Let's go fly a kite ... Lord Hunt asks Mrs Angry to behave herself, and to pay him for suggesting it

the Wild West frontier of the blogosphere
Broken Barnet, naked blogging, & flying the kite, in accordance with new PCC proposals

worried about outlaws: Lord Hunt. photo credit: PCC


Yes. Well. Mrs Angry was trying not to write any blogposts today, for various reasons, but she just cannot help herself, and this one, especially, just had to be written.

You may recall that recently fellow blogger Mr Mustard was rather startled to find out that , without his knowledge, he had been targeted by the London Borough of Broken Barnet earlier this year in one of its increasingly desperate attempts to end the relentless scrutiny of the borough's citizen journalists.

Barnet Council tried to convince the Information Commissioner that the naughty Barnet bloggers were unregistered data processors and therefore, of course, liable to criminal prosecution and potentially enormous fines for breach of the Data Protection Act.

The ICO, unsurprisingly, took a different view, and reminded Barnet in no uncertain terms of the need to observe the right to freedom of expression, as enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights. The idiotic Tory cabinet and witless senior management team of the London Borough of Broken Barnet had apparently never heard of the concepts of freedom of speech, or indeed of human rights, and had to have these radical ideas patiently explained to them by the commissioner not once, but twice.

This story, it is true to say, caused utter disbelief in many quarters: academics, politicians, senior legal experts, and even members of the House of Lords (and we don't mean Barnet Libdem Councillor Lord Palmer) were horrified at what was generally seen not only as an assault on freedom of expression but clearly a totally disproportionate act by a local authority so obsessively fearful of the agenda of transparency and accountability that the coalition government states are the keystone of their localism policy for local government.

While this story was breaking Mrs Angry also wrote about an interview in the Guardian with, oh, another member of the House of Lords, Lord Hunt, the new Chair of the Press Complaints Commission:

http://wwwbrokenbarnet.blogspot.com/2011/11/mrs-angry-on-blogging-and-who-says-what.html

David Hunt praised the professionalism of veteran journalists such as our friend, Mr David Hencke, and was quoted in this article as claiming that his primary concern in his new post was not going to be the regulation of the tabloid press. He stated:

..."I think the greater challenge is with the bloggers, whether it's Guido Fawkes or whoever."

This seemed to Mrs Angry to be an absolutely extraordinary thing to say, only three days after James Murdoch had had his second grilling by the House of Commons Select Committee investigating the widespread and utterly scurrilous practice of phone hacking by tabloid journalists over a period of many years.

Guido Fawkes reported the next day that Hunt had clarified his remarks and had intended to make the point that he wanted to protect freedom of speech, and to 'stave off statutory regulation' of the blogosphere.

Yesterday on the recently launched 'Exaronews' website, the revered Mr Hencke published an interview with Lord Hunt:

http://www.exaronews.com/articles/4199/online-publications-face-regulation-under-hunt-proposals

in which, yet again, the new PCC Chair expressed some rather regrettable views on the subject of the regulation of the blogosphere. He told Hencke:

" ... it is like the Wild West out there. We need to appoint a sheriff.”

The article reports that Hunt wants to scrap the PCC and replace it with a new body which will be an effective regulator of the press - and other areas too such as the blogosphere and the internet:

"His initial plan for online media is to invite bloggers who write on current affairs to volunteer to be regulated by the replacement body for the PCC.

They would be able to carry a ‘Kitemark’, showing that they abide by the new body’s code of practice. They would lose the ‘Kitemark’ if complaints against them were repeatedly upheld. But this regulatory oversight would mean bloggers having to pay a fee to the new body, which would be funded by the publications that it regulates. Hunt said: “I want accuracy to be the new gold standard for blogs. Once they have agreed to be accurate, everything would follow from that. I would like to see a ‘Kitemark’ on the best blogs so the public can trust what they read in them."

Er: what?

Mrs Angry wonders if the new Chair of the PCC actually knows what a blog is?

Clearly he is familiar with the knavish right wing gossip columnist Guido Fawkes, but Guido is a law unto himself, and is hardly typical of the wider blogosphere. Does Hunt have any clear understanding of what the rest of us are up to?

