One young Redbridge councillor will be embracing social media in tonight’s budget crunch council meeting to decide on �25million of cuts in the borough.
Labour councillor for Chadwell, Wes Streeting, 28, has so far racked up over 20,000 posts on the networking site Twitter and plans to tweet his way through this evening’s meeting to keep people updated.
He told the Recorder that he has been following the dramatic spending cuts in other London boroughs through following other councillors on the website that allows users to post messages of up to 140 characters to a ring of followers.
Cllr Streeting said: “I have tweeted from the council chamber before although mobile phones are supposed to be turned off.
“I have brought my phone charge this evening so I hope to be able to tweet throughout the meeting, or until the mayor tells me to stop.”
Cllr Streeting says that the internet is changing how people interact with local politics. With so called micro-bloggers and citizen journalists making meetings more instantly accessible.
Other councillors who tweet include Burt Jones and Aziz Choudhary, although it is not known if they will be active during this evening’s meeting.
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