Having spent rather a lot of money to build a beautiful Pledgebank website I thought I would take a look and see how it was doing. But where is this beautiful website? Not on the front page of the Council's website. So I enter Pledgebank into the search box. Up come lots of pages but none of them are Pledgebank. Wait, in the side bar of the Community and Living page is a link to Pledgebank. I click on it only to find it clicks through to the free, standard, UK Pledgebank website with Vicki Morris' pledge for the march on Sunday top of the successful pledges. I know I am trying to make this a bit humorous but actually it makes me rather cross. The Council has spent a lot of money building a bespoke Pledgebank website and then burying so deeply in the recesses of the councils main website that it is impossible to find. What a complete waste of money!
I caught a glimpse of one of the advertising frames that had a Barnet poster in it - the ones used for the "rogue's galleries" of councillors' mug shots, a few months ago.
ReplyDeleteWas that an advert for the pledgebank? It was about clearing snow with 10 of your neighbours, or something.
Or was that something else?
Hi baarnett, I think it may be the Barnet First magazine cover.
ReplyDeleteA waste of money indeed, Mr R: a little bird tells me that there were only four pledges on it, and bearing in mind what happened with the Ideas site, I would guess there was some 'encouragement' for those, or that they were send-ups ...
ReplyDeleteMr Reasonable
ReplyDeleteThis is off topic, but have you seen this week’s Private Eye? In the Rotten Boroughs column, there are articles about Hammersmith & Fulham and the Isle of Wight councils where two chief officers are hired as consultants through limited companies rather than employed directly. The reason for this is to circumvent pension rules as the people in question had retired early on health grounds from other authorities.
Is this happening in Barnet as well?