MP says no to constituents’ emails.

 

Dominic Raab MP

A newly-elected Conservative MP has refused to receive email from his constituents, according to a leading UK campaign website set up by a former Obama Presidential aide.

Tory MP tells constituents not to email him

Today an MP threatened to complain to the Information Commissioner about an increasingly popular campaigning group cause which called on his constituents to email him.

 

Talk to the hand

Brief Encounters of the Transport Kind

This is a really fun site called Brief Encounters. It lets you post romantic, funny or bizarre stories about things that happened to you on public transport. And let’s face it,

Why everybody’s talkin’ ’bout Wikileaks

Ssh! by Kradlum

Wikileaks. It’s like the Freedom of Information Act turned up to 10. And not surprisingly, right now it’s causing a storm at the Pentagon, across the web and among fans of transparency.

Based on the founder’s premise that ‘if journalism is good, it is controversial by its nature,’ (he says it here), the first major case blown open by Julian Assange’s whistleblowing site, has resulted in one of the biggest leaks in US military history. More than 90,000 classified internal records of US military incidents in Afghanistan (AKA ‘warlogs’) over the past six years were published on Sunday.

An ideal trip (experimental)

I’m experimenting with a new service called Plinky and I’ve been asked to describe my perfect holiday.

OK, here goes: it would involve

Feedback from my mini e-democracy survey

Let me relieve you of your tenterhooks!

I’ve received some interesting feedback from  some pollsters who took the time to leave their views on the  question I posed, inspired by the local issue reporting (eg broken street light, fly tipping) site FixMyStreet.

The opinions varied from pole to pole, pun intended. Tim Green says: “I think it’s sad that non-profits have to make improved interfaces for councils to get them to a point where they’re usable, but also recognise that it’s important that it should be possible for non-profits to

Poll on e-democracy sites is live – cast your vote!

Websites developed by non-profit organisations which develop web tools to help you report problems and issues in your neighbourhood to the council are doing some great work . Like Fixmystreet for example. But some people I’ve spoken to believe fervently that

Young people and political engagement

When it comes to engaging people with politics – whether that’s making sure decision makers hear your voice about local matters or a broken street light right up to lobbying government for a change in the law – us Brits are a pitifully apathetic lot.

I was at Future Democracy 09, an excellent and well-established event which takes place annually in London organised by Headstar, looking at ways the internet can improve political engagement (‘e-democracy’) and I chatted to a researcher who had come from Italy from the University of

How my council is encouraging us to “get involved”

Right now, I’m here at Brighton and Hove City council’s first Get Involved event, an opportunity to tell the public about what it is they pay their council tax for and perhaps how they might spend it better. The day will be devoted to showing how to be involved with the council, health and emergency services in the community.

What brings me here? Well

Like a truffle pig in the woods – the hunt for blends.

not that kind of spork silly!

To help me gather new examples, I’ve started a hashtag thread on Twitter as part of my hunt for linguistic blends new and old.

A blend is an amalgamation of two words to create a new one. A Classic examples that springs to mind is ‘brunch.’  Others include Peter Andre’s seminal (ahem!) album from the 1990s ‘Insania;’ the more recent ‘Freakonomics‘ from Stephen Dubner and