I am pleased to report that I have hit 1,000 site visits in only 36 days of blogging, which I think is decent.
But after a month, I have decided to re-assess what I do here, and have come up with the following conclusions;
I started it to let people in East Finchley know what I and my ward colleagues were doing as ward councillors. I feel that the balance of the blog should be community related, but it's difficult when most of my work as a councillor is casework related, and therefore non publishable. But I will make more of an effort to keep up news from Efland.
In terms of my work in the Council chamber, I think I have been reporting these well, and my biggest hits relate to One Barnet, so I will continue to blog on this.
I will be a member of three main committees, East Planning, Health OSC and Budget and Performance OSC. I have been reporting my work on health, and will do on Budget, when it starts siting again fom October 15th. Planning is difficult. As a member of the committee, I can't state an opinion on any planning applications until they are heard, and I have decided not to write about anything on the planning committee deliberately, as refused applications often return.
Personal- I won't be writing more personal blogs about diets, the buffet at the Town Hall etc. The blog should be about East Finchley and Barnet, not me. Consequently there will be fewer updates like this. Though I have yet to rant about cricket, there might be a few.
National news- I have not written much about national news, and I may start to write more, if locally relevant, but we will see.
Writing style, content, post frequency etc- I must start to use the spell check! I aim to have about 7 or 8 posts a week. I think this works, but the aim should be to improve the quality of my writing, rather than increase the amount of it.
Comments- Thus far I have not allowed comments because I think it is wise to avoid people writing libellous comments, which would get me in trouble, or making accusations or writing things I might not like to see on a blog. I have provided my email address, and my contact details are publicly available, so if anyone wishes to raise something with me, they can. I simply don't have the time to moderate comments on the blog. I apologise for this but I can't see a way around it.
Interconnectedness. Yes I am making up big words. I try and tweet out the more important blogs and am now posing them to google + as well. I link to the Barnet Labour part website often. I will start to highlight the links, so that people can tell where they are, as that's not always possible on the white and black colour scheme.
So after some navel gazing, I think I have some ideas to improve the blog, let me know what you think.
Update 16/7/12 11:15pm: after some debate on twitter, I would like to clarify on the comments that everyone is entitled to thier views, but I really don't want to go through and moderate comments. I do encourage people to get in touch with me, and have moved my contact detail nearer to the top of the site. I also encourage people to discuss, but I would rather that I wasn't responsible for what they said.
