Thanet District Council’s new local news history project

Keeping an eye on the council’s much talked about but little understood RSS news feed I was interested this morning to note that it has just updated and sent me the latest news form the council saying that:

Birchington residents can learn more about fire safety and crime prevention advice, when the latest Operation Cleansweep visits the village.

The Kent Fire and Rescue Service drop-in vehicle will be parked outside the Co-op at 56 Station Road on Wednesday 26 January from 12.30 pm until 4.00 pm.

Kent Fire and Rescue Service officers will be joined by a Crime Reduction Officer from Kent Police, who will be giving out crime prevention advice.

Operation Cleansweep will be visiting Birchington and Westgate over their next two-day operation to do enforcement checks, clear communal areas and offer advice and support to local people.

If you would like any issues that you feel need tackling in the upcoming Birchington Cleansweep or have ideas for future operations, please call 01843 577737.

I would of course normally have alerted the press office to this latest error but of course I am not allowed to communicate with them, perhaps I am supposed to raise a foi request any ideas anyone?

I think the problem here is the council just don’t appreciate the importance of this I have sent them the following official complaint:

This is an official complaint that TDCs news feed is feeding the news that there will be a village event in Birchington on January 17^th 2011, today is 15^th June 2011 the main news event that the council should be feeding to the rest of the country in Margate’s Big Event due to start 18^th June 2011.

I should further add that the council has sopped sending me press releases which I used to publish for them with proper working news feeds at http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/ there reason for doing this appears to be that I should use their feeds which evidently do not work.

The net result of this will be probably be a few thousand less people attending The Big Event with the associated loss of income for local businesses and even the council because of lost program sales.