On Line

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In this issue

Cover image
The Fringe...
...the Festival
Martin Rowson
News in Brief
Readers Letters
Park Life
News in Brief
Dissent
Tapas Time
Back to the Fringe
Straight to the Point
Royal Bengal
Handy Contacts
Summertime Blues
Summery Justice
Up the Junction
Books/Poetry
The Factory
Summer Allergies
Farmers Market
The Arts
Away Days
A Royal Visit
Coffee Corner
Surfing N16
Man in North Bank
XWord
View from the Lane

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p34

Not one to duck a challenge, I have been wading through the Hackney Council web site which has been undergoing a major face lift. Has it been worth the effort?

A qualified yes. Navigation has in the main improved, at least from the home page. The site is cleaner and in part easier to use than before and there is plenty of information available. On arrival at the home page you are offered three major headings to start your exploration: The Council, Your Life and Your Hackney. Each heading has a number of sub headings. You are also presented with a number of Do It Online links. These include Family & Local History, Find Local Services, Jobs in the Council, Make a omplaint, Maps and Statistics, Register to Vote, Report Street Defects, Search Council Reports, Visit the Museum and What’s on in Hackney.

Straightforward, you might think, but things can get a bit messy depending on what you want from here on in. Of the three main sections, The Council is probably the most useful and complete. There is plenty of information on individual councillors, wards, Neighbourhood Forums and reports, etc.. The Your Life section runs from having a baby to starting your own business, with a reasonable amount of basic information and external links. The third section, Your Hackney, just sucks.

What’s On needs a very serious pruning. I have visited these pages off and on over the past few years and nothing ever seems to be removed. What is worse, it was only today that I bothered to scroll right down to the bottom of the June page and discovered that the latest entries are posted at the bottom not the top of the heap. Intrigued at just how much information was on the page I copied the entire list into a plain word document. It totalled 53 pages. Come on, Council, take a heavy duty cutter and get rid of the dross. A number of the ongoing events listed stopped years ago. The monthly listings should only be about shortterm events of which there were eight listings for June. All ongoing events should have their own pages divided into, for example, sport, dance, volunteering etc. And don’t just cut and paste from here – check ‘em out, please.

Another area which really should be overhauled or junked is the information pages about the different areas of the Borough. The page relating to Stoke Newington, for example, covers restaurants that have been closed for years. In fact, even when it was first put up it was wrong, eg Anna’s was a Swedish not a Russian eatery.

On the plus side there are now large numbers of documents that can be downloaded. The council diary is also useful to see what meetings are due to happen or if you want to know any of the Borough’s major religious holy days. The best way to find any particular department, school address, etc. is to use either the A-Z Services or the Sitemap, both of which can be found on the top navigation bar. Far too often I have used the site search on the left hand navigation bar only to be told that it could not find what I wanted. A quick visit to either of the above normally works.

If you are fed up over problems with holes in the road etc. there is now a direct link to what is called a Street Defects Report Form. It is a simple matter to fill in the details and then I presume you cross your fingers and hope that something might happen. Cynical, moi! However, you should not use this form if it relates to any of the Red Routes which include old favourites like the A10, including the Stoke Newington one-way system, Clapton Common, Upper and Lower Clapton Road. They do promise that they will pass on any information on to TfL.

Will I continue to use the site? Yes, because if you have any interest in the goings on at Mare Street’s Fortress Hackney, and if you are prepared to work for it, you can find real meat. It’s just it seems such sodding hard work sometimes.

PS If, like me, you use your history button in MS Internet Explorer to return to recently visited sites, a number of the council pages are to be found at 156.61.16.5 and not Hackney.
www.hackney.gov.uk 

Regular readers will know that I have a soft spot for historical research sites. One that over the past few months has really caught my eye is the British Pathe News
archive. With access to 3500 hours of film, covering news, sport, social history and entertainment from 1896 to 1970, this site is well worth a visit. Short clips can be downloaded for free or you can purchase a licence for higher resolution copies of the same items for PowerPoint presentations and web publishing.

The data base is fast and efficient. It very quickly pulled up 12 clips covering Stoke Newington including a 1939 wedding on roller skates, World War 1 soup kitchens and children’s hairdressing in 1952. Tapping in Arsenal produced 98 results, although I must admit that looking at some of the topic headlines I couldn’t see what they might
have to do with football. Both the Stoke Newington and Arsenal searches were done using the simple search engine. You can also use a much more detailed advanced search.
www.britishpathe.com

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