Government IT

As you will know if you read this blog recently I have been trying to get the the council to drag TDCIT kicking and screaming into the twenty first century, one thing I pointed out to them was that parts of their website didn’t work on the later versions of Internet Explorer.

Having countered their unlikely argument that most people that used their website, used older versions they eventually put this right.

I should point out to all of my readers that using older versions of Internet Explorer means that your computer is not secure when you access the internet and that you could easily have something nasty happen to you.

Many thanks to reader Keith for pointing out this article click here to read pointing out that the MoD are using insecure browsers, presumably this could even lead to members of the armed services being killed.

I am told that our own dear council are slowly coming round to the idea that not all is well with TDCIT and more improvements will be made eventually.

Below is the gist of what I said to them today about it.

As far as what is visible to me goes the councils website search still doesn’t function it won’t even find things on their homepage, I just tried typing in Gary Rhodes who is the subject of an article there.

There isn’t any reason why they couldn’t use the Google one as many other councils do.

There are still no feeds for their press release pages, an embedded blog with the press officers having access to post on it would do the trick for free.

At the time of writing 4 pm today neither of the last two press releases that I published yesterday at http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/ had appeared on the TDC website although I do concede they are getting better with pretty much all of the press releases getting up within three days.

There does seem to have been some increase in the documents available in html, although where the document is an image of a document i.e. it has been scanned it always appears as a pdf file. It is as though they lack the ability to publish ordinary image files, this may be the case as they make so little use of their press release photos.

They are still bouncing back emails that they shouldn’t be I just tried simon.moores@thanet.gov.uk in a normal sane world and in any other organisation I have come across from the house of commons down they only use one format for email addresses derived from a persons name.

Still no linier scales appearing on planning documents, this is something that could be solved with a few rubber stamps. At the moment you can’t tell the dimensions of any building if you view the plans online making the whole expensive business of putting them there almost pointless.

In all of this I discovered that TDC have their own Utube account http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=ThanetCouncil&view=videos many of the videos are produced for them by professionals and most of them never appear on the TDC website. Just another wasted resource like the press release photos.

Something for our councillors here in Kent to live up to?

There has been some suggestion on some of the blogs that not all of the councillors in Kent are serving the electorate as well as they could be, so I thought an historical perspective here could be of some use.

During the 1700s the parishes of Kent were governed by the clergy and churchwardens, fortunately Archbishop Wake kept a private notebook in Latin (Notitia Dioces Cantuar,) here is what he wrote about some of Kent’s clergy at that time.

Patten of Whitstable kept a mistress and did not pay his debts; Bourn of Ash was "allied to the sons of Eli" ; Roberts of Queenborough, ale-house sot and debtor, "so impudent as nothing is like him"; Bate of Chilham, "proudest and stiffest man" in the diocese, allowing corpses to lie unburied for want of fees; Burroughs of Kingston, "most horribly covetous" ; Ansell of Stowting and Cade of Sellindge, Jacobites and taven-brawlers; Edward Dering of Charing who fought his own sister at the Swan Inn and threw her "head-cloaths" into the fire; Hobbs of Dover, who amassed pluralities; Isles of New Romney a notorious sot and Jacobite; Nicholls of Fordwich who preached that King George was a Foreigner, a Lutheran, and a Beggar-"a wicked, swearing. Lying, Drunken man".

Local and National Government is There a Credible Alternative?

With an air of disillusionment hanging over us both by Labour supporters and MPs in the national cabinet and something fairly similar among Conservatives locally, assuming we don’t get an election in the short term and therefore retain the same parties but possibly not the same leaders I thought it interesting to speculate on who would be the best people to lead us.

As I have said in a previous post I think an elected mayor of Thanet is our best hope in the medium term click here to read it

I am also beginning to wonder if a prime minister elected by the people rather than a political party wouldn’t be better for us as a country.

Having written to the two most senior Conservative councillors recently about the Pleasurama sites temporary use for the summer, something that would greatly benefit Ramsgate and cost virtually nothing I found neither of them could be bothered to reply to me, these people what can one say?

However the question is were you in a position to choose a new leader from the Labour MPs or Conservative councillors who would it be?

Ramsgate town council

Where is the town council that we voted for? Click here for the answer

What can it do when we finally get it? Click here for the answer

I have been snooping around trying to get some answers please post any further information. We had similar problems wresting power form the decayed government of Sandwich in the 1800s and as not much has happened wresting power from Thanet District Council you may wish to read about what happened last time. Click here read about what happened.