The new Chair of the PCC has a political background, of course: he held various ministerial roles during the reign of terror of Margaret Thatcher, including, oh dear me, a stint as Coal Minister during the Miners' Strike of 1984: he then served in John Major's cabinet. He is not a journalist, and has no direct experience of Fleet Street, or the mainstream media, and one imagines he is hardly familiar with the rise of social media and its growing influence within the broader political debate.

Lord Hunt's remarks betray a patronising attitude towards the huge number of bloggers who now write about politics and 'current affairs', however you would define that in the context of regulation.

How dare he suggest that we are all in need of regulation, and that the idea of striving for a standard of accuracy is a concept that needs to be imposed upon us? Who is he to define what we may or may not write about, and to impose his standards of acceptability on everyone else? We are all entitled to express our varying opinions in whatever way we choose, whether by reporting news, or investigating an issue of public concern, or simply holding our elected representatives up to well deserved ridicule in the time honoured fashion of the British tradition of caricature and satire.

As regards to the need for regulation, this is anti-libertarian nonsense too: anyone who writes and publishes material is subject to the same laws and limits of acceptability as anyone else - no further legislation or regulation is needed. Are we no longer allowed to engage in free debate or express a personal opinion? Is Lord Hunt in need of a reminder of the European Convention on Human rights? Is he keen to set a new standard of acceptable conversation in pubs, or in the workplace, or in personal emails, or texts, or anywhere else where debate or the expression of opinion on politicial issues or current affairs might take place? No, one would hope not because that would be ridiculous, wouldn't it? As ridiculous as these new proposals.

It never fails to amuse Mrs Angry that Conservative politicians, so fiercely protective of their own right to freedom from regulation and bureaucracy, inevitably fail to see the need to protect the freedom of others to be different from themselves, and to hold and express opinions that diverge from their own.

Bloggers are labelled by him as amateurs, not as worthy as 'real' journalists, you know, the ones that used to work for the News of the World, or those that write page after page of drivel for the Daily Mail, yet they are now to be expected to observe professional standards as laid down in a code of practice by the new PCC. Furthermore, even though they are not paid for their work, they will be asked to pay for the privilege of carrying his new Good Housekeeping seal of approval.

Mrs Angry can assure Lord Hunt that no one with any intelligence will want to read anything written by a blogger sporting one of these code of conduct kitemarks: it will be an indication to the blog reading public of a guarantee of tedium and lack of originality, and will be avoided like the plague in favour of the thousands of interesting, innovative and well written pieces by independently minded bloggers who do not want or need the permission or intervention of any regulatory body, thank you very much.

Mrs Angry would also suggest to his lordship that as a member of an undemocratically appointed chamber of legislation, and the lucky recipient of a post whose appointment process would appear to be something of an arcane mystery, he might be better off not telling everyone else what to do, think, or say with such authority.

And last of all, before he takes it upon himself to badmouth the British blogosphere, he might like to remember that despite the lack of regulation, no blogger has ever been accused of such gutless and appallingly distasteful behaviour as the hacking of the voicemails of a murdered teenage girl, or the families of the victims of terrorism, or the systematic intrusion into the lives of thousands of other individuals whose privacy has been assaulted by supposedly professional and self regulating journalists over the last couple of decades. If and when this open sore on the body of the British press has been healed, it might then be time to start debating the perceived irresponsibility of the blogosphere, but not yet.

The reason that blogging is a flourishing medium is in no small part due to the contraction of the traditional press, and the decline of proper investigative journalism. It is also directly as a result of the increasing sense of cynicism and frustration felt by our society for the political deadlock in which we now find ourselves, with three parties almost indistinguishable from each other, and all equally tainted with an image of self serving opportunism, as a legacy of the expenses scandal and the moral questions raised by the Blair years and the Iraq War.

Blogging offers a voice to people who have been silenced by their own lack of opportunity of expression: it is a spontaneous, naturally democratic phenomenon that will follow its own course, and all the signs are that newly appointed regulator Lord Hunt has completely failed to understand what it is, and where it is going.

Update:

There is an interesting debate here in the comments following an article on the Liberal Conspiracy website, including one by David Hencke.

http://liberalconspiracy.org/2011/12/15/the-pcc-wants-to-regulate-blogs-and-make-us-pay-for-it/

Now excuse me: in the middle of a game of poker with Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and them Clanton boys. (*just amended historical inaccuracy re Gunfight at the OK Corral, just in case Lord Hunt is calling in).

