Re: Local Councillors using this web site

[CTCREP]

OK Wheels, perhaps saying Councillors were paid was an oversimplification of the situation - although I believe at one time all Councillors were voluntary - the allowances etc come out of the funds provided by Council Tax that is paid by a reasonable proportion of society. If then the Councillors only listen to complainants and then not take every opportunity to inform and listen to the rest of us - they could easily inform us anonymously via this Web Site - then their decision on the complaint can only come from their own opinion, and thus not that of the wishes of the majority of the people who elected the Councillors to represent them in the first place.  Not, I suggest, a very democratic way of doing things.

[wheels]

We don't "pay" Councillors Roy we provide them with an Allowance, most/many will have full time jobs as well.  Indeed you would only expect that Cllr Derbyshire is full time and even in her case her role is strategic decision making and facilitation not dealing with individuals unless of course they are electors in her ward who have an issue. The rest even Executive members are not available 24/7 to the public as is reflected in the level of allowance they receive

I think Simone makes the point very well.

[simonesaffron]

"Paying" people is only a very small component in the equation that defines people as our employees.

Councillors "allowances" and the misinformation surrounding them has been done to death on this site so I won't add to its burial. We seek guidance and advice from our Councillors, would we do that from our employees, possibly. We pay our G.P's and our Teachers, do we consider them to be our employees. We pay the Prime Minister - is he our employee ?

Some of us receive state pensions, paid for in part by the income tax that Councillors pay on their allowances, when many of them are long past normal retirement age themselves, whereas we no longer pay any,  so are we their employees ? We can usually impose our will upon our employees but we can't even make one of our six Councillors put a posting on this website about a gate on a path. We can't sack our Councillors, only via the ballot box and we might have to give 4 years notice to do that!

The Local Goverment Association says that Councillors are "volunteers". Councillors themselves would probably say that they are our "Servants". Yet politicians have been defined as ..."People who seek to be our Masters by posing as our servants". 

If they are our employees they are very strange ones' indeed.

[CTCREP]

Oh wheels,  you said (I understand that but they like everyone else will have a twitter and facebook account.)  As I see it Facebook and Twitter are primarily for people to publish their own opinions - ideal for Councillors of course - not for serious discussion. Although there may be discussion on those sites there is plenty of publicity about idle chatter, and worse still identity stealing to put many people off getting involved in them.

We actually pay people to be Councillors, I don't want to argue the Pros and Cons of that, but basically they are our employees and as such should represent our majority views which the Council Officials should then act upon. Obviously it is not a simple as that, but that should be the principle on which the system works. There is absolutely no reason for Councillors to take part in discussions on this Forum, but every reason for them to read what is being said about Marple etc. What other way will they hear from the people who are not complaining, or as in the instance that started this discussion, hear from people that may be affected by an issue and may have every reason to oppose the original complaint.

[wheels]

I understand that but they like everyone else will have a twitter and facebok account

[simonesaffron]

We don't mean to use for their benefit Wheels, we mean that they should use it for ours.

[wheels]

But surly they have their own Twitter, Facebook and web sites, they should not need to be here.

[simonesaffron]

I agree with all points made. Nevertheless I do not believe that we should now walk smugly away with the realisation that in our assumptions and deductions we have uncovered absolutely the reason why Councillors will not contribute to this website. The computer access theory is either true or not, I believe not. The "censorship" theory is perhaps a personal perception of one Councillor. It may not be true , but it could be sincere - if you see the difference. 

Either way this is a representative community website and as the official representatives of our community I feel without a doubt that Councillors should use it for the benefit of the community.

It may also be relevant or it may not, to understand that the two Councillors who have actually made contributions to this site are by all appearances the two youngest members of the group. Even though I accept that this is an ageist view, maybe the age frame of the others disallows enjoyable use of the medium altogether.

Perhaps Admin, we should approach them all in some way, possibly via an open letter to them on the forum or perhaps personal email to all of them explaining that we will publish their responses (just a reflex suggestion on my part) and ask them if they would be interested in using this site for community matters and if not why not thus establishing their reasons. I cannot see how they could ignore an open letter/email from their constituents and I don't actually think that they would.

Anyway a very interesting and I think important community point has been raised here. I leave it to you Admin.
         

