2003-02-04»
bees in bonnets»
About seven months ago, I was gibbering in my Sunday Times column about Internet pressure groups. I rather glibly promised to give links to anyone who mailed me with info about their own single issue site. I’ve now dug up the mailbox that contained all of those URLs. Gritting my teeth with the shame of being so late, here are those links. No guarantee of quality here – they’re just people who wrote in. It’s spoor for the googlebot, mainly.
Somewhere to go if you’re a descendant of the Bond-Jones family of Liverpool.
A slightly strange free online test for heart trouble., together with a history of the Norfolk and Norwich hospital and the unsuccessful fight for its survival.
A kinda warbloggy, kinda not Irish blog.
A site by Brian Barder which, as he says, “absolutely buzzes with multiple bees from my pinkish bonnet”. It’s sort of JerryPournelle.com mixed with Samizdata.net in the style of David Brake’s Weblog. Also, possibly, Jimmy Young.
A site about looking after children’s teeth.
A parody of National Westminster bank.
A site that lets you add your own entry to the Band Family Tree.
And Greenhouse Gas News, which does exactly what it says.
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the story behind faxyourmp»
I’ve had a rant building up about this for some time, but Stef’s always been better at the nuclear-tipped flame than me.
We’ve running FaxYourMp.com for two years now, always in the expectation that Parliament would eventually introduce their own system for making representatives more easy to contact. Not only has that not happened – they’ve now started filtering constituency mails. Their obscenity filter has caught constitutent mails about the upcoming Sexual Offences Act, and a party position paper on – of course – censorship.
Stef has all the facts on faxyourmp.com, and more. It’s really worth reading, both as an examination of where e-government is now, how far it has to go. And how easy it could be to get there.
One of the most heartening aspects of the service has been the letters that constituents write. Almost without exception, the letters they send MPs are reasoned, well thought out, not always perfectly spelled, but often insightful engagements in civic society. Far from the image of a disaffected and disengaged electorate, we see a mass of people who’ve discovered that they can effectively participate in democracy- if artificial and archaic barriers are not put in their way.
I can’t be the only one who sees the irony in the fact that in the week that we celebrate 50K faxes served, the people whose job should be doing what we do for free are still trying (feebly) to raise barriers against the citizenry.
There’s a dramatic mindset change that needs to happen over there, because, if you will not give us greater democracy, we will simply take it from you.
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