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 is [...] read on »

The explicit references to the internet in David Cameron's big speech on 'fixing broken politics' this morning don't come until the end. All MPs' expenses to be published online; the same will go for 'all other public servants earning over £150,000'. An Obama-esque pledge to put all national spending over £25,000 online. A commitment to [...] 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 provides [...] read on »

The Tories' latest engagement initiative, Cameron Direct takes its 'town hall meeting' roadshow to a Plymouth primary school tonight. The event will be broadcast live, and then 'on demand', in video via the UK-based SelfCast.com. It also looks like they'll be liveblogging the event through, guess what, CoverItLive. I'm not entirely sure it's worth doing [...] read on »

Over at the Telegraph, Mick Fealty rightly reflects on the 'fascinating confluence of ideas cascading into the body politic at the moment', with both right and left suddenly making an issue of innovation, open source, and all that good stuff. The latest contribution was David Cameron's speech at NESTA this morning: Indeed, the odd thing about [...] read on »

With civil servants' blogging habits such a hot topic, I can't avoid mentioning the reference casually dropped into PMQs by David Cameron this afternoon. There is a new strategist, a man called David Muir. Yes, I have done a bit of research—he is the chief strategist and on the internet he has listed his favourite book. [...] 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 »

Of all the topics I might have expected David Cameron to speak in favour of, standardised data formats was not top of the list. So I'm grateful to Nick Booth for pointing to Cameron's speech last Friday to the Conservative Councillors' Association. At the moment, local government bodies must provide the public with information about the [...] 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 »