Hello, and welcome to my little bit of the interweb. I’m assuming that you have come here by following the link on my Twitter profile – so I’ve taken the liberty of putting together a little something just for you.
Who I am
I’m James Cousins, and I’m a councillor for Shaftesbury ward in the London Borough of Wandsworth. This site/blog is primarily about all that, but does sometimes wander off with my thoughts on national politics, or just things I want to post. You can find out a bit more on my About page.
How I use Twitter
I first started using Twitter as a form of online engagement as a councillor. Frankly, it wasn’t a productive use of my time as a councillor or executive member and my tweeting tedious in the extreme (I refuse to believe anyone is that interested in the number of meetings I’m attending).
Having said that I discovered I did rather enjoy Twitter, so am still on there, but mainly in a personal capacity and mainly for the humour. I also tend to dip in and out depending on how busy I am; Twitter is the first thing to suffer if I am particularly busy on the council, politically, professionally or with family life. Feel free to follow, but don’t expect too much by way of political or council related tweets.
Having said all that, I do check for @ messages and DMs fairly frequently, so free free to contact me via Twitter with anything Wandsworth related (although it’s only one of the ways you can get in touch).
Why I am online
It all started as a bit of an experiment, Wandsworth has one of the highest penetrations of broadband in the country, and my thinking was the internet may be a good way to communicate and develop a dialogue about what I and the council are doing. Thus far the experiment has been inconclusive, although promising enough to continue.
If you want to explore this website further (and I would be flattered if you do) then you can, of course, just pop to the Home page and see where it leads you. Alternatively, some of the following suggestions might tickle your fancy…
Shaftesbury ward residents might to see all the posts tagged Shaftesbury, since these will relate specifically to the local area.
If you live in Wandsworth then you might like to read more about posts that cover the Regeneration or the Community Safety parts of my Cabinet brief.
If you are specifically interested in crime in Wandsworth you might like to look at the posts tagged with crime mapping. They aren’t perfect and are something of an experiment, but I am hopeful they will develop into a interesting resource.
Finally, you might like to take a look at the more general commentary posts I make about politics or blogging.
Whatever you do, please let me know what you think, my Contact page lists a series of ways you can communicate with me.
James.
