• Home
• Subjects
• Blog Roll
• Blindside
• Kable
• Advanced Search

• 

17 May 2007

Search engines and the quavering wotsit of council powers

Litter wardens in Crawley issued an £80 fine to a woman whose toddler dropped two Quavers on the street. Creepy Crawley Council revoked the fine and apologised. Nevertheless Councillor Beryl Mecrow admonished: “People have a responsibility not to drop litter.” It follows the episode of the woman fined for throwing a Wotsit in Luton last year.

These gems should not be lost to future generations of ethnographers. But what happens when we search the trusted gold-standard, soon to be one and only e-goverment web site for the central search terms?

Search: “Quaver”

Search: “Wotsit”

The £multi-million site appears to deny that either such episode ever occurred!

But, if given the existence of Google, you prefer to search on the twopenny-halfpenny alternative government search engine the entire pattern of council behaviour is laid bare. Thus we prove the “Wotsit principle” (set out more elegantly below by Dr Paul Hodgkin): independent sites reflect better what people are interested in. They don’t give a fig about what government thinks is important. Thus they win.

Although Luton Council’s website carries a cheery defence of their cheesy shocker, Crawley’s own site also pretends that nothing untoward to do with crisps (here) or with Quavers (here) and the Council has ever taken place, even though this must have been the year’s hottest news story in Crawley. It is kinda creepy, isn’t it?

Aconyms: 2. Cheesy/crass brand names: 3

• Posted by William Heath on 17/05/07 at 7:17pm
• Categories · "What do we want?" · Save Time and Money · Power of Information
Trackbacks (0)  Permalink

Ideal Government

Let's say what we want from e-enabled government. Let's observe government first-hand. Let's say "Wouldn't It Be Better If" (WIBBI). Become an ethnographer of bureaucracy today! It beats getting frustrated with public services.

Categories

• "What do we want?"
  • Wibbipedia/MindtheGap
  • Design: Co-creation
    • Online Maps
  • Design: user-oriented
  • Foundation of Trust
    • Identity
    • Data nitwittery
  • Save Time and Money
• Greener government IT
• Pertinent Art
• Power of Information
• Political engagement
• "Transformational Government"
• Government Procurement
• Across the Board
• Ideal Goverment - project

Comment

Anyone is free to comment. Or mail with an article if you want to be an author. I'll post it up and send you a password. This whole thing is supported by Kable.

Authors

Sign up for new articles

Copyright

Designed by...

Statistics

This page has been viewed 1392741 times

Entries: 1630 | Comments: 2668 | Trackbacks: 206
Most Recent Entry: 10/13/2008 05:25 pm
Most Recent Comment: 10/13/2008 02:02 pm

Members: 185 | Logged in: 0 | Guests: 32
Most recent visitor: 10/13/2008 07:51 pm
Most visitors ever: 443 on 10/12/2005 02:21 pm