Sunday, April 23, 2006

About Us

We've had a number of requests from residents and journalists about who we are, so we thought we'd create this page to tell you why the site exists and what we are all about.

We decided to set up Greenwich Watch about six weeks before the 2006 local elections. When we began the current Council term was winding down so we decided to take a simple approach. Get the site set up and prepared, then formally launch on Friday May 5th, the day after the local elections. We'd already arranged our access to the count for the election so we knew that our first official post would - we hoped - be a humourous review of the count for those that don't get to witness such strange and wonderful events.

Why did we feel we needed to run a blog dedicated to watching Greenwich Council? Well we're long standing residents of the borough and we felt that the Council had become somewhat autocratic, and it seemed to spend a lot of time spinning. We rarely saw the Council seriously held to account in the local press and we felt that we could have more impact on the web than in any other way.

We wanted to cut through the spin and provide a new (and occassionally more caustic) view of Greenwich Council. Our hope - with a bit of luck - is to at least keep them on their toes. Not only this we wanted to give the people of Greenwich a platform to make their views known that isn't affiliated to the Council and doesn't have to toe a party line.

This point is important. This is as much the people of Greenwich's site as it is ours. We allow people to publish their view through the Comments section, and, assuming it's not libelous or overtly abusive we will publish it. We are not afraid of debate and should people disagree with our commentary then we urge you to post a comment. We do ask that you avoid doing it with the "anonymous" option though. We'd rather you picked a silly name than post as anon. It makes it easier for other posters to respond to you directly if they disagree with your points.

Remember, this site is about the people of Greenwich making their point. If you have a story to tell then email us and we'll do the rest.