I’ve used this column to speak out against technology for technology’s sake, but news earlier this week from Wiltshire Council reeked so badly of digital vanity, I couldn’t resist it.

In times of austerity, budget and jobs cuts – news that council meetings will now be broadcast live from the chamber in Trowbridge smacks of somebody rolling in digital snake oil of the finest Wild-West tradition. The council says it will help enhance the transparency with which the council makes its decisions, but in fact they took the line of the third party selling this service hook, line and sinker.

Launching in the delightful sounding local democracy week, the idea of live broadcasts will show us the debates that affect our communities. Yet, having watched five minutes of the corporate directors in the opening speech, I can safely say I’ll stick to Jeremy Kyle over the winter. Unless you allow me to electrify the chairs of committee members, or send in a congregation of alligators to harass Chairman Roy While – I’ll stick to reading the pertinent points of a 90 minute session in a 200 word report in my weekly WT.

Broadcasts of council meetings are a vanity project at best and an absolute waste of money at worst.

Our biggest concern shouldn’t be what tie an important director chose to wear today, but just how much of our money was pumped into a project with viewing figures I could count on one hand. While my colleagues at the WT were facing silence from the Council about how much this new broadcast service cost, I had a search around the web and discovered some interesting facts about Wiltshire Council’s web broadcaster supplier, Public-I Group, based in Brighton.

According to a downloadable document on the government’s “digital market-place” Public-I’s consultants cost up to £1,250 per day and its Connect Social webcasting solution costs a cool £21,500 a year.

If these figures are not what Wiltshire Council paid, I invite them to clarify.

I really hope our leaders got Wiltshire a better deal, because this would have almost funded a social worker for an entire year and delivered a direct benefit to the overstretched frontline.

As the fanfare for this project dies down, I really hope somebody at Wiltshire Council feels this was a justified investment – but I fear it would have been cheaper to hire a car and a driver to personally deliver ‘viewers’ to the chamber.