Simon Dickson, principal consultant at Puffbox, writes stuff about e-government, online news and politics. Some important people read it.

Commons motion to free postcodes

9 July 2008 1 , ,

I've just come across an Early Day Motion at the House of Commons, dated 1 July 2008, by Labour's Khalid Mahmood:

That this House believes that the Register of Postcodes is a national public asset and should be freely available.

Short and sweet. And attracting healthy numbers of (mostly Labour) MPs willing to add their names in support. It's one of the most popular EDMs tabled in the last couple of weeks.

Now, let's bear in mind that EDMs are widely derided as little more than parliamentary graffiti. But given the Power Of Information taskforce's activity in this general area, the sustained traffic to my own recent blog posting on the subject, and favourable follow-ups from both e-gov minister Tom Watson and the Guardian's Free Our Data campaign... is this suddenly going somewhere?

UPDATE: OK, strange things happening now. 'The Status of this EDM is Suspended,' according to the Parliament site. Anyone?

UPDATE 2: Now showing as 'withdrawn'. Curiouser and curiouser.

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