That arch-sceptic of bloggers, Professor Stephen Coleman, has succumbed to the lure of blogging (for a week at least) as a guest blogger on Connecting Bristol. He’s just returned from an intellectually challenging conference in Amsterdam to pose some points about the changing nature of citizenship: 1. The rules of Read more…
The Audit of Political Engagement series is the Hansard Society’s annual political check-up of the nation’s health. It includes original poll data from surveys conducted by Ipsos MORI, which allow yearly comparisons to be made about the British public’s attitude to politics and their level of engagement with the political Read more…
Having recently dipped my toe into the TwitterWorld (or whatever it is called) my attention (h/t Simon Dickson) was drawn to the new Twitttering from no.10 who then today drew my attention to their new Flickr account. Personally I’m not sure about Twitter. I think it is because it is Read more…
The talented folks from Norfolk who ran the X-factor session at the symposium have now posted their evaluation on YouTube. Well done guys. You’ve joined a small group who have actually posted something about their attendance at the symposia. A group that sadly doesn’t include its sponsor the DCLG or Read more…
The Obama08 campaign have always made a big deal out of the fact that they raise all their funds from ordinary citizens whereas Clinton and McCain have taken millions of dollars from lobbyists and political action committees. The latest sales promotion that the Obama campaign are using is the chance Read more…
MySociety, of TheyWorkForYou and WhatDoTheyKnow fame have started the Free Our Bills campaign to get Parliament to provide upcoming bills online in a structured data format so that anyone can publish, compare, comment or do whatever they like on them easily and quickly. So far MySociety’s attempts to persuade Parliamentary Read more…
The government seems to be having problems with the human embryology and fertilisation bill. It appears they were intending to apply the whip, but Catholics, in particular, are objecting and calling for a free vote. One quote in this article really caught my attention, Denis MacShane, a former Europe minister, Read more…
I’ve been following the Lord (Clive) Soley instigated group blog for a few days now and despite the awful design, name, and technical set-up it is working well at the moment. In my opinion it is because the blogging Lords are writing in a very natural language. Of the nine Read more…
Colin McKay, a Canadian Government communicator and blogger and social media pioneer extraordinaire, has written The Secret Underground Guide to Social Media for Organisations. It is not a technical guide. More a cultural, managerial guide to avoid the roadblocks set by IT and legal departments. Colin has blogged about it Read more…
One of the highlights of the empowerment symposium in February was going for dinner and sitting between Phil Booth, from NO2ID and Carolyn Lukensmeyer from AmericaSpeaks. Amongst other things we talked about the previous symposium in Budapest and I went on as usual about how inspiring a speaker had been. Read more…