Who do you trust? Brian Coleman or Don't Call Me Dave

Today Don't Call Me Dave, Barnet's most sensible Tory, has a great blog exposing the secrecy culture eating away at the heart of Barnet Council. Although I'm a swivel eyed Trotskyite and David is a dyed in the wool Tory, we both agree that transparency in government is vital. There is only one reason that in this day and age that a council wouldn't want to record council meetings and let the public have free access to these. That is because they don't want us to know what they are up to. Councils such as Barnet do not plan clandestine operations against foreign powers. They collect our waste, run our schools and arrange for carers to look after our sick and elderly (at least they are supposed to). Little of their business warrents secrecy. The public can attend council meetings (except when councillors decide to chuck them out) but no wider record of this is available.

What would happen if Barnet recorded meetings and made them publicly available. Well one thing I can guarantee is that people like Don't Call Me Dave and myself would regularly draw your attention to what they've said and they wouldn't be able to deny it. Decide for yourself whether that would be a good or bad thing. I consider Barnet to be rather lucky. We've got several blogs which represent all political views. DCMD and Richard Weider are Conservatives, VickiM and myself are left wingers. There is balance. I've read every single blog DCMD has ever written. As a result I know 1,000 times more about the workings of Barnet Council than I did before he started it. Unlike Council Leader Mike Freer's Barnet Pravda.com  blog, it is interesting, informative and readable.

Whilst DCMD and myself disagree about many things political, we both passionately believe in open, honest and clean administration. We both write blogs because we want The London Borough of Barnet to be a better place. We both love the area with a passion and we both want to see our Council be well run.

Today in the Ham & High, Brian Coleman launches an unprecedented attack on bloggers. He calls us a Cancer. Why? Because we've highlighted his shenanigans. He claims we undermine the publics faith in politicians. It doesn't occur to Mayor Coleman that people don't like taxpayer funded excess. If Brian Coleman wants bloggers to write nice things about him, maybe he should stop saying outrageous things, reign in his expenses and start acting as if he was a "public servant".

The reason Great Britain is a successful country which is a mostly fantastic place to live is because we have a free press and people can express their opinions. Brian Coleman himself used European Human rights legislation as his defence for insulting and smearing me. Coleman lost this case because whilst we all have a right to free speech, no one is allowed to make libellous accusations if they are a public servant. I don't know if Brian Coleman suffers from a rare form of Tourettes syndrome, but was he really incapable of telling someone he didn't like them without being abusive and making wholly unsubstantiated allegations.

And therin lies what I perceive the problem to be. Whilst Barnet Council is dominated by  people such as Brian Coleman and Council Leader Freer who descibes his opponents as "nutters" and other more repulsive terms, it is probably quite a prudent move for them to ban recording of meetings. I mean heaven forbid if we could actually hold them to account.

So who do you trust more? Dont Call Me Dave who campaigns for open government and honest policies or Mayor of Barnet, Brian Coleman who fights it tooth and nail and wants even more censorship of the Internet than the Communist government of China has introduced.