H&F's Press Office Up To Its Old Trickery Again

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams opening the
St. Andrew's Star Centre on 22nd March 2012

The ever vigilant and wonderful Cllr. Mike Cartwright (Lab) has spotted this bit of jiggery-pokery by H&F Council's ever sycophantic press office.

On Thursday 22nd March the Archbishop of Canterbury's office published this press statement titled "Archbishop opens community centre at St Andrew's Fulham Fields". The opening paragraph explains that "The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has joined Baroness Margaret Eaton and over 200 members of the congregation and community at St Andrew's Fulham Fields, to open a £3 million project to renew the church and create a new community facility, the St Andrew's Star Centre." In the eighth paragraph it mentions how "attendees at the opening included local dignitaries such as Councillor Stephen Greenhalgh, leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Council."

Contrast that with our very own H&F Council's press release published three weeks later on Thusrday, 12th April which proclaimed: "Leader opens renovated church." I suppose they should be congratulated for their restraint by not claiming he went on to perform a series of miracles but H&F's press office have still won themselves another Brown Nose Award which they can add to their crowded shelf of gongs - in the Deliberately Misleading the Public section.

This mildly amusing incident is one of H&F Press Office's more minor offences. It does give an insight to the toadying culture that's rife amongst senior officials and the press team at H&F Council but more importantly I cannot see how it is value for money to employ teams of PR people to write this junk. This is a time of austerity and one when H&F Conservatives are cutting £22.6m from this year's council budget. It's the same as we stated at the last election, if we win in 2014 we will slash the size of H&F's press office and save up to £5m for local residents in the process.

UPDATE 18th April 2012: H&F's Press office have now changed their press release to read "Archbishop and Leader open renovated church." Now they just need to change all the other misleading propaganda they've put out over the last six years.