Power of Publicity
Readers in North Lanarkshire should take inspiration from events next door in South Lanarkshire and enlist the support of the press whenever council bureaucracy raises its head.
When I first raised my concerns about 'censorship' of the A4ES blog site, the Council told me that it would take up to 20 days to answer my complaint, but after contacting The Herald newspaper South Lanarkshire quickly changed it mind.
Because the Council looked extremely silly and someone had to quickly dig South Lanarkshire out of a hole of its own making.
As for the supposed policy of banning access to all blog sites, I suspect this was made up on the hoof at the time as it makes no sense to block blog sites without telling people that they could ask for them to be unblocked.
Although this still doesn't explain who was acting as Big Brother and deciding what local citizens could read in the comfort of their local Carnegie Library.
Monday 9 September 2013
Council rejects claim over campaign website
But South Lanarkshire Council said all blogging and social networking sites are treated the same and can be unlocked on request.
Mark Irvine took the local authority to the UK Supreme Court to win a Freedom of Information case which has brought the council back to the negotiating table over the issue of equal pay for women. He discovered that the website of his campaign, Action 4 Equality Scotland, was blocked for access by all users of South Lanarkshire Council computers, whether staff or users of local libraries. Mr Irvine wrote to the council claiming: "I am sure you will understand my concern that the A4ES blog site appears to have been singled out for such treatment which looks, to me, very much like heavy-handed censorship."
But a South Lanarkshire Council spokesman said: "The default position of our computer systems is that all blogs are blocked.
"If a user made a request for a particular blog or social media site to be unblocked that would be considered."