[admin]

I agree with you Simone, and I thought I'd said so in my lengthy post earlier - I sympathise completely with the REAL reason why councillors don't use to forum - it's very simple, they would be publicly overwhelmed by complaints, abused with demands for their resignation and Godwin's law would be worn out.

Personally, if I were a local councillor, I simply wouldn't be prepared to deal with people who were anonymous. I would expect to discuss things face to face and know who I was talking to (like a surgery in the library) or at least have a real name, phone number, email address etc.

But instead of saying that, we are told there are technical issues - their council computers will not allow them to register / login, they find the moderation and "censorship" unacceptable etc. etc.

Clearly if Cllr Dowling is able to register and post, then the technical issues can be overcome. My tongue-in-cheek (but genuine) offer to create a separate section on the board where there would be no moderation, or they could moderate themselves would overcome concerns about "censorship".

So as far as I can see, all barriers cited can be removed. All that is left is the REAL reasons - so why skirt round it with excuses as Dave puts it. Maybe this is part of the problem that you describe?

What we could have, that may address some of CTREP's concerns, is perhaps a councillor's announcements section of the forum - it could be an area where only local councillors could post maybe, so at least they would be able to make the community aware of what is going on. The opportunity to do something is there - whether it could be made to work well I don't know, but I would be happy to give it a try as an experiment - if it failed, so be it.

[Dave]

Dave, recently owned up to resisting to going into one of his ..."anti councillor rants,"   Why ?

My rants are simply because they failed to support the college, as you well know, Simone!  But I don't hold anything else against them, and in answer to this very good question.....

why do they do it. Does anybody know ?   

...I would suggest that they do it from an admirable sense of public duty - they simply want to do something useful in their communities.  But as Abraham Lincoln famously remarked, 'You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time'.

[CTCREP]

As it is my comment that triggered off this discussion, the excuse given to me was twofold, one that the Council Supplied computers would not access the site eg Web Browsing, which seems highly authoritarian and lacking in trust of its Councillors, and by another was that he already had too many complaints to deal with without reading a lot of "ranting"/"rubbish". I can't think of the word he used. The problem with that attitude is that he then only receive complaints and without publicity he is never going to get the views of people who may either agree or disagree with the complainant.

I am not objecting to this separation of the argument from the one about visiting Chadkirk, but it was the fact that here was an issue that I was approached on and which on reflection needed response from the people who lived in the area, or who made regular use of the route. The Council frequently make decisions based on their own opinions instead of widely discussing the issue with the people they are elected to represent. The Forum seems to be the only place where open discussion can take place, the Councillors should then read the discussions themselves but should not take part unless to state the position in law. They should then be able to realise a balanced response on the tenor of the majority of writers to the issue and take that as his/her approach to any subjects/he has to deal with, and not just his/her own opinion. Thinking further on this approach it could mean some complaints should first be placed on the Forum and left to stew to see what the majority felt and then the Councillor would wait to see what the consensus felt and act accordingly, but can you imagine that ever happening.

[simonesaffron]

Admin,

Whatever the real reason is you can hardly blame our elected members for not wanting to put themselves into a position whereby they can be attacked in public for what appears to be no other reason than they actually are in a position of influence and that they are who they are.

Over the years I have witnessed many of our posters who are normally intelligent, rational people go completelty off the rails and lose all rationale when it when it comes to the subject of politicians, particularly local politicians.

Dave, recently owned up to resisting to going into one of his ..."anti councillor rants,"   Why ? He doesn't appear to rant about anything else.

Somebody sad recently, I can't recall who it was ..." that they should all stand down," Why ?

I even recall one of your moderators, I'm not sure who it was, Lisa I think, (its surely on the record) accusing one of them of being a "bully". So what chance have they got on here if the moderator is actually pitching in.

It seems that when they are involved, our normal common sense leaves us.

We level accusations and make speculations against them (me included) that we would not dream of making about anybody else yet  most of us apart from a fleeting conversation about some vague issue years ago hardly know anything about any one of them let alone as a body of people.

We do all this and more yet most of us would never even consider standing for their office. So why do we do it and why do they do it. Does anybody know ?   

