The Political Weblog Project is a collaborative effort designed to encourage MPs, Councillors and other elected officials to communicate more effectively online via the intelligent use of weblogs. Elected officials who wish to take part in this scheme must follow these simple rules that exist primarily for your own benefit:Rule #1 - You must own (or be ready to purchase) your own domain name.
Rule #2 - You must use the technology to engage in two-way commmunication
Rule #3 - You must fund/source the weblog with your own money or resources.
Those who pledge to follow these rules will be provided with all the necessary assets and expertise at an extremely competitive rate.
What is a weblog? | Why two-way communication? | Why do I need my own domain?
More politicians need to be using weblogs properly. Maybe you can help.
PRIMARY NAVIGATION
Main Page
Starting and Running a Political Weblog
Information for Councillors
Information for Members of Parliament
Information for Cabinet Members
WEBLOG PACKAGES
(withdrawn)
CONTACT DETAILS
manic AT bloggerheads DOT com
If you click on any of the 'Blogs' categories below, you will find that these entries have been individually backdated to correspond with the launch date of the blog that entry references (in order to provide a categorised and sequential history of these blogs).
CATEGORIES
Blogs: All (31) Blogs: Campaign (2) Blogs: Councillors (Labour) (1) Blogs: House of Lords (1) Blogs: MPs (Conservative) (1) Blogs: MPs (Labour) (5) Blogs: MPs (Liberal Democrat) (2) Blogs: Proxies (20) Designers and Providers (4) Education and Seminars (2) Fighting Ignorance (6) General (1) News (2)« Political blogging seminar preview (on the subject of potential abuse of your trust) | Main | Special Event - MPs and Weblogs Seminar » October 4, 2005 Conservative leadership contenders - who cares?Considering that the great unwashed will have a say in who gets to be next leader of the Conservative Party, you would think that at least one of the smart bods behind one of the following contenders would see the sense in engaging with the online crowd, right? Wrong. David Cameron - No two-way communication on his website apart from the usual 'send me an email' invite. Nothing approaching a blog, just a sequential newsfeed. Ken Clarke - Email and newsfeed. Again. But they do dress up the email form as your chance to 'comment' (presumably so his team may pick and choose the best sound-bites). David Davis - Email and newsfeed. Again.. But both have been given prominence on the front page. Do try to contain any overwhelming feelings of gratitude. Dr Liam Fox - King of the clever strapline and now master of a new domain. With a button marked 'FOXblog'!!!! And an RSS link! Be still my beating... oh, wait, it's just another newsfeed. Edward Leigh - Wow! His front page is *covered* in newsfeeds! He must really, really, really care. Theresa May - Email. Newsfeeds. Online photo gallery. *yawn* Sir Malcolm Rifkind - Doesn't even have his own website. Instead, he shares space with the Kensington & Chelsea Conservatives. Look how seriously these people take the challenge to engage with their own party members and the electorate. It warms the heart, doesn't it? Can you feel the love in the room? UPDATE - As Anthony Wells notes, David Cameron and David Davis have dedicated campaign sites: 1. If they each ran their own personal website, there would be no need for this external campaign website nonsense; they could instead have set up shop at their established website and taken control of traffic almost immediately. (Hint: Google does not trust new domain names.) 2. David Cameron says: "Send us an email if you'd like your comments posted here." If they like your comments, that is. This is not a conversation, this is not the way to establish trust. 3. David Davis has a big 'BLOG' link on his front page that links to this monstrosity, which is written by staff and does not allow comments. Posted by timireland on October 4, 2005 9:38 AM in the category Fighting Ignorance CommentsTim - Davis and Cameron have got separate campaign pages - David Davis - http://www.modernconservatives.com/ - has a link to his campaign blog on the front page. True, it doesn't have comments enabled, and while one of the authors goes under the moniker of "David Davis" they talk about David Davis in the third person, so it isn't him (thought I suppose that is infinitely better than someone pretending to be David Davis.) David Cameron's - http://www.cameroncampaign.org/ - doesn't have anything interactive, the link to post your comments does exactly that - you can post your comments to David and if he likes them he might put them up ;) Posted by: Anthony Wells at October 4, 2005 10:35 AM Thanks, Andrew - updating entry. Posted by: Manic at October 4, 2005 11:28 AM (Hint: Google does not trust new domain names.) David Davis got things *half* right on that front - www.modernconservatives.com isn't a new domain name, he's had it registered for about 5 years and used exactly the same address in the 2001 leadership election. On the downside, I think it has just had a logo or something on it for most of the last 3 years, so it hasn't got any googlejuice. Still, it's the first result for David Davis campaign though sadly (for him) on the second page of results for "david davis". Posted by: Anthony Wells at October 4, 2005 11:58 AM David Davis has a blog run by someone else for him that he would be better off publicising: http://daviddavisleader.blogspot.com/ Posted by: Gavin Ayling at October 9, 2005 9:02 PM Post a commentThanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out) (If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.) |