Dave Briggs – Page 296 – An online notebook

6 days to stop MPs concealing their expenses

January 17, 2009

A quick repost of an important message on the MySociety blog:

Uh oh. Ministers are about to conceal MPs’ expenses, even though the public hasjust paid £1m to get them all ready for publication, and even though the tax man expects citizens to do what MPs don’t have to. They buried the news on the day of the Heathrow runway announcement. This is heading in the diametric wrong direction from government openness.

You can help in the following three ways:

1. Please write to your MP about this www.WriteToThem.com – ask them to lobby against this concealment, and tell them that TheyWorkForYou will be permanently and prominently noting those MPs who took the opportunity to fight against this regressive move. The millions of constituents who will check this site before the next election will doutbtless be interested.

2. Join this facebook group and invite all your least political friends (plus your most political too). Send them personal mails, phone or text them. Encourage them to write to their politicians too.

3. Write to your local paper to tell them you’re angry, and ask them to ask their readers to do the above. mySociety’s never-finished site http://news.mysociety.orgmight be able to help you here.

NB. mySociety is strictly non-partisan, by mission and by ethics. However, when it looks like Parliament is about to take a huge step in the wrong direction on transparency, we’ve no problem at all with stepping up when changes happen that threaten both the public interest and the ongoing value of sites like TheyWorkForYou and WhatDoTheyKnow.

I’ve sent an email via WriteToThem to my local MP, James Plaice. Here’s the text I sent (mainly copied and pasted from other sources) – feel free to re-use it for your efforts:

I am writing to express my concern at the recent decision to conceal the details of MPs’ expenses. I do not understand why it is necessary for MP’s to be the only paid public officials who will not have to disclose the full details of their expenses and allowances.

After all, members of the Scottish Parliament have to declare all oftheir expenses – why does the British Parliament need to be different?

As my local MP, I hope you will be lobbying against this concealment and that you will also be of those enlightened MPs who, knowing that they have nothing to hide, are willing to publish the full details of their expenses anyway.

Bookmarks for January 11th through January 14th

January 14, 2009

Stuff I have bookmarked for January 11th through January 14th:

Social reporting: some more tips and thoughts – "You need to remember there are several different audiences for any event and this should guide you as to the way you need to report it"
Tech-Savvy Communications: A Toolkit for Nonprofits –
Wild Apricot Blog : Creating a Social Media Policy for Your Nonprofit – "Who should speak for your organization in social media? How can you control what’s being said about your group and your cause? If you're not sure, it may be time to work out a social media policy for your staff and volunteers who blog and chat and comment online, where the personal and professional lines often blur. "
Use Social Media Efficiently – 52 Tips – Beth Kanter's 52 (count 'em!) tips on how non profits can get the most out of social media
LabourList.org – Derek Draper's attempt to get a half decent Labour group blog going. Why the closed, propriatory platform when WordPress could have done the job better and easier? Other criticism is that it describes itself as a 'grassroots' site. While the author list is impressive, grassroots it ain't.

Life must go on in Gaza and Sderot

January 13, 2009

…is the title of a wonderful blog, which describes itself thus:

This blog is written by 2 friends. One lives in Sajaia refugee camp in Gaza and the other lives in Sderot, a small town near Gaza on the Israeli side. There is ongoing violence between Israel and Gaza which has intensified greatly since October 2000. Many have been killed and many have been injured. The media coverage on both sides has been extremely biased. Our Blog is written by 2 real people living and communicating on both sides of the border.

Dave @ BCS

January 12, 2009

I’m going to be talking to the good folk at the Central London branch of the British Computer Society this Thursday, on the topic of The Search for Shared Meaning: How Social Media Changes Everything:

Blogs, online video, photo sharing and social networking are redefining the way that people interact with each other and with organisations. Understanding the implications of this is vital for any organisation which wishes to remain relevant in a Web 2.0 world. Dave will discuss how organisations can approach these new tools, and how such an approach should relate to existing strategies and communication plans.

Weighty stuff, I hope I don’t disappoint!

It all kicks off at 6pm at the BCS HQ on Southampton Street in London.

Hope to see some DavePress regulars there – and for those that won’t be, I hope there will be a twitter back channel to keep folk at home informed on just how badly I’m doing. How about #davebcs for a tag?

Open Source Schools

January 12, 2009

Open Source Schools is a site that launched sometime last summer, I think, but has now had quite a bit of a makeover.

It’s chock full of great advice and resources on how schools can make use of open source software – and there is plenty in there that other organisations or individuals could pick up on too.

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