[Dave]

I am interested when you say ..."its just an excuse ". An excuse for what?

I was about to answer, but Admin has done it for me, and better than I would have done.  I'm sure he's put his finger on it when he writes:

local councillors are frightened that they will become embroiled in protracted debate over local issues with anonymous individuals who would probably bombard them with complaints that would be very difficult and time-consuming to deal with effectively. I have some sympathy with that - I think it could become very uncomfortable for them (especially if there were no moderation of the site whatsoever).

I'm sure that's the real reason, but it's not the one that the councillor who spoke to Simone wished to give - hence my description of it as an excuse! 

[admin]

I've broken this new thread out from the topic about the "Visiting Chadkirk" Kissing Gate so that people can discuss it without cluttering up that specific issue.

Over the years I've heard many reasons why local councillors don't post on the forum, and I've had a lengthy email debate with Cllr Kevin Dowling over so called "censorship" on the forum in the past. I would imagine that Cllr Kevin is the source of Simone's comment but perhaps this is now our local councillors' collective policy - they were all aware of the exchanges at the time. I will see if I can dig them out.

Cllr Kevin is actually registered as himself and has made a number of posts in the past - which suggests that any technical issues that may exist can be overcome - but he has not logged into the site with that account for quite a while.

You can read the posts that Cllr Kevin made by following this link:

http://www.marple-uk.com/smf/index.php?action=profile;u=2599;sa=showPosts

I think it's a shame that this didn't continue as it looked to be a useful way of sharing information with the local community.

Cllr Andrew Bispham occasionally shares bits of information with me for publication on the site but neither he or any of the others have registered.

I believe myself, all other excuses aside, that local councillors are frightened that they will become embroiled in protracted debate over local issues with anonymous individuals who would probably bombard them with complaints that would be very difficult and time-consuming to deal with effectively. I have some sympathy with that - I think it could become very uncomfortable for them (especially if there were no moderation of the site whatsoever).

They probably deal with a lot of stuff like this by email already but to do it in the public domain would be a big challenge.

It was interesting that Conservative candidate Carl Rydings saw the forum as a good way to raise awareness of his campaign for election last year and posted quite extensively between October 2011 and May 2012. But Carl hasn't logged in since 9 May after the elections (although he may have visited the site without logging in). Carl's postings are here:

http://www.marple-uk.com/smf/index.php?action=profile;u=2504;sa=showPosts

Local Conservative MP Candidate Ainsley Abercorn also has an account but has only made one post and has not logged in since May 2012 either.

http://www.marple-uk.com/smf/index.php?action=profile;u=2573;sa=showPosts

I think it's a shame that our local politicians can't find a way to make better use of this facility to communicate in an informal way with the local community and I would like to challenge them to give it a try and build on what Cllr Kevin tentatively started doing just over 12 months ago - the moderators and I could protect them from the worst of the abuse that they may receive but, if desired, we could set up a separate section of the forum that could have specific rules (defined by them) and the local councillors could moderate (or not) themselves as bit of an experiment - but I don't really expect this offer to be taken up.

[simonesaffron]

I'm not really in a position Dave, to either defend or condemn the stance of  Councillor/s. If nothing else I have always found them (the Marple 6 anyway) very contactible, so if you feel strongly about it as you seem to, you could always ask them yourself. Their email addresses and telephone numbers are public information and they do a "surgery" at Marple Library every Saturday morning. In pursuance of the point though, I do recall making your point about all "properly run websites being moderated" to the Councillor I refer to. Whereupon he/she in turn pointed out that he/she agreed websites should be moderated for such things as obscene language and threatening posts but not for things such as ..."patronising post" and differences of opinion. He/she made reference to "all forms of wit and banter" which he said should be acceptable. So I guess it was the extent of the moderation and not the moderation itself  that he/she was referring to but I am guessing a little - you should really ask them.

I am interested when you say ..."its just an excuse ". An excuse for what?

On a topical point about oppenness and transparency, I heard ( go on someone shoot me down in flames again) that very soon Stockport  Council meetings will be visually recorded and transmitted both live and afterward. I think the process is called webcaste. Producers of Coronation St/ Eastenders etc must be terrified about the effect that these charismatic,film star like Councillors will have on their ratings.