Power of Twitter

This is more of an update on a story in the press that I featured in the blog post "Council Censorship" on Friday. If you remember Argyll and Bute council decided to censor a nine years olds Blog, NeverSeconds, who posted about her school dinner experiences. 

When the news broke in the media, both conventional and internet based, you can imagine the reaction. Instantly the story hit Twitter. I even tweeted about it myself on my own Twitter account, as some of you might have seen from the snap shot of it on this page. People were doing all kinds of things including email the Council concerned and putting in complaints. Everyone was saying how out of order the council were for doing what they did. 

Most of the morning nobody from Argyll and Bute council were available to comment on the story. Then on the Victoria Derbyshire BBC Radio 5 live programme an Executive from the council appeared, putting the case for banning this nine year old girl from taking pictures of the food she paid for and effectively stopping her blogging. He claimed it had been done because her pictures were used in the Scottish press in an article that wasn't to kind to the dinner ladies and suggested they should be sacked. So it would appear that instead of tackling the press they picked on a little girl. He came across as a real bully on the programme and although I could see the why the dinner ladies might have been upset, which I might add the little girl had a good relationship with, it was quickly clearly that he was attacking the wrong person. The nine year old girl had done nothing wrong and she had the support of the school, but she was the scape goat and the full force of the council turned upon her. 

The appearance of the Executive from Argyll and Bute council just made things worse and twitter was off again. They had already been some famous people saying things were getting out of hand including former Westminster Politicians. Next in came Jamie Oliver who congratulated the nine year old on writing the blog in it's early days. He got everyone to retweet one of his tweets in support of the little little girl, effectively marking the start of a more organised campaign against the council. As the presenter of the World of One on BBC Radio 4 was about to launch into the leader of the council who had consented to appear on the programme, the councillor announced that censorship has no place in Argyll and Bute and that she could start taking her pictures again. 

Sense and reason had won the day through the power of public opinion driven by the media and the backlash against the council on Twitter. What I find ironic in all this is that they picked on a little girl because of a press article when they could have used the same tool to highlight the quality of school meals. Very few meals that the girl reviewed got low scores, in fact many were rated over at over 8 out of 10. It could have been used for good and they decided to blame this innocent child and silence her. The whole thing turned in to a public relations nightmare because of bullying tactics someone decided to employ against this girl who had the support of school and as it turns out the general public.

What is amazing is that she has now raised over £90,000 pounds on her JustGiving page for Mary's Meals. That is enough money to build a kitchen and a lot more. Looking through the Blog one can see it was working in so many ways. Even the school meals were getting better, but the best thing is she is continuing with her blog, now the ban on her taking pictures of her dinners has been lifted. She posted her first post after she was censored yesterday on her site which has a now amassed over 6 million hits. Over 4 million more than when I first heard about the story and read the site.

To me what this story shows is how the power of public opinion can be used to effect good and change. How it can be used to protect the freedom of speech and expression. Lets us hope that the same  power of  public opinion can be used to protect our privacy in the coming months from the Conservative Nanny State.