Forum Topic

The power of Twitter!

I have discovered that if you want to bring something to the attention of Hounslow council Twitter provides an excellent route to get a pretty quick reply. All credit to Hounslow Highways who I tweeted to get them to replace our pavement parking area white lines, they said it would be late June, early July, before the work was done, and today they have arrived and we have lines! Ditto some trees on the highway in need of attention both around here which are now on the programme to be treated later this year, and in Church Rd. where you can hardly get along the pavement because of the basal growth and very low canopy growth. Just as well as our councillors obviously walk around oblivious to things in their local area and ignore contact from the peasants.

Vanessa Smith ● 3898d5 Comments

"I think we owe a 'big up' to Ruth Cadbury who has long recommended twitter and inspired me to start despite my scepticism. "I'd be a damned sight more impressed if Ruth answered the Tweets sent to her! So far she's ignored an e-mail from my son and a follow up Tweet asking her to respond to it! Judging by the performances at the Brent Lea meeting last week the council might be better off confining their contact with the great unwashed by Twitter because their performance was dire, and that's being kind.

Vanessa Smith ● 3897d

Why can a phone call, letter or email or even intervention by a councillor not get the most simple of things sorted and yet twitter can?It says to me that people are spending too much time playing with their computers and not doing things.Big problem is those dutiful citizens who do most reporting of problems are older and don't use computers or smartphones or social media for a myriad of reasons and like so many other things of late are completely frozen out.The assumption that everyone is linked in by technology is still way off the mark and has become another form of social exclusion.All means of communication should be equally effective whatever ones access means.

Raymond Havelock ● 3897d

I think we owe a 'big up' to Ruth Cadbury who has long recommended twitter and inspired me to start despite my scepticism.  Reporting grotspots to @lbofhounslow got Andy Alsopp, then Head of Comms, agitating @hounslowhways and they took to it with relish despite having been wary at the start.  Now it is a very effective way for residents to cut through the bureaucracy and get things done, anyone can see the problems being reported and the increasing effectiveness of Hounslow Highways as they respond.The more people who do it the better this gets and the better our area becomes.

Theo Dennison ● 3897d

Well you could also give it a try, to be honest I don't even know how I got on to Twitter - I am not that tech savvy so I was more than surprised to find I'd managed to do something all on my own. I have also tried Fix-my-street but it failed miserably, and in fact they contacted me recently to enquire if my complaint had been resolved. The thing is with Twitter you have to get to the point, it is a good exercise for not wittering on about something!

Vanessa Smith ● 3898d

So does this mean I have to sign up to Twatter (as I un-affectionately call it) to get HH to do something about this bloody clanking manhole cover on Brentford High Street which has been reported weeks ago on FixMyStreet, and which Guy Lambert has also reported to HH too ?.

Adam Beamish ● 3898d