No: don't stop the carnival ...

Margaret Thatcher at Finchley Carnival, 1984 - photo John Hodder

What is Finchley famous for, do you know, apart from stroppy women? (Yes, above and to the side ...)

Well, let's see ... we have plenty of interesting historical, literary and cultural associations. Yes, we do: don't tell our Tory councillors, though, because it will confuse their poor little empty heads. We don't like culture, here in Broken Barnet, and we close it down wherever and whenever we find it, with our relentless drive for efficiency.

History, then. Take for example Finchley Common: the former lair of infamous highwaymen such as Dick Turpin, and Jack Shepherd. Turpin's Oak has been preserved, as it happens, and carved with the inscription ' Stand and Deliver', and placed on the edge of the last remaining strip of the common, now the location of alternative outdoor pursuits, especially after dark. No doubt soon there will be a tribute to Reggie and Ronnie Kray, who once holed up in flat nearby, not long before their detention at Her Majesty's pleasure. Wonder what the inscription will be? Give me all your cash or I'll nail your f**king hand to the floor? Nice. We like protection rackets, though, here in the London Borough of Broken Barnet, don't we?

What else? Well, adjoining the Common was once Cobley's Farm, where Charles Dickens lived in 1843, while he was writing 'Martin Chuzzlewit'. He often reminisced about wandering the 'deep lanes' here on his rambles with friends, and being inspired to create the character of Sarah Gamp from encounters with a well known, drunken and rather disreputable woman who staggered around the neighbourhood in those days. No: not Mrs Angry. Dickens knew the area well, in fact, from an earlier period he had spent here researching the life of the clown Grimaldi, who lived in a cottage near the farm. We like clowns here too, in the London Borough of Broken Barnet, don't we?

Cobley's Farm was built on, of course, by housing development in the late nineteeth century: Mrs Angry lives in one of these houses, in fact. One field was not developed, but became Victoria Park, a much needed greenspace and public amenity. And for more than a century, the park has been the focal point of Finchley Carnival, always celebrated - or until recently - with a funfair, and a parade, with floats presented by local organisations and charities, marching bands, that travelled through Finchley's shops, to the park, watched by people lining the streets, and volunteers collecting for charity. (Mrs Angry remembers one year when her then small son was deeply traumatised by the surreal sight of a hundred or so marching trumpeters all dressed - for no apparent reason - as Spiderman. Still not over it, are you, Joe?) These parades, in fact, were probably the only time throughout the year when there was, for a brief hour, some sense of community and pride in what is now a high street in decline, like so many others, unable to compete with supermarkets and local shopping centres.

Not any more though. This year, there was no carnival. A bitter and public feud has erupted between the organisers of the Carnival and uh oh: guess who -no, go on, have a try - yes our favourite, much loved local councillor and GLA member, Mr Brian Coleman. Brian is Cabinet member for Environment, don't you know, and a part of his responsibilities is to oversee the use of our greenspaces.

Councillor Coleman, unsurprisingly, loves local carnivals and shows, as this gives him the opportunity to attend them in his official capacity, dress up in all his municipal bling and stomp about feeling Very Very Important, wowing old ladies with his charms in the tea tent, and cheerily taking his turn in the stocks for the 'throw a wet sponge' challenge. Ok, I made that last bit up: but wouldn't it be fun? Imagine the money it would raise. Queues of eager punters, from here to St Albans. Me first, though.

Sideshow Bob/Brian is especially concerned about Finchley Carnival, as he lives, conveniently, just across from the park, and is sometimes to be seen lurking in the vicinity, just popping in for a little stroll, I imagine, incognito, you know.

So what's gone wrong? What could possibly go wrong with, let's see, a group of hard working voluntary organisers, and an impossibly rude, opinionated, and obstinate individual who thinks he knows better than anyone else what should be done in any given situation?

According to a report in the local Times group paper, Councillor Coleman, demonstrating the masterful display of the tact and diplomacy for which he is so widely admired, and which is guaranteed to return him to his role as GLA member next year, is quoted as claiming:

“The council has rescued the event and saved it for the benefit of the people of Finchley. We saved it from a bunch of amateurs who failed to deliver.

