his Department has given to non governmental bodies in the South West region for the last year for which figures are available?
I posed a similar question to all Government Departments in order to find out just how much of our money is spent by non governmental bodies, or Quangos as they are known, that receive taxpayer’s money from central government and take decisions which affect our lives.
In short I uncovered that un-elected quangos spend more taxpayer’s money than elected and accountable local authorities in the region. In that year local authorities across the South West region spent just under £2.9 billion, whilst un-elected quangos spent over £5.3 billion.
I believe that the true figure of unaccountable spending is probably much higher, as many quangos did not provide a response to my request for figures.
This is yet another democratic deficits at the heart of our over centralised system of Government. Decisions are taken about the expenditure of Billions of pounds within our region by appointees of the Secretary of State and not by the people their decisions affect.
Such expenditure should be in the hands of elected representatives whom we can all influence and then judge when an election comes round.
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English Heritage has published a list of sites and buildings they deem to be at risk in Torbay.
There are some obvious ones we have known about for some time such as the Torbay Cinema in Torbay Road, and The Bishop’s Palace in Tower Road, in Paignton.
There are some not so obvious such as the prehistoric field system at Walls Hill, Torquay, and then there’s a building I have not heard about before.
The Ilsham Oratory in Ilsham Road was part of the now demolished medieval Ilsham Manor. According to English Heritage the chapel is in private hands and has no current use. It is considered a category A risk where there is an immediate risk of further rapid deterioration.
Whether natural or man made our heritage should be treasured. It is what adds to our quality of life and without it Torbay would be the poorer.
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