Click HERE to find out what Mike Freer thinks of the Barnet Eye and it's author !
Listening to this is the best laugh I've had all year, Mike is clearly a David Brent like master of unintentional satire. Send it to all of your friends. The best quote, 7 mins 20 seconds in.
"If you get upset by negative comments then (a) you shouldn't be in politics but (b) you know just don't do it because you will have the nutters out there who will want to have a pop at you and that's part and parcel of doing it, but 99% of people seem genuinely pleased that someone is taking the effort to do a bit of social networking, but you will always get one or two who will try and hog it and you just have to try and freeze them out so that your normal residents get access to you."
Another great moment
"There's a couple of ways of handling it. If someone is clearly trying to be provocative, it depends on what their motivation is, erm... I have a group of followers what I call the 'one handed bloggers' erm, I'l leave it to your own imagination what the other hand is doing. But it is largely because they are seeking to attack the Council's record, now that fine if it is a genuine resident, but when you have got two or three people who are just following a vendetta, I now ignore them so I moderate them out. If it is a genuine resident who's got a beef - great! it allows me to respond directly and I do respond, Dominic does not do my responses i do them all myself and if clearly something comes through for moderation I will sometime say "no, I know this person, it is just an axe to grind - we will not respond". But most people get a fairly blunt response..."
Now as you can see Mr Freer states he moderates all the comments himself. Strangely enough this wasn't what Barnet Council told me in a response to a Freedom of Information response on Tuesday 16th December. Here's what they said :-
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3. As the blog is a publically funded information service, who is responsible for applying the editorial policy. Is it a paid council official, the Council Leader himself or some unpaid third party? If it is an unpaid third party, what authorisation do they have to edit Council taxpayer's comments and on the basis of what guidelines.
Response: The Social Media Manager in accordance with the terms and conditions as outlined above.
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Now as he's not moderated comments from Me, David Miller or Richard Logue on Leaderlistens.com, by his maths there should be 297 "genuinely sycophantic" comments on his site - where are they?
Anyway Mike thanks for recording this. It makes it all seem worthwhile. By the way if any otherone handed bloggers, nutters or other malcontents are reading this, please feel free to leave a comment here. Unless it breaks the law or uses naughty words, you can say what you like about me, Mike Freer, the price of fish or whatever.
Here's a copy of some correspondance I received from Councillor Freer on this very subject recently. I've edited it as the contents is copyright of the great leaders office
Dear Pot,
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Yours Sincerely
The Kettle
There you go, venting your spleen again, you nutter!
ReplyDeleteI must confess that I had good laugh when I first listened to the podcast, but then I sat down and gave serious consideration to the thoughts of Chairman Freer. But I just couldn’t help laughing some more! £28 million of our money is missing in Iceland, and producing this podcast is what the prospective MP for Finchley thinks is a productive use of his time.
ReplyDeleteGiven what happens when he's actually working it probably is more productive doing this than "The day job"
ReplyDeleteRog, the point is that Mike Freer’s comments were totally inappropriate for any politician to make under any circumstances. I am still laughing, not because what he said was funny (because it wasn’t), but because it was the stupidest and most absurd thing I have ever heard from someone who has genuine pretensions to be an MP.
ReplyDeleteReal politicians know that you respond to critics with courtesy, not vulgar insults.