Nottingham City Council Press Releases

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.

PR Fail

You may have noticed that the comments section to my piece an Cllr Mick Newton's story of his illness looks a bit busy. If you haven't already I recommend you go have a look. It presents an interesting view of how to make a total ass of youself online NCC's PR strategy.

Corporate Media Manager Stephan Richeux took offence at my quite clear statement that baseball batting someone in the face would be an 'unacceptable reaction' which is slightly bizarre. Does this mean he thinks that it is acceptable?

The point I was making, which I am sure is plain and clear to all lifeforms above the 'drunken amoeba' level is that, after being treated extremely badly in a life/career ruining kind of way, there are good ways of channeling your anger and bad ways. I like to think I've picked the good way. Perhaps Mr Richeux disagrees.

Of course he missed the bit where I was praising a NCC councillor for his frankness and honesty and the bit where I wrote about my own personal experiences, including the hint of an admission that not all of my feelings in response to the way I've been treated have been good but at least I've not been daft enough to act on them and never will. He homed in on an admittedly flippant remark which I used as part of my attempt to make light of the issue. It's a defence tactic I often use when things get a bit heavy.

And it all seemed to go downhill from there, the result being that Richeux makes a total dick of himself. Not a bright thing to do in the world of PR I'd have thought but there you go.