Philip John

Tag: local government

  • Planning Applications for WordPress: New Plugin

    It was great to hear last week of the progress Chris and his team at OpenlyLocal have made on resurrecting Planning Alerts. Thanks to their efforts we now have a site where we can view planning alerts for each council across the country. Not all councils are there yet, but it’s a great start. As…

  • Think open data is just the realm of geeks? Not in Lichfield…

    This is partly the reason why I love Lichfield so much. Our council CEO recently joined Twitter and was last night tweeting (much revered) webmaster, Stuart Harrion; [blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/Ninadawesldc/status/133285420699095042″] Where else do you get a council chief exec tweeting her webby on a Sunday evening about the Open Government License?! Fantastic!

  • Filming Council Meetings: For and Against

    At yesterday’s LocalGovCamp I led a session which attempted to come up with a good round-up of the arguments for and against filming of council meetings. We did a good job and there’s still room for more additions. I’ve used the excellent wrangl.com to show what we came up with and allow the debate to…

  • Blogger arrested for filming council meeting

    As if it wasn’t bad enough that the Police arrest hobbyists for taking photos of public events they’re now arresting bloggers for filming council meetings. While my request to film council meetings in Lichfield was met with no resistance it seems some councillors seem to be living in an entirely different reality. I’ll be writing…

  • Five ways to make a difference with data – a round up of #madwdwm

    As part of the Making a difference with data project I was asked to run an ‘unworkshop’ for the West Midlands which pulled together hyperlocal site owners, local government folk and data geeks. Thanks to Nick Booth‘s generosity we had a suitable venue where we could gather. We had 16 people altogether and a good mix of backgrounds. It was…

  • Defamation – Case Law: Derbyshire County Council v Times Newspapers Ltd

    Held, dismissing the appeal, that since it was of the highest public importance that a democratically elected governmental body should be open to uninhibited public criticism, and since the threat of civil actions for defamation would place an undesirable fetter on the freedom to express such criticism, it would be contrary to the public interest…