Today I’ve accessed three different MySociety websites: TheyWorkForYou, WriteToThem and WhatDoTheyKnow.  I honestly don’t know what I’d do without these powerful tools: MySociety are indespensible and we’d all miss them if they weren’t here.

I was using WriteToThem to contact Sarah Teather to urge her to support Early Day Motion (EDM) 2141 that her parliamentary colleague Jo Swinson has tabled.

 FREE OUR BILLS CAMPAIGN, 22.07.2008, Swinson, Jo

That this House believes it has a duty to publish Bills in such a fashion that they can be accessed as easily and as early as possible by the public; notes that the non-partisan Free Our Bills campaign is urging the House to publish bill texts in a new electronic format to improve accessibility and public scrutiny of legislation; further notes that the changes requested would have no impact on the content of Bills, nor upon the process by which they are currently made; considers that the new format could be delivered cheaply and quickly; acknowledges that the Leader of the House’s office did not accept a prior request for new formatting from mySociety, nor provide an explanation of why the changes could be made; and calls on the Leader of House to ask House of Commons Clerks to work with Free Our Bills campaign staff to commence publication of Bills in the new format.

I wrote to Sarah

“As you will recall from previous meetings and correspondence, I have a strong belief in the enabling potential of new media technologies in mproving accessibility and increasing timely access to information. The opportunities of new media technologies are being ignored or locked by parliamentary authorities, preventing public scrutiny of legislation by the widest possible audience.”

“EDM 2141 calls on the “Leader of House to ask House of Commons Clerks to work with Free Our Bills campaign staff to commence publication of bills in the new format.” I urge you to support this EDM and to give as much support as you can to this proposal.”

Why don’t you write to your MP about Freeing Our Bills using WriteToThem today too?

Daniel Finkelstein puts the boot into the Lib Dems and encourages leadership machinations ahead of the party conference season, goading Ming into a long walk along a short pier.

“Remarkably few people will shout through to the kitchen: ‘Hold dinner for a moment, love, Sarah Teather’s on.’ ” – I must be one of the remarkable few.

Sarah Teather and other Brent Liberal Democrates have joined facebook. I’ve poked her, have you?

I wasn’t expecting to see our Sarah on Facebook… A few years ago electronic networking wasn’t on her list methods for constituency communications. How things change over time: the ubiquity of the term “social networking”, meaning a twittering, bebobuzzing space for me to show my face on the internet, has overtaken “blogging” in terms of its penetration into the nations daily lexicon.

Sarah sees Facebook as a compliment to her existing constituency working: “It’s important to be accessible to all my constituents, and there are lots of ways for people to meet me face to face.”

“Young people often have very strong opinions on local and national issues. Sites such as Facebook provide another way for me to hear their views. I can also use the site to tell young people about the work I am doing on their behalf. For lots of younger adults the internet is now the main way of keeping in touch. I hope that having a page on Facebook will encourage many more people to come forward with issues and campaigns they would like me to take up.”

But Facebook is a closed community, a members only space on the internet: at least MySpace member pages are public! These “Social websites expose class divide“. Blogging, i.e. online publishing with comments, is open and public and seeks to engage readers in a transparent dialog.
As we know from recent escapades that some people around Brent’s elected representatives like to engage in online ‘activism’… So I hope that Sarah’s Facebook account and our other MPs for that matter are only being operated by her and not by their teams. As we know from the Facebook terms of service, in the User Conduct section:

• In addition, you agree not to use the Service or the Site to:
• register for more than one User account, register for a User account on behalf of an individual other than yourself, or register for a User account on behalf of any group or entity;
• impersonate any person or entity, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent yourself, your age or your affiliation with any person or entity;
• impersonate any person or entity, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent yourself, your age or your affiliation with any person or entity;

Speaking on the ‘carnage’ following the local elections in Brent, Labour Cllr Mary Arnold acknowledges that Team Yellow worked hard for the victories they knotched up:

“There is also the Teather factor – there’s a machinery that the Lib Dems have got for producing leaflets and campaigning, for bringing people in to canvass.”

The Lib Dems did manage to distribute a lot of paper in Mapesbury and Queen’s Park – significantly more than teams Red and Blue.

What will the Teather Factor mean in the light of the new Brent Council? When Ken Livingstone was the MP for Brent East in the 1990’s he was never shy of putting the boot in to the council, Blue or Red. Will Sarah continue with her tactics to date? When she was a lone Lib Dem MP for a constituency with a Labour Council, each opportunity for highlighting problems with the administration and delivery of services was taken. Now Brent Council has no overall control, the Lib Dems do have the most seats on the Council and look likely form the Executive at the Full Council meeting on the 22nd May. I’ll be monitoring for any noticable shift in tone over the coming months.

Not awake at 415am? Shame as you missed Sarah’s victory speech! If you want to watch it you can thanks to the BBC.

Paul Palmer of the Evening Standard, who was having terrible trouble with his laptop when trying to submit his story, writes about the Brent East result. He focuses on Yasmin loosing rather than Sarah winning.

More later, when google news advises me of it!