U.K. councillors in Croydon have been named and shamed for using an iPad during a council meeting to keep track of the score in a soccer game.
And — wouldn’t you know it — as with every other time something like this happens, senior Labour councillors John Wentworth and Pat Ryan claim that they were just “momentarily” taking a break from the important meeting they were in.
Photo: Daily Mail
The meeting in question was to discuss redundancies in the council, after an overspend of several million.
“Croydon is the home of (the team they were watching) Crystal Palace, so I can understand the councillors wanting the check up on the progress of their team,” local resident Tom Ellis told the media when the story was first reported. “Doing it in a packed council meeting, where some people in the public gallery might be losing their jobs, however, is taking your devotion a bit far and a bit disrespectful of the other people in the council meeting.”
While this might not be an out-and-out tech story, I’m still amazed — and perversely amused — by how senior politicians seem to think it’s okay to use their iPads for non-work activities in situations like this.
It’s certainly not the first time we’ve heard a similar story. This time last year, a Conservative MP (also in the U.K.) admitted to sneaking a quick game of Candy Crush Saga during a dull parliamentary debate.
A few years earlier, back in 2011, 67-year old Italian politician Simeone Di Cagno Abbrescia, a member of Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi’s PDL party, was caught looking at photos of escorts during a parliamentary session. When caught, he argued that the pics were pop-up ads which “came up suddenly” while he was navigating a respectable news site.
Probably not Apple’s finest advert for why iPads should be used as serious business aids.
Source: Daily Mail
