Puffbox

On the day the BBC launches its Democracy Live website comes news that MPs speaking in the Commons chamber are 'to be discouraged' from reading out text stored on an electronic device. No, seriously. But hey, back to Democracy Live. There's a lot to like about it. The front page 'video wall' owes a lot to [...] read on »

Bad news for anyone who's just put a massive amount of work into an innovative, cutting-edge website for an MP. (Ahem.) I've received confirmation from the British Computer Society - oops, sorry, 'BCS - The Chartered Institute for IT' - that their annual awards recognising the best websites by Members of Parliament aren't quite as [...] read on »

I had a bit of a brainwave earlier, which led me to wondering how many MPs run websites on WordPress. Taking as my starting point the Total Politics directory of Parliamentarians' blogs, I soon received a number of extra suggestions from Twitter folks... leading me to the following list of MPs whose blogs (or non-blog websites) [...] read on »

I wrote last year about the insanity of the annual Budget speech(es), in which the Chancellor stands up and reads off a list of numbers. In business, you'd never contemplate doing that without some kind of visual aid. But come on, visual aids in Parliament? Let me take you to Canberra, where there's been an outbreak [...] read on »

Did you know the House of Lords is currently inviting opinions on how it, and Parliament generally, can relate better to the public? No? Neither did I, which kind of proves something in itself. It's the Lords' Information Committee, it's called People And Parliament... and it closes in two days. The deadline for full written submissions [...] read on »

It would appear that the plan to exempt MPs and Lords from Freedom Of Information provisions has been ditched. The Mail's Benedict Brogan is trying to unpick what just happened: Gordon Brown claims that Tories have pulled out of a cross-party deal to introduce the change. The suggestion from No10 is that up until yesterday the [...] read on »

The Parliament web team have launched a new News site for the new parliamentary session - and hurrah, it's done in WordPress. I can't really claim any credit for actually doing any of it, despite what you may have read elsewhere. The internal development team did a considerable amount of customisation, most of which won't be [...] read on »

Labour MP for Newport West, Paul Flynn has apparently 'been stripped of a Parliamentary allowance for making fun of other MPs on his blog', if you read today's BBC piece on the subject. Flynn himself tells the story slightly differently, on said blog. I've had a similar run-in with my own MP, Newbury's Richard Benyon (Con). [...] read on »

Congratulations (hardly for the first time, of course) to the MySociety crew: in less than two months, it looks like their community of volunteers has completed the work to timestamp the 42,019 video clips supplied to They Work For You by BBC Parliament, covering the entire 2007-8 parliamentary session. Hero status is rightly accorded to [...] read on »

Flicking across the news channels tonight, I bumped into recorded coverage of Wednesday's Lords Communications Committee. You had the BBC's Frank Gardner and Sky's Tim Marshall, plus a couple of other senior journalists, giving their frank opinions on the state of media, politics and government. I only caught the last few minutes; it looks like [...] read on »