Tories don't like to tweet!

Last night a Full Council, one of the Tory Front bench asked a question about the use of electronic devices at Full Council. Cllr Pope was the 21st Century Luddite – and his follow up question was the real crux of the matter – he wants councillors to be banned from tweeting at Full Council. In the end this caused even more tweets as Labour and Lib Dem Councillors joined the Ipswich Press in tweeting every question at the meeting. They were also joined in this tweet fest by two prominent Tory bloggers.

The Tory Group does not seem at home with the use of social media in getting information over to residents. Now there is one Tory councillor who does use twitter and blogs and that is Cllr Cenci, but she was missing from Full Council last night.
So why did Cllr Pope want to get twitter banned? Cllr Cenci seems to think that the dispute is in some strange way being used to highlight splits in the Tory Group over the use of twitter and blogs. She seems to forget it was a Tory question.

I feel the question may have come around after Labour tweets at the last council meeting. The tweets informed Ipswich residents that the Tory spokesman for Transport did not know the cost of a bus fare in Ipswich.

But I am sure there are many more reasons why the Tories would like to see the end of the use of twitter and other social media in Ipswich Council meetings. Cllr Cenci and her infamous blog may be one reason they would like to see a total news blackout but there are other reasons I can think of.

They do not want Labour Councillor’s to tweet when:

Tory councillors have failed to turn up for important budget working groups (and not even sending apologies)

Tory councillors can’t even fill all their allocated spaces at Scrutiny

Answers to questions about the Wind Turbines to be built to the South West of Ipswich, inform residents that the Tories signed the lease.

Or is it that they can’t find anyone who knows how to use twitter or even blogs. The Ipswich Tory website has not been updated for over 7 weeks and their last tweet was 5 weeks ago (though the Tory blogger at ‘A Riverside View’ would deny this). Even the Tory MP for Ipswich, Ben Gummer seems to be struggling with his website, according to his own site he has done no casework since February!

Now a Twitter!

I now have fully arrived in the 21st Century! A Blog, Facebook and now I have joined the Twitter world. You will see a link on the right hand side of the blog.
It is all a bit new, but I like the feel of it so far.
To those who have only heard rumours about the spread of Twitter, basically you have a site where you can send 'what your doing' in less than 140 characters - have a feeling it will be a better communication tool for politics than Facebook.
A good link for blogs, so not a replacement, I am following the tweets of John Prescott, Alastair Campbell, No 10 Downing Street plus away from politics, BBC News, BBC Sport, BBC Football, Ipswich Town, Billy Bragg and also a link to news on Afghanistan.
I would recommend trying it.
Local councils are now looking to use blogs, Twitter and social network sites as a means of getting their message over to the public. a number of councils used such sites to pass on highway and school closure information over during the recent cold spell.
According to a local government publication, there are at least 20 councils using Twitter and 40 individual councilors. Well make that 41!
Will be interesting to see how many followers I get to my Twitter site over the next few weeks, not sure I will be as popular as Stephen Fry or even Jon Prescott!
Try it and join me on Twitter!