Money and Politics: Illuminating the connection (in CA at least)

MAPLight.org illuminates the connection between money and politics. We shine a light on campaign contributions and show their related legislative outcomes, which leads to a more informed public and election reform. This site uses a rich (please excuse the pun) database of campaign contributions and voting records in the California Read more…

£6,460,000 to spend

There already has been much said about the news that MPs have awarded themselves £10,000 to spend improving the public understanding of parliament.  MySociety have added to the noise with a very sound request for MPs to sign a pledge on Pledgebank saying they will give £2,000 of the allowance Read more…

Youtube does politics

YouTube have launched You Choose ’08, a centralised hub for videos by US presidential hopefuls. There’s lot’s of interesting stuff on it. I was particularly struck by the fact that there have been over 1 million views of Barack Obama’s videos, and the next highest is Hillary Clinton with just Read more…

Why politicians should blog

Tom Watson MP has given a great illustration of why politicians should blog.  A constituent of his was having problems with a utility company.  Tom used his blog to ask his network for information about the company.  Unsurprisingly that post featured quite highly in Google searches for the company.  The Read more…

The Changing Role of the British State

Leader of the House of Commons, Jack Straw, spoke at an NLGN meeting yesterday.  His speech is reproduced in full here.  I’d skip the first third where he talks history and skip to the parts where he outlines a refreshing apolitical view of the interaction between the governed and the Read more…

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