“Last year it was sad and pathetic. This year it’s going to be fun in Finchley.”

How dare this puffed up, egotistical little nobody speak about any residents in such terms, let alone those who have given years of dedicated - and voluntary - service to the community, and raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for local charities?

Who the hell does he think he is?

Yes, the last couple of events have been frankly pretty awful. It was a mistake to get rid of the parade. But it is clear from remarks made in a letter to the Finchley Arrow site by Bill Lethorn, one of the long term organisers of the show, that they have been struggling to maintain proper control over the planning of the carnival, thanks to interference from the council. Rather amusingly, the editor of the Arrow has felt moved to ask, in the interest of political balance, for someone to volunteer to write in with fulsome praise for any of the positive and generous things that our Brian has done for the local community. There appears, strangely enough, not to have been an over abundance of replies to this request.

This year further problems in arranging the carnival were caused by Mr Coleman and his Tory councillor chums upping the charges for use of the park from £140 to a stonking £3,500. Mrs Angry understands that discretion could have been used to waive the fees, but someone, who exactly, I just cannot imagine, decided to impose the full cost. A suggestion was then made that the council would be prepared to lower the cost if fees were shared with a large funfair that the council wished to force the organisers to hire. The organisers refused to be bullied into the council's terms and decided to withdraw, cancelling eleven events, including a blues & soul night and events involving local dance and drama groups, ending a hundred years of history of the carnival, and enabling Brian to get his own way, as he always must.

Late in the afternoon yesterday, Mrs Angry and daughter wandered home through the park. The funfair chosen by Councillor Coleman, we noted, was poorly attended, and nothing like the lively, buzzing event it used to be. It was so boring, even the Graveyard Family & the Bally Gang didn't bother to show up.

Around ten o'clock, Brian's much vaunted firework display sent who knows how much of the fees from the fair up into the sky, pointless as it was hardly dark, and no one cared anyway. Mrs Angry didn't watch, preferring instead to lie on the sofa feeling gloomy, watching angst ridden Swedish policemen not get shot in Wallander.

The end of the Carnival says a lot about the state of things here in Broken Barnet: all the usual themes are to be found running right the way through the whole sorry affair. The lie of the Big Society laid bare for one thing.

Here in our borough we treat community volunteers with contempt and insult them, rather than 'empower' them, and respect their right to make their own decisions. The failure in the negotiations between organisers and the council was doomed by the dysfunctional relationship that this Tory administration has with its electorate. It does not want to listen, to engage and to consult, it wants to dictate, and use our money for its own purposes, rather than be accountable to us for the way in which it is spent. All the important decisions are made, secretively, by a minority of councillors who are paid a premium for their roles a Cabinet members - but believe they have the absolute right to ignore the views of the people they represent.

This is not localism, or democracy: this is life in Broken Barnet, and oh, Margaret: this is all the doing of some of your most devoted, die hard fans. The Carnival you used to come and watch is dead, and, almost everywhere else, Thatcherism may be dead too, but not among the ranks of the Tory party in Barnet - did you know? In more ways than one, here in your old constituency, we're still living in 1984.

Big Brother's Order for the Day: constitutional 'reform' in Broken Barnet

Updated Tuesday - see:

http://davidhencke.wordpress.com/2011/02/08/barnets-new-pioneering-tory-policy-curb-free-speech/

Only last month an attempt was made by Brian Coleman, in his capacity as chair of the London Fire Authority, to revise the standing orders of this body so as to prevent 'the practice of Members of the Authority putting questions to the Chair and leader of the Authority' ... This move was spotted by a vigilant blogger, Adam Bienkov, and highlighted in the Guardian and London Standard, leading to awkward publicity for the Mayor, and, pretty swiftly, a humiliating climb down by Coleman.

