Saturday 10 October 2009

BLINDFOLDED

Denbighshire County Council bans staff and councillors from accessing this blog and other ‘social networking' sites. The authority acts as an Internet service provider to computers connected to its own network and therefore can exercise control. The ban means that staff and councillors attached to the Denbighshire network are not able to view this site even though I have readers in overseas countries including Finland, Egypt and Argentina.

Who decided to impose the ban? Councillors would not have sat around a table and said, “Yes, let’s have a ban and deprive ourselves of information that is available to the rest of the public.” By the same token, councillors wouldn't have decided recently "Let’s take trees out of streets in the west end of Rhyl.” Nor would they have decided “Let’s put wheelie bins in fixed positions along the pavements in John Street and Aquarium Street.”

If councillors are not deciding these things, who is? Are senior officers of the council out of control and doing whatever they like?

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