A thoroughly unmodern council

At this week's full council meeting an entirely sensible suggestion was made - shouldn't the council be using twitter to advertise its activities and communicate with its residents?

No difficulty there you might think. Plenty of councils do it already. Good idea, no?

Not when you're a Luddite RA councillor. Step forward Keith Mann, RA Chairman of our Strategy & Resources committee. Keith was having none of it. He couldn't possibly have the council taking on such a significant financial burden as twitter. Given the current financial situation one would normally admire such economic caution. However Cllr Mann's answer simply exposed in general terms the reactionary nature of the RAs and specifically their ignorance of modern technology.

Twitter would not cost one additional taxpayer's penny. Any council account could simply publicise new additions to the web site and would be monitored within the council's communications unit. If the council wanted to be particularly engaging then queries coming in from the public could simply be transferred so as to be dealt with by the staff in our contact centre.

Despite twitter being within Cllr Mann's sphere of responsibility I suspect he didn't even bother to research how it works. However, perhaps I'm being a little too harsh on dear Keith. Perhaps he knows more than appearances suggest. Perhaps he knows exactly how twitter works and that's why he won't allow the council to use it.

When RA councillors are being so heavily criticised by our residents why on Earth would the RA group allow them an additional means by which to lambast them?

Remember you can follow me on twitter: @EpsomSean

Leave us free to tweet!

Senior RA councillors have made complaints to the Chief Executive about councillors tweeting from council meetings. It seems that these fuddy duddies find such activity "disruptive". Twitter is a useful social networking and micro-blogging tool that a number of opposition councillors, including myself, use.

As one of the councillors who tweets from meetings I cannot see anything objectionable about it. I use twitter to alert my followers to what is happening on the council. Given, unlike other authorities such as Surrey, Epsom & Ewell don't webcast their meetings I imagine this is useful to local residents who can't make it to meetings themselves. Why would we won't to deprive local residents of this sort of information? Unless the RAs don't want what takes place in meetings advertised which is understandable given some of their awful policy decisions recently.

In any event the Chief Executive seems much more up to date and open than certain crusty RA councillors and has even suggested that a council officer could tweet from council meetings. Hurrah for her! Three cheers for all of those who seek to defend the right to tweet.

And if you want to follow me on twitter just go to the side bar on this page and follow the link.