A fly on the wall

It's too bad that I can't be at Barnet council's General Functions Committee meeting tomorrow night, since it will discuss extending to residents the right to blog, tweet and film from council meetings, a topic close to my heart.

Let's be clear, the council almost certainly wouldn't be discussing this at all if the blogging community and Barnet residents hadn't kicked up a stink at the fact that we had been stopped from filming and tweeting until now.

One new weapon in our armoury was the guidance issued by the Department for Communities and Local Government (itself, I suspect, promoted in part by the behaviour of Barnet council).

In fact, we made the council's rule a dead letter by filming and tweeting from the council meeting on 1 March. I understand Lynne Hillan told MetPro Security (where are they now?) shortly before the meeting itself not to stop us from filming (well, that's what I heard).

The choice before the committee tomorrow night is outlined as follows:

If the Committee agrees that the existing position on filming and recording should be re-considered, there are two main options (although there are, of course, variations on these options):
(i) Filming could be permitted by anyone in any Council or committee meeting, subject to it being non-disruptive; or
(ii) Webcasting of Council, Cabinet and other key committee meetings, with the public not permitted to film separately.

(Full paper available here.)

Unfortunately, the membership of the GFC does not include Daniel Seal, one of the Tory councillors for Hampstead Garden Suburb. He has been tweeting his support for the right to blog. But I don't suppose anyone in the inner circles of the council would listen to him anyway.

Garden Suburb residents have been cast into the outer darkness by the council lately: despised by Brian Coleman for their wealth - apparently, employing a nanny precludes you from being annoyed by the CPZ charge increases; and living in the only part of the borough that is clearly and unequivocally going to have its library closed.

On that topic, I'm glad to see that the Hampstead Garden Suburb Residents' Association has pledged to oppose the closure of the library.

Anyway, I can't get to the meeting tomorrow night but I'm still interested to see how the debate goes. Now, if we had filming of council meetings...

Transparency Barnet council style

Barnet council leader Lynne Hillan has budged. She has. I'm sure she'd deny it, but I will say it. After telling the Times series on Monday that there'd be no filming, blogging or tweeting in the public gallery while she is Leader (are you sure you want to bring that up, Lynne?), this morning she had made some attempt to appear reasonable. She told the Times that, although residents still would not be allowed to film the council meeting:

“I think the world has moved on since we last debated this. Frankly we all expect to be able to find the whole world on YouTube now.

"My own view is that the public would be best served by us live streaming council over the web, but this is a matter for the whole of council to debate. I am happy to have that debate at full council in the near future.”

Well, that's it then, she's budged, and we'll hold her to it. She takes some shifting, does Lynne Hillan, but a good fortnight of harrying, and judicious use of the pronouncements in favour of transparency from her own government, plus one manic afternoon on phone and email to Bindmans, human rights lawyers (I have to thank them a lot for their work) have resulted in this grudging half-promise to bring Barnet into the 21st century.

Unlike some more frugally-minded bloggers, I think that the council should spend some money on getting the job done properly and having professional filming, as Haringey does, for example. And then, in addition to that, allowing blogging, filming and tweeting in the public gallery.

My own experience of filming in the public gallery was that it is pretty tedious, but then my equipment was a bit clapped out (and, to be frank, so was I). But AL managed to get some nice clips. See them here.

The interest with these clips is less the content - it's a council meeting, fer chrissakes! - than the fact that AL got these bits of film at all. Because AL and me, in my own feeble way, and Mrs A, all had to do our filming with the threat of being booted out hanging over us.

In the event, we were not booted out (I came close, for a bout of sustained heckling, but I won't bore you with the details of that now). Whatever the "legality" (huh!) of Barnet council's filming ban, at least among some parts of the council apparatus - some of the Tory group, some of the council officers: it's not clear who - there isn't the appetite to enforce it.

That's great news. It means the ban is a dead letter.

P.S. Oh, yeah, the g*ts passed their £54.4 million cuts and privatisation budget, but let's celebrate our tiny victories. On those, we build.