I mentioned in my last post that Iain Dale’s guide to political blogging will almost certainly point you to a blog or two which you didn’t know about before. I’m thinking specifically of the blog by the UK’s minister for e-government, Pat McFadden.
Before you rush over there, be prepared for a disappointment. It started in July 2006, a few weeks after McFadden took on the e-gov brief. There have been six postings since, on a weekly(ish) basis with long gaps. It looks like an extension to the site’s barebones CGI-driven CMS, rather than any recognisable blogging tool. There’s no comment function, no permalinks, no RSS.
The content is purely constituency-centric, and even then, it reads more like the ‘MP’s Diary’ column you typically see in the local paper. In fact, one wonders how seriously he is taking his e-government duties: his biography makes no reference to the portfolio.
Responses
Lots of Politicians decide to get into this whole ‘blog thing’, and set up their own blog. How, though, do they expect to have a conversation with the electorate when they don’t participate in other blogs or, as in Pat McFadden’s case, allow comments on their own?
As e-Government minister, he should be the one who understands blogs and their potential, not only from the point of view of improving his own party’s popularity, but more importantly as a new avenue of Government communication which if used properly could stem the tide of falling turnout and help people form opinions and then express them.
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