Followers of mine on Twitter will have been expecting updates from the recent budget-setting Council meeting. Sadly, this wasn’t possible after a decision by the Conservative-run Council to ban Councillors from using mobile phones for any reason in meetings. As someone who tweets by text, this means no Twitter for me, and no updates for constituents.

At the start of the meeting, the Mayor informed us that anyone using a phone for any reason would be asked to leave the meeting because such activity is rude and discourteous. I respected the Mayor’s request, but I disagree with it.

It might seem like a sensible plan. After all, talking on phones during meetings is discourteous. Disrupting meetings using phones is discourteous. Wandering in and out of meetings to take calls is discourteous. I’ve seen all of these and worse at Council meetings, but the Mayor has never before been compelled to react.

If the Council thinks that mobile phone usage is wrong, that’s fine, but they’ve taken their time coming to that decision, and it’s odd that it’s come immediately after I became the first Councillor to start tweeting in Council meetings. Anyone would think the Mayor was put up to it by the Conservatives worried about me revealing their incompetence in real time!

I think that it’s perfectly possible to send text messages to Twitter (or anywhere else actually) whilst in meetings without either disrupting that meeting or concentrating any less than is required. Sending a tweet takes a few seconds, and is a fine way of keeping people informed on what’s going on. To ban it is not forward-looking or fair, in my view. Even if phones have been banned for another reason, they’ve chucked the baby out with the bathwater with a blanket ban.

At the last meeting of the Council, I sent various tweets. I don’t think they interrupted the meeting in any way, since the phone I was using was out of view and on silent. The tweets told constituents what was going on, and were even picked up by the Manchester Evening News who broadcast them live online alongside those of their own journalist. There was no difference between texting my thoughts and writing them down, except that by texting them to Twitter I was letting my constituents know about them there and then.

I managed to ask four questions and take part in two debates during that meeting as well, which is more than probably 45 of the other 50 Councillors in the Chamber. I see no reason to believe that my tweeting had any negative effect at all. In fact, I think we should be encouraging it so long as it doesn’t interfere with how the meeting goes on.

If the Council wants to tackle discourtesy in meetings, it needs to go further than stopping phones. It could start by banning pens, which are used frequently to doodle during debates, or to write down the thoughts that I’d otherwise be tweeting! It would then do well to talk to several high-ranking Councillors and ban them from talking, laughing or nodding off during questions and speeches. Many do that frequently.

Officers too would have to receive the Council’s ire, since they are not above reproach. One was the victim of one of my tweets, in fact, when I caught him mouthing “blah blah blah” during a Councillor’s speech and tweeted about it. I don’t know when my tweeting became ruder than his blah blah blah-ing, but apparently it is.

That type of stuff is far more discourteous than a bit of under-the-table texting. At the recent budget Council meeting both Cllr Trevor Holt (Lab) and I had to actually stop our speeches to allow for Conservative Councillors to stop talking, laughing and interrupting. The Council might want to look at that as well. It’s worse than tweeting in my view.

The behaviour of a number of Members is beyond discourteous and bordering on the rude. But worse is the frequent lack of complete answers given to simple questions and the Leader’s repetitive habit of leaping up and speaking without the Mayor’s permission throughout meetings. I’d like to see these things tackled too. They don’t add to democracy in this borough, and they put distance between the people and their Councillors. Tweeting does the opposite, and yet it’s this that’s been stopped because of the phone ban.

Sadly, I can’t see anything happening to tackle real discourtesy. By all means make it clear that phones should be on silent and nobody should take calls. I don’t want a speech interrupted by “Sex Bomb” blasting out as a ring tone. But there’s good stuff that can be done with phones, and I’d like to be able to do that.

Rick