Edinburgh Sucks! | The new myEdinburgh query

Alistar Frater

The new myEdinburgh query

By The Basa ⋅ March 20, 2006 ⋅

It seems that the millions of pounds that the Community Education spent on the myEdinburgh website has further turned into embarrassment for Children & Families, specifically ‘Rosendale’s Fraudsters.’

Although the site’s forums which were expected to become the talking shop of the city within and between the different Edinburgh communities some years ago, they eventually turned out to be infested with tumbleweed as nobody turned up to use them other than ‘Rosendale’s Fraudsters’. They averaged about 2 postings a month over a few years pretty much 50% of those by Rosendale’s Fraudsters David Hillson, Pete McDougall and Alistar Frater who is the current ‘webmaster’.

It now seems that the upshot in publicity of the Whistleblower case sent some people to the forums and become critical of Community Education, and it was mainly community education workers. There were a few threads started which became critical of Community Education heirarchy (Rosendale & Jobson) for taking part in fraud and of course there was criticism of the recent MORI poll which told us that our honourable council have given us the best city in the world and people want to take the ‘meanies’ home for tea on a daily basis and on holidays with them because they make our lives so good.

A typical post:

But of course there are polls and there are polls. Perhaps you never read EdinburghSucks tagline “An account of how the politicians and officials are screwing our city.”

Maybe if there were questions about whether there is massive fraud going on in Wellington Court or the City Chambers the outcome would have been different. Maybe if there were questions about whether you trust the council to do the right thing there would have been different answers.

EdinburghSucks.com get’s up to 3,663 visitors a day, between 90-130 emails a day and the vast majority are in agreement with the site (99%+). They have had almost 700,000 visits in the past year with the majority being direct to site visitors - the figures, it seems, speak for themselves - and they have independent documentary evidence to back up their figures.

And how many did Mori speak to exactly, perhaps you will post the methodology and all the details of the Poll so that we may make a fair decision.

In a recent poll on EdinburghSucks 97% of 1,124 participants in 24 hours called for the resignation of Mr. Mike Rosendale who is in charge of Strategy for the Children & Families Department. On this evidence he should be picking up his P45 dontcha fink.

Someone was also clearly upset about this site and it is thought among ComEd staff that the poster was either Rosendale, Hillson or McDougall.

At the time when the myEdinburgh forums were getting more traffic in one week than they had in the previous 2 years the fourms suddenly disappeared. Current thinking within the department is that Rosendale & Jobson had a meeting and the forums were immediately pulled.

What does this say for free speech within the community education department of the City of Edinburgh Council?

Mr. Rosendale, Mr. Jobson or even the employee charged with overseeing the site Mr. Frater, feel free to contact us and let us know why the forums were suddenly taken down.