Twitter ban by Lord Mayor of Leeds

Leeds is a dynamic European city with a thriving digital and creative sector, unfortunately it’s not one that the Lord Mayor of Leeds appears to understand.

John Barron, the blogger responsible for the excellent new Guardian Leeds, tweeted “at #leedscouncil meeting no tweets allowed, says lord mayor.”

If this is true then Leeds City Council has joined the list of clueless councils that are damaging democracy by failing to engage with the electorate to the best of their ability.

When I was a Leeds councillor one of my frustrations was how it holds nearly all of its official meetings during ‘normal’ working hours thus depriving the vast majority of the electorate an opportunity to participate. There’s never a perfect time to hold meetings, but during the working day is done for the convenience of officers and councillors, not the public.

Enabling councillors to blog and tweet from official meetings actually makes them far more accessible to voters. If MPs can blog in the House of Commons – and many of them do – then Leeds councillors should be able to as well.

The worst of this is that Leeds can justifiably claim to have been at the forefront of councillors using social media. In 2003 I was the first councillor in the UK to blog (as covered by The Guardian at the time.) In July 2003 I even blogged live from the council chamber, which who knows but might even have been a world first.

It’s disgraceful that in February 2010 the Lord Mayor has chosen to take Leeds back into the past.

I’m inviting Councillor Judith Elliot of the Morley Borough Independents to use the comments to explain why she wants to deny the citizens of Leeds the right to hear direct from their elected representatives. I’m waiting Judith.