I occasionally get the stereotypical complaint that I never write good news about Nottingham City Council. I'm not sure that's entirely true but there are a couple of defences I can make.
Firstly, of course, doing NCC's PR function for them without payment is not exactly what I consider to be a core function of this blog. NCC spends quite a lot of money on its Communications (the Director, Stephen Barker, gets £75,079 plus £14,131 pension contributions alone, see page 89), much of which is PR. They can clearly afford to write their good news stories themselves.
Notwithstanding that, I did set up a RSS feed of NCC's press releases in the sidebar but unfortunately that stopped being updated in May. Why, I have no idea. The only thing I can find now is the website's front page stories so I've put that up. These really are puff pieces though.
I'd much prefer to have the press release feed back and be a minor part of NCC's propaganda machine but if it's not there I can't post it.
Not sure why news feeds have stopped, you should be able to get them back up and running by putting the folling link into your RSS browser:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=3911
Well, yeah, that's the idea Steph but the most recent story I'm getting via that feed is the 'Use you cycle helmet' campaign of 25 May.
ReplyDeleteSomething's broken either your end or mine.
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ReplyDeleteImage is everything to NCC, they will protect it despite the truth.
ReplyDeleteYou will also notice that Chapman, is tasked as spin doctor on items that relate to expenditure. This must come as second nature to him as he is always 2nd behind JoCo on expenses. in the 09/10 period, chapmas expenses were £34,725.41 and JoCo was £46,338.59 which I feel is the real reason that this campaign over a lord mayor is more than just a diminished responsibility followed by the public purse being snapped shut. Lets face it, JoCo and friends have in Nottingham's fund pie many fat finger that need to be slapped. The usual top three on expenses are JoCo, Chapman and Liversidge, although I note that Liversidge was pipped to 3rd place by Mellen on 10/11 Allowance report but has been a consistent performer, you could put money on at William hills on the outcome of the expenses expenditure, I think I will go and place my bets now.
So, Image, important, possibly why they bury reports like these, I resorted to using the old hackers favourite, google to mine the information out after spending time looking on the council site and searching it would list no results.