Puffbox

Before you get carried away, it’s the prime minister of Kazakhstan who has demanded that all his Cabinet colleagues get blogging. Reuters reports:

“I have opened a blog on the government website,” Masimov told a government meeting. “So I order all ministers… to start personal blogs where people will be able to ask you questions that you must answer.”

Masimov started his own blog last week with an introductory post that has already received 152 comments, some of which were complaints about the quality of tap water in villages. He has since ordered the cabinet to investigate the criticisms.

For the record, I’m not sure you can actually order someone to blog. I wrote something on this ages ago, referring to David Miliband’s pioneering efforts: ‘The channel is nothing without having someone willing and able to talk to (and with) us.’

But anyway… the Kazakh PM’s website is running on BlogEngine.NET, not a platform I know well. There’s embedded Flash video, comments on every (?) post, and a fair smattering of RSS icons. He’s not exactly prolific, with only 5 posts on the site since the end of November, but he’s getting plenty of responses.

If anyone happens to speak Kazakh (or is it Russian?), feel free to tell us all about the content. No Borat references required, thank you very much.