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Monday 30 May 2011

Councillors demand Cockell ceases censoring

Councils and councillors have rarely been more under the spotlight than now. And it is not going to stop anytime soon. People are fuming. They sense that the same corrupt practices endemic in the parliamentary system are prevalent in local government.

The multiple conviction of “Lord” Hanningfield aka Paul White, ex leader of Essex County County Council, for claiming for hotel expenses running into tens of thousands of pounds, have got people thinking.....'if one leader is on the fiddle how many other senior councillors are'?

In the last few months Kensington & Chelsea has been in the press frequently. Comment has been negative and highly embarrassing for councillors, officers and residents.

So the Dame wonders what councillors feel about the their council and leadership being pummelled in this way; after all they all get a press cuttings service from the multi million pound a year public relations department, don't they?

Well, yes and no came the embarrassed response from councillors she spoke to.

wot you lookin' at?
What seems to be happening is this-and it's redolent of a repressive dictatorship a la North Korea.It seems that Dear Leader has decided that only glowing press comment on him and the council will be included. And that means there has been little to circulate.

But on serious note....most councillors don't buy newspapers on a daily basis. They prefer to keep their newspaper allowance to spend on more interesting things so they will be unaware of what is being said about them-unless they read the Dame's musings.

This is not how it should be. They need to know what the press are saying. By deliberately censoring circulation content Dear Leader patronises those he is supposed to be leading.

Cllr Cockell is South African by birth:maybe he got so used to censorship in the days of apartheid he thinks it acceptable here. It is not: stop it now please. Our councillors are not children.

Councillors of every political hue, and the Labour Group in particular, need to call for an end to this un-British way of doing things.

6 comments:

  1. Your headline "Councillors demand Cockell ceases censoring" might be sensational but the article is just waffle.

    No Councillors are mentioned who DEMAND anything.

    Maybe you DEMAND something and that is attention

    ReplyDelete
  2. There is a glossy 'newspaper' produced by RBKC. For some reason the title eludes me. The public is forced to pay for a propaganda sheet more appropriate to a totalitarian state, than a London borough. When will our councillors act to protect residents from such blatant misinformation, circulated by the Town Hall at residents' expense?

    ReplyDelete
  3. "The Royal Borough" is a pathetic news sheet for which Cllr Cockell employs a small army of expensive PR officers to peddle the propaganda of "The Leader's Leader"

    What a scandalous waste of money that is totally out of keeping with democratic values

    ReplyDelete
  4. I think Hornet posted on the costs of this a while back, but that only included costs of printing and distribution. How much would it be if you include the Leaders's primping and preening team, photographers, editors, sub-editors, copywriters, designers, etc? If we need to disseminate information rather than this propaganda, it would be better done by buying a couple of pages in the local paper, which needs our support.

    ReplyDelete
  5. ... and don't forget, the Conservatives also used photographs paid for by the Council tax payer and published in this "a-political" Borough newsletter in their election propaganda last year. I hope they paid a royalty.

    ReplyDelete

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