Hydro Hackney

A good piece of PR for Hackney Council on Page 8 of tonight's londonpaper. It seems the councillors are doing their bit to go green by switching all their electricty supply to renewable sources - and saving £500,000 in the process.

Of course, what we don't know is how much electricty was being wasted and whether cutting use could still help further. But we shouldn't be too cynical so a big well done to all concerened. I would have liked to link to the full story but the press release doesn't seem to be up on the Hackney Council site yet. If it's there soon, I will.

Meanwhile, I have emailed my questionnaire to the Hackney Gazette. They seem to have been the least forthcoming people on this project so far. Like a lot of journalists I suppose they are working under coinsiderable time pressure. Then again, who isn't? I'll just have to be persistent ... again!

The Tenth Politician

A quick visit to Hackney Town Hall this morning to pick up the questionnaires left by Councillor Desmond. Luckily there was no repeat of the saga with Coucillor Siddiqui’s questionnaire of a few weeks ago so today’s collection was problem free. I’ve now got ten questionnaires filled in by Councillors which means I’m still short of my 25 per cent target but I think I will just have to work with what I’ve got (plus the answers coming from Speaker Khan)

I’ve also forwarded the youth questionnaire to Gary Francis at HCVS so we’ll see how that all goes.

The rather exciting period of sorting through all the data and adding up the results is approaching. That’s when all this will actually start to get interesting as the information I’ve collected starts to throw up some patterns of thought (or maybe not) on different stakeholders perceptions on the potential of new media as an effective channel for political communications.

Chasing

Today began with calls to Hackney Council, Hackney Police and the Hackney Gazette trying to get appointments to see various people. These all proved unsuccessful. I did get an email from Michael Desmond, a councillor, to tell me that he has left a few questionnaires for me at the Town Hall. I’ll head over there tomorrow to collect them. I’ve also been sending out a load to emails to various Hackney stakeholders including Hackney Voluntary Action, Springboard Hackney, the Methodist Circuit, Hackney TUC and a few bloggers who seem to have an interest in Hackney. Finally, I’ve also heard back from HCVS and it looks like the offer of help is now turning into practical assistance. I’ve sent them the main questionnaire and I must remember to send them the students’ questionnaire tomorrow. Anyway, overall some progress. More tomorrow hopefully.