Well, then. A regular reader of the blog recently drew my attention to the agenda of a Special Committee meeting of Barnet Council, scheduled for the 9th February:

http://committeepapers.barnet.gov.uk/democracy/meetings/meeting

And look what Mrs Angry has spotted, tenderly placed amongst a flurry of proposals purporting to 'improve' the organisation of council procedures: Item 5, point 8 - aha: a very helpful suggestion from a Councillor B. Coleman. It proposes:

'To amend the Council Procedure Rules to grant a reserved express right to only the Leader of the Council and the Leader of the main Opposition Group or their spokespersons to speak on Motions, Policy Items and Committee reports at the Council meeting. All other speakers would be called at the discretion of the Mayor.'

This outrageous proposal openly seeks to prevent any free debate by the elected representatives of you, me and all the residents of this borough, in what is supposed to be a democratic system of local government, reducing our council meetings to a mute, submissive, rubber stamping exercise.

In fact, forget about rubber stamping, it's back to the Orwellian boot stamping on the human face routine: you will do and think as you are told, and there will be no dissent.

What possible defence could you give for such an amendment to council procedure?

They will say it is to 'streamline' the committee structures and council practices, to save time, or some such rubbish. According to the accompanying report, however, it is clear that there are no resource implications - and no justification.

They will emphasise that the Mayor may use his discretion to allow speakers. This is crap as well: the position of Mayor is not like the position of Speaker in the House of Commons, with strict neutrality. The Mayor is an elected councillor, takes part in important votes, and will inevitably be under pressure to be party political in decision making. And please observe that, incredibly, only the leader of the main opposition party is allowed to speak - for a couple of minutes - not the leader of the third party, ie the LibDems. Yes, do sit down, and shut up, Lord Palmer, you're not in the House of Lords now, chum.

There are other proposed changes too. Note that the next two are from the Conservative Group as a whole, whereas the restriction of speech amendment above is a personal proposal from Coleman. I think that is very interesting, don't you, citizens?

Point 5:

To amend the Council Procedure Rules to remove the distinction between motions and policy items. This could allow for a more flexible procedure where the Mayor might decide to allow prolonged discussion of a motion to allow more Members to have the opportunity to speak and interact.
The abolition of Policy Items could allow the discussion of at least one 'opposition motion' at each meeting. Dispensing with two distinct items on the agenda (motions and policy items) could involve arrangements by which there could be discussion of at least one opposition item.
Please note the clever use of the phrase 'the Mayor might decide to allow prolonged discussion of a motion' ...

Point 6:

To remove ‘Comments on the Work of Cabinet’ from the agenda of Council meetings.

Ah, yes, of course, f*ck transparency and accountability, the work of the Cabinet should be exempt from comment from our elected representatives, who have no right to scrutinise or question the decisions of their betters. Quite right.

Point 9:

To review the current structure of Area Sub-Committees and Residents Forums.

This last one is no suprise and is no doubt intended to prevent Mrs Angry and other badly behaved residents from daring to ask awkward questions, in writing or in public, leading to embarrassment for the council: in other words, it is another attempt to minimise the powers of scrutiny of ordinary residents, and the accountability of the administration and councillors to the people who placed them in power.

There will be a lot of excitement this week about the forthcoming budget papers, details already leaked elsewhere, if you are interested. Forget, for a moment, all of that, and the fuss about parking charges, and libraries, and children's centres: no matter how serious theses issues are, they are greatly outweighed by the significance of what is being proposed this week in the shape of these so called consitutional reforms.

If these reforms are passed, the ability of councillors to make a real contribution to the decision making processes of this council's administration will be cut to shreds. If you think what is happening now, in terms of the cuts, the One Barnet nonsense, is bad enough, imagine what might happen if the current leadership is able to push through even more controversial proposals without even a whimper of protest from their own party, let alone the opposition.

Ask yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, if you think that these outrageous proposals are truly what David Cameron and Eric Pickles and Grant Schapps would consider to be in line with the sacred tenets of 'localism'. Is the repression of debate and free speech by the elected representatives of the people of this borough in any way going to deliver the declared object of localism, ie to further empower ordinary citizens and give them greater involvement in the decision making processes that govern their community?

Or have we been kidnapped and marched relentlessly onwards into a brave new world of localised dictatorship, by a small bunch of power crazed Toy Town megalomaniacs masquerading as the Tory council Cabinet, intent on imposing their lunatic agenda in blatant disregard for any of the fundamental principles of democracy, let alone the governing policies of their own central party?