Puffbox

David Cameron has taken the Conservatives' promises on availability of public data a few steps further, in principle at least, in a speech at Imperial College on taking 'broken politics' into the 'post-bureaucratic age'. 'In Britain today, there are over 100,000 public bodies producing a huge amount of information,' he said; 'Most of this information [...] read on »

ConservativeHome blogger Tim Montgomerie posted a damning article over the weekend, condemning 'waste, over-spending and poor revenue strategies' at Conservative central office. One particular remark jumps out: 'The Tory leadership did not fix the party's finances during the good economic times and are now facing very difficult decisions as a consequence.' Sound familiar? Tim's piece [...] read on »

There are quite a few reasons to warm to the new Conservatives.com site. A refreshing colour palette; well-executed content tabs; a good solid navbar along the top; and most importantly, lots of human faces. The source code drops all the right names: Flash, Amazon web services, JQuery, Lightbox, and so on. But the apparent obsession [...] read on »

It really is Twitter week in Westminster. Barely ten days after the first MP began tweeting, and only a week after Number 10, the @Conservatives have launched an official channel - although so far, it's precisely the one-way Twitterfeed-powered channel we all expected @DowningStreet to be (but wasn't). Likely to be more interesting is @conhome, [...] read on »

OK, I'm an idiot. The lengthy and fair-minded piece I wrote this morning about a speech by Tory shadow chancellor George Osborne at the RSA was a year late. Osborne made some interesting points about the need 'to recast the political settlement for the digital age.' And now today, there's an email doing the rounds [...] read on »

David Cameron takes his 'be my friend' campaign to the Guardian's Comment Is Free this morning, with a piece about the internet 'transforming our political culture', and how young people are more political than ever - just not via the old-style channel of political parties. As I noted last week, he's presenting this new concept [...] read on »

I'm genuinely surprised to see the Tories' new Facebook-targeted viral video. It's David Cameron, sitting in a drab - in the Commons, judging by the furniture? he says 'Whitehall' - office. Then it's Jimmy Cliff. Then it's flashy animations with a string of familiar electoral promises, some more substantial and quantifiable than others. Although having [...] read on »