Last night's livefeed of the Brent Council Meeting was hailed as a breakthrough but was characterised by breakup of the sound. On Twitter Cllr Denselow, the Executive's own 'techie' blamed exhausted batteries for the failure of the microphones, but today said that wasn't the problem and the microphones would 'have to be sent back'.
The problem particularly hit Cllr Paul Lorber, leader of the Liberal Democrat group, while Labour microphones generally worked well, although during a particularly fine speech on Violence Against Women, former leader Cllr Ann John was at times inaudible.
The problem comes on top of IT and telephone problems, as well as a shortage of 'hot desks' that leaves some staff finding it easier to work from home, which some says, despite the £100m cost of the Civic Centre, was the plan all along. I hope the Council give the home workers an allowance for their winter heating.
Some may claim that there was a political bias in the microphone cut-outs, but there was more substance in the claim that the twitter feed on the Council website during the meeting had political bias. Many of my comments failed to appear on the Council feed, although they were available on the hashtag #brentlive in the public arena.
The result was a preponderance of pro-Council and pro-Labour tweets, which as I tweeted (but not published on the Council feed) rather made a nonsense of the idea of a public debate using social media.
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In fact the Council's House Rules on Social Media severely restrict what can be said LINK with several catch-all rules including:
The problem particularly hit Cllr Paul Lorber, leader of the Liberal Democrat group, while Labour microphones generally worked well, although during a particularly fine speech on Violence Against Women, former leader Cllr Ann John was at times inaudible.
The problem comes on top of IT and telephone problems, as well as a shortage of 'hot desks' that leaves some staff finding it easier to work from home, which some says, despite the £100m cost of the Civic Centre, was the plan all along. I hope the Council give the home workers an allowance for their winter heating.
Some may claim that there was a political bias in the microphone cut-outs, but there was more substance in the claim that the twitter feed on the Council website during the meeting had political bias. Many of my comments failed to appear on the Council feed, although they were available on the hashtag #brentlive in the public arena.
The result was a preponderance of pro-Council and pro-Labour tweets, which as I tweeted (but not published on the Council feed) rather made a nonsense of the idea of a public debate using social media.
In fact the Council's House Rules on Social Media severely restrict what can be said LINK with several catch-all rules including:
Personally, I think a selective twitter feed itself brings the Council into disrepute.If you’re offensive about the council, or anyone who works for us, or runs the organisation, we will remove your comments. Comments that are likely to bring the council into disrepute will be removed