It’s interesting that the leader of Swindon’s Tory Council, Cllr Rod Bluh, should have had a letter published in the Swindon Advertiser on 30/03/2012 (and a quite detailed letter at that).
It must have taken him a while to write, and yet at around the same time, he publicly berated the Labour Party in Swindon for, and I quote from a tweet he made on the 27th March, being “too busy issuing press releases”. Might this be because Labour are bringing the failings or the Tory administration to light, which takes me nicely to my next point.
Another interesting observation is that Cllr Bluh recently told a Local Government Association event that “we need to stop being precious with our data and get beyond the fear of sharing”.
According to Openly Local, a website that presents open data sets provided by local authorities, who should be on their list of “Councils with no open data” but Tory run Swindon borough Council.
From what I can tell, Swindon borough Council doesn’t license any data under the Government’s own “Open Government Licence” – something local authorities are encouraged to do.
I could go on, but I think you get the idea. The Conservatives in Swindon are just for transparency and open data practices in theory, while ensuring information does not get shared in practice in case it paints them in a negative light.