Labour follows Cllr Gareth Fairhurst lead.....AGAIN!

One of the first things that I noticed when I first got into politics back in 2001 was the poor quality of the political leaflets. Cheap black and white photocopy paper with poor quality pictures that you couldn't make out was not the answer. So over time I have improved the leaflets. The first thing I did was start with a two colour glossy leaflet up to the first ever A3 full colour glossy leaflet in Wigan in 2007. Labour learnt that one of the reasons I and other candidates in my party were getting votes was because people read our leaflets and that was because of the great quality. Labour followed.

Back in 2009 I decided to enter the digital age by writing a blog. Initially I wanted to do a blog post a day but quickly learned that was too much for people so I started a series on the blog, "The week that ended...." This was so people could see what I have been up to during that week. This is a popular blog that has gown in numbers over time. I also do ad hoc blogs on issues too during the week. The Wigan Evening Post wrote about back in 2009, the story is here. Back then I even challenged other Cllrs to get up to date and do blogs but not many did. And those that did soon stopped.

WIGAN COUNCIL TO WASTE MONEY TRAINING CLLRS FOR BLOGS

But now Wigan Council and Labour have realised how popular my blog have become (5000 hits per month), even though they keep complaining about it :-), and are now set to employ an external company to train Cllrs how to write and do blogs.

I say - "What a complete waste of taxpayers money!" Yes blogs can be useful but Cllrs should be able to do them by themselves, or ask another Cllr how to do it if they don't know how. It is simple to do and a quick Google shows you many different ways to do them too and taxpayers of Wigan shouldn't be expected to pay for this.

I suspect another reason for this is that it is another tick box exercise for the Council to get awarded some top council by some quango or other! Another slap backing exercise where labour says what a great council we are, when reality is they are just wasting taxpayers money again and not serving the people that they should!

SOME INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT MY BLOG

• Over 400 posts on it to date.
• My blog gets 5000 hits per month.
• My blog has nearly 50000 hits to date.
• Myblog and myself has been covered by digital marketing expert David Meerman Scott. See article here.