Follow Friday

Twittering and other things

If you ignore the fact that many of us have found our way onto the redundancy lists of our respective councils and the fact that many of our friends and colleagues are finding their jobs at risk, the last few weeks have been pretty exciting for us at the WLLG blog.

Not only have more of you lovely people be reading the blog and commenting but we have also started moonlighting for our friends at the Guardian Local Government Network.

We’ve only got three posts up so far but if people like them and the Guardian get nice comments it should become a weekly thing.

Here, we have a slightly cynical look at local government cuts

This piece has caused some controversy on twitter so it is worth noting that the post is satirical in nature, highlighting some of the worst examples of rash cost cutting and is based on experiences that we and our colleagues in local government have actually witnessed. The Guardian pieces are slightly lighter in nature than those on this site (by design) and hopefully provide a useful corrective to some of the other pieces in Local Government literature.

Here, we explain the process for writing a local government blog (with tongue in cheek)

Here, we rehash previous blogs for our Guardinan debut.The Guardian Local Government Network site is also excellent; a good mix of blog posts, news articles and practical advice for local Government workers, practitioners and interested passers by. Do check it out.

And whilst you are checking out other blogs do have a look at the following:

Welcome to the Age of Austerity. Longer and more thoughtful pieces than we can manage about the state of local government at the moment. Thoughtful and extremely well written.

FOI Man. A Blog about FOIs for those who enjoyed our lazy journalism index.

Flip chart fairytales. A well established blog that provides an interesting take on all manner of things; a daily read in all our households.

Helpgov’s helpful blog: A must read for those interested in local government and the mighty big changes we’re going to need to make.

CitizenR: Another victim of the cuts but someone who is keeping their spirits up by sharing some great and witty observations with the rest of us.

In other exciting news we have entered the world of twitter. For those interested in these types of things our tag is @welovelocalgov. Please do come along and follow us and remember there are a few of us who tweet so don’t be surprised if the same twitter account has differing views over the course of time, we like to think of it as part of the intrigue!

Whilst you’re twittering why not follow: @GdnLocalGov (it’d be rude not to), @dominiccampbell (omnipresent tweeter and public sector social media sage), @RedundantPS (author of the truly excellent Redundant Public Servant blog), @ajrhayman (the chief reporter from the LGC) and @ksmyth2010 (for a Northern Irish perspective and a nice person to boot).

We’ll put up many more next time we do a follow piece.

Before we go we just want to say thanks to all of those who read our blog, comment on it or are otherwise passing through. We enjoy writing it and enjoy the fact that others read it even more. And if you want to get in touch do drop us a line at welovelocalgovernment@gmail.com

Explore posts in the same categories: We love the Council

Tags: dominic campbell, flip chart fairy tales, follow friday, freedom, guardian, helpgov, local government network, redundant public servant

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