Matthew Cusack
On Thursday (May 22) the ‘Community Consultative’ page on Metgasco’s website did some rounds on social media, primarily because the body of the document was written entirely in Latin.
A company spokesperson website had been hacked, while members of the Lock the Gate Alliance Facebook page who used the website’s internal search engine to find the page, claimed that the page was indexed in the search results as being uploaded 13 February 2013.
The page was taken offline a few hours later and replaced with a splash page reading, ‘Access denied. You are not authorised to access this page’
Other commenters were convinced that it was what publishers refer to as Lorem Ipsum, place-holding text that is written in Latin and is still used occasionally to demonstrate how a publication will appear once it has been filled with actual information.
Certainly one would assume that had Metgasco been hacked then they would be able to simply and quickly retrieve the original webpage from a backup.
As such, this was taken by some as proof of Metgasco’s lack of genuine and effective community consultation.
Social media pundits who used an online translator to make the text readable in English were greeted with nonsense text often about protein, such as, ‘It’s chocolate, the mass of the football a lot of protein, my dear,’ or ‘Learn some tips for the same protein drink.’
Some commented that this was more effective than the communication at meetings undertaken locally by the company or by government.
As Echonetdaily reported recently, the final attempt to sway public opinion towards a positive view of the gas industry was held as an invitation only event in Lismore and without media invited to be present.
Metgasco recently hit back against the suspension of its licence suggesting that it was ‘unlawful’, believing they had fulfilled their obligations to provide genuine and effective communication with the local community.
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