Saturday, March 24, 2012

How will Labour manage for the next few weeks?


A few days ago the RCT Councillors received a document entitled  “Guidelines for Staff and Councillors during election periods.”

It contained such gems as this

“During the election period the Council needs to ensure it remains impartial. The Council cannot use public money to promote (or give the perception of promoting) one political party, or its policies, over another. 

Political parties and candidates can legitimately, in their own right, seek to influence their electorates.  Political groups and individual candidates may therefore issue their own press releases or public information (but not using the Council’s resources therefore).  However it should be clear that these represent the views of that political group and not the Council.”

And crucially:


During the election period all staff should:

b)         prevent any suggestion of political use of Council resources for the purpose of the promotion of any candidate or political party;


Now that is all very good and proper, and welcomed by all concerned no doubt, but those who have been keeping up with the antics of Labour in RCT will recall some concerns over the content of their website.

On that site there are photographs of a senior officer – Christian Hanagan, Head of Strategy and Public Relations

As I may have mentioned previously he is the son of a Labour Cabinet Member, and a former Labour Council candidate in RCT in 2008.  Not at all biased then.

So in light of the guidelines will be seeing the removal of his photograph from the RCT Labour website any time soon?

2 comments:

Frank Little said...

Answers on a postcard to?

DutchEnery said...

And how about the blatant use of a so-called Council newspaper (Outlook) for the purposes of promoting the Labour party? Oh yes, you couldn't make it up, it happens in RCT!