Thursday 7 July 2011

A good day to bury bad news in Barnet? Nah!

On the day that Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles publicly lambasted Barnet council over its MetPro failings, its arrogance toward residents, bloggers in particular, and its lousy procurement practices, in front of the annual conference of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA), the bottom has to fall out of Murdoch's media empire. You couldn't make it up.

As an NUJ colleague Rich Simcox tweeted earlier:
Press officers, take the rest of the week off. You can forget that thing you were pitching. Whatever it was.
No! We don't like things too easy in Barnet, we thrive on a challenge, we persist in trying to catch people's attention when all eyes are turned the other way.

So I will report on our protest outside the HQ of Capita this evening, I will remind you that Capita and other multinationals (hm, multinationals...) are coming to Barnet council's offices tomorrow to be schmoozed (surely it should be the other way around) and enticed to bid for massive multi-million pound contracts to run the services that we've managed so far to run quite well ourselves - and not for profit - and I will crow once more over Eric Pickles siding with Barnet's bloggers against Barnet's complacent Conservative administration.

Rupert Murdoch, who he?

4 comments:

Mrs Angry said...

Barnet's arrogance and stupidity continues: take a look at the update on Patrick Butler's blog, or mine - in a hole, and still digging!

Citizen Barnet said...

Update: Thursday 7 July, 18.56pm

Barnet council has issued a statement in response to Eric Pickles's comments on the MetPro scandal:

Leader of Barnet Council, Councillor Richard Cornelius, said: "Something seems to have got lost in translation here. At no point has Barnet Council ever paid £1 million to "snoop" on anyone. We will be in contact with Eric Pickles' office."

Vicki comments: Pickles only said snooping was one of the things they asked MetPro to do, not that they spent the whole £1million on it. In any case, who knows what they asked MetPro to do, as nothing was ever written down? Their stupidity, as you said. I'm still wondering what they did with that tape recording of us, by the way. (ICO inquiry moves very slowly.)

Mrs Angry said...

It's an interesting indication of the huge gulf between the Tory nutters in Barnet and the leadership of the party in government. The Tories in Barnet are an embarrassment not only to themselves but to the Conservative movement. Dreadful shame, thinks Mrs A, sitting back and laughing behind her hand. Except for the terrible damage they are doing here, of course, which is no laughing matter.

Don't Call Me Dave said...

I would not be surprised if Richard Cornelius' comments were actually penned by Richard Robeson - Barnet's answer to Andy Coulson.