The tl:dr.  Comments haven’t been disabled on the Leader’s Blog. Glitch in the software, old chap. Web monkeys working overtime to fix it.

Richard Leese has been the leader of Manchester City Council for 23 (twenty-three – quarter of a century, less some change (1)) loooong years.

For a while now he has had a blog, since he has so very few outlets for his ranti… his rambl… his statements (of various factfulness (2) and worth, but that’s another story).

He relaunched the blog in July of this year because (and these are his words) “principally as a response to social media which has its purpose but is not really suitable for more detailed argument. This is often compounded by people posting stuff that has absolutely no substance but which then gets repeated as if it was gospel.”

Because, you know, on social media, the serfs, peons and scum who don’t know their place, well, they can holler back.

No, no, I am totally wrong.  The whole point of the blog has been that reasoned debate can be engaged in, like the mature but not-too-mature adults we all are…

That’s why there have been 12 (one for every two years we have been blessed) blogs and not a single comment.   And it seems that it never seemed to occur to Our Glorious Leader that there was a glitch in the software.

So, on 16th October (which was one of those days – see (2) below), Manchester Climate Monthly (aka Marc Hudson) submitted a Freedom of Information Act request.

2. Whether comments are disabled or not – it does not say anywhere that they
are, but various people have tried to leave comments and received error
messages of late, and there are NO comments from July 2019 onwards (I have
not bothered to look further back)

3. If comments are disabled,
a) when this happened,
b) on whose authority/who made the decisions
c) with what rationale
d) whether the decision-maker sought the opinion of legal advice and/or public
relations advice within the City Council before making this decision.
e) if they did, what advice was received
f) why there is still a comments form , since this is a waste of people’s time and exactly the kind of fake ‘dialogue’ offer that has the young folks sharpening their pitchforks.

Now, normally when I FOIA the Council, they wait the maximum legal time (20 working days) before supplying the information (or a version of it).  Here’s the hilarious bit-

Given that there is a little online wtafuckery about Richard Leese claiming he wants to work with people (see here and here, and see here for my reply to one of his sprays)  it seems somebody has decided the usual delay-till-the-last-minute-on-general-principles will hurt more than it will help. Here we are, ten-ish working days later, with the answers –

Well, that’s alright then.

Footnote
(1) Change? Manchester? Nope.
(2) See forthcoming post