I’ve seen some idiotic security controls in my time, but yesterday at Estació de França, Barcelona, beats all of them. The station, as the name implies, is the old terminus station for trains from the north of Catalonia towards France, and it’s also the station where night trains for France […]
As if anyone needed more evidence that I spend time thinking about odd things and then blogging about them, here’s yet more evidence: this is a post about the science of the ‘Jabulani’ balls used at the World Cup in South Africa. More precisely I raise the question: is all […]
There are two ways to use Twitter as a politician. The first (the right way) is to build a discussion, a conversation with people, to reply to normal Twitter users as well as other politicians and journalists. Politicians that understand this include @jeaninehennis @edballsmp and @corybooker. The second way (the […]
I’m in the United States for just the second time in my life and I’ve had some time to reflect a little on my impressions of the place. Last week I was at Personal Democracy Forum (PdF) in New York, and I’m currently writing in Washington DC. I’m here simply […]
I’ve been at Personal Democracy Forum in New York and I’ve started to get thinking about which US political organisation tools could be effectively used for politics in Europe. Here are a few ideas… Groundcrew – a system of rapid mobile organising via SMS, iPhone apps, and Google Maps. Could […]
No-one visiting a politician’s website realistically expects the site to be entirely written by the actual individual. But how should a site be written and designed on a candidate’s behalf? Importantly, what person should be used in the text?
This blog has been a little quiet recently, but it’s not because I’ve stopped writing. Post-election UK politics is more interesting than at any point for the last few years and I’ve been entering the debates by writing elsewhere – in the main because this blog has a very EU-focused […]
“Online campaigning may be crucial to the winner’s success, as suggested by Harriet Harman’s 2007 deputy leadership win, a disparate electorate and the myriad opportunities now afforded by social media Just last week I wrote a piece for Progress entitled ‘Was 2010 the internet election?’ – essentially looking at the […]
“Was 2010 the internet election? It was the first, but the internet alone didn’t win the election, and politicians need to avoid the pitfall of broadcasting without listening Last week a couple of hundred people involved in internet politics met to discuss the impact of the internet on the UK […]
As the debate about the composition of the UK’s government continues, I’ve taken a moment to reflect on my personal and professional involvement in the election – as webmanager for 12 Labour candidates. Here are the 12, and how they did. I’m happy to be working with a whole group […]
Folks involved in internet politics in Europe are often in awe of their counterparts in the USA, a sentiment further underlined by the Obama phenomenon. In light of that the folks behind Personal Democracy Forum, one of the biggest US conferences dedicated to politics and the internet, organised a European […]
I’m forever astounded when dealing with people outside my circle of friends and work colleagues when it comes to dealing with computers. Still today, in 2010, it’s far too acceptable in western Europe to have totally, horribly, shockingly bad computer skills and yet work every day in front of a […]
