Posts Tagged ‘MPs’

The Government has published its Template Twitter Strategy for Government Departments (even more impressively, it is available for download on a Scribd page), suggesting to civil servants to begin tweeting and explaining how to do it, with the ultimate aim of improving public engagment.

The document is a really interesting, well put-together twitter template. It sets out pros and cons, twitter stats, a glossary and a reasonably significant list of influential twitter uses including journos, departments, MPs. It also has devised twitter objectives and metrics, which I’m sure will spur plenty of debate amongst bloggers and tweeters.

Written by Neil Williams (a.k.a @neillyneil), a self admitted “Web strategy geek at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills,”  the document advises civil servants, particularly those from the digital comms teams, to tweet on departmental campaigns, news releases, ministerial announcements, highlighting content on other social media platforms such as YouTube and even asking and answering questions.

Amazingly, this all means that civil servants will be crawling out of the shadows of Whitehall and will have a face, albeit a digital one.  By encouraging interaction, there will be a transparency and two-way communication that, possibly, has never existed in Whitehall before.

Tom Watson MP, the first blogging Parliamentarian and avid social media nut, was also on the Today programme on Radio 4, spruiking the benefits of social media and, in particular Twitter, as a method of communication and interaction.

Tom Watson also made the point that many old mandarins still get their secretaries to print out the mandarin’s emails for review.

MPs are similar; we are currently surveying Parliamentarians and politicos about the use of twitter in Westminster.  There are indeed MPs like Tom Watson, who was among a number of MPs on the Independent’s list of influential parliamentarian twitter, who are actively involved on the blogosphere and many of those listed have actively participated in our survey. But the truth is many still don’t get it and don’t see the point.

But surely, strategies like this show that social media has been adopted by the main stream  and the idea that social media is just for kids, computer geeks and a small sector of society is no longer true.  The powers that be have recognised the revolution will be digitalised and they have no choice but to get on board.

If you are interested in this issue and you would like to take our survey on the use of twitter in Westminster and Whitehall, we would more than appreciate your comments.  http://bit.ly/10sf8B

There has been a fantastic response to our survey  Why there are less Conservative tweeters than Labour and Lib Dems? With MPs, Prospective Parliamentary Candidates, political activists, PR professionals and many more telling us they have filled in the survey, we are building up a great bank of responses to answer this conundrum. The party political range has also been fantastic with Conservative, Labour, Lib Dems, Greens and UKIP supporters tweeting the survey and passing it on to their colleagues.

BUT, we would love even more responses.

We are going to keep the survey up for a little longer and keep pushing it on Twitter, so please join in and help us get the broadest possible snapshot of how people view MPs’ contribution to Twitter.

Please forward it on to friends, family and colleagues and even your local MP so that we can have truly representative results and get the fullest answer to the question: Why are there less Conservative tweeters than Labour and Lib Dems?

Survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=Jag7hJARKIXxAZB5bkTmSw_3d_3d

John Prescott's twitter page

I was just pointed to a really interesting gallery on The Independent’s website titled Twitter’s speedy move to the centre of politics. The gallery is compiled with the help from the team at Tweetminister, which is a really useful resource that lists all tweeting MPs and Prospective Parliamentary Candidates (PPCs).

What I really find interesting about it and is obviously the point of the gallery, is the evolution of twitter use by Parliamentarians. Initially, when I first joined twitter around 18 months ago, I think there were only one, maybe two MPs tweeting. Now according to the Independent, there are at least 66 MPs tweeting - 10% of the Commons. What’s even more exciting is that the vast majority of those MPs are active tweeters. Sure you have MPs such as @HarrietHarman who hasn’t tweeted since May and there is Shahid Malik (@DewsburyMP) who has never posted, but you also have avid users such as Kerry McCarthy [Lab] - Bristol East with 2623 updates, Jo Swinson [LD] - East Dunbartonshire with 1503 and of course Tom Watson [Lab] - West Bromwich East with 2368. There are apparently also 13 Ministers tweeting away.

Some MPs have even got so involved they have tinted their profiles green in support of the Iranian protestors. This may be a slightly questionable in terms of foreign policy decisions, but the fact is these MPs actively involved in the political social media revolution.

Most surprisingly, possibly in the majority of cases, it is actually them tweeting and not a researcher hidden away in Portcullis house as proven by @JoSwinson who tweets from the Chamber. And they reply if you contact them.

So the moral here is that there is a growing awareness of the power of twitter and social media in Westminster and this is surely going to grow. Twitter, facebook and other tools are becoming more and more legitimate ways to contact and engage with MPs and other key decision makers. I can only guess about what is to come especially in the lead up to the General Election

Whether this was intentional or not, very cleverly, the Speaker was made to be the fall-guy.

Effectively, the Speaker is the CEO of the House and the buck stops with him when it comes to rules and guidelines of the House. With the downfall of the Speaker on that basis, the story has been deflected away from the MPs to the need for change within Parliament.

Unfortunatly for the MPs, the story has refocuesed itself back onto them, with revelations that more MPs have claimed for mortgages that didn’t exist, claimed for flood damage when they could have used their insurance, or built duck islands, all on expenses.

But surely, there is still lots more to come. Even with 25 journalists working on this story day and night, they can’t have gone through every single receipt and every single backbencher yet. Now that the Speaker has fallen, the Parliamentary smokescreen been blown away, opening the door for the Telegraph to publish more stories about wayward MPs?

If you knew the expenses details of Morely, Chaytor and Hogg, would you hold onto that story until the public was already demanding blood, or would you have released them earlier before stories on the higher profile Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet MPS, which were interesting but ultimately less tantalising?

Will an MP talk to the Telegraph again? Obviously, but its reputation of being in the pockets of the Tories has now clearly gone and they have led the pack of attack dogs that is the media in this situation.

But, as a former member of the fourth estate, I’m on their side. I’ve heard people say the media has gone too far etc. but this is what the media is here to do. It is part of their remit nay, responsibility to stir up the establishment and right wrongs. This is journalism that hasn’t been seen in Britain for a long time - proper hard muckraking, designed to bring the seemingly unaccountable to account.

Parliament is facing a crucial time, the new Speaker is facing a crucial time. Recent events surrounding MPs expenses have left us all thinking how did it come to this and how did this go on for so long without anyone noticing.

All MPs need to consider how this looks to the public - claiming allowances for moat cleaning, for mortgages already paid off, for other border-line goods and services, regardless of whether the rules allowed them or not, does not look good and does not help with forging closer links between politics and the people of Britain.

The question also has to be asked not only what can be done about it but what can be done to prevent it happening again?

Michael Martin came in for pretty robust criticisms from MPs and from outside the House. It is rare for such outright defiance of a Speaker to be seen in the House of Commons. Regardless of the necessity of the Speaker to stand down, there are many people who will regret the manner in which it was done.

How much is this down to MPs really thinking that the Speaker is the best option to save their own hides as a convenient scapegoat  after so many of them have been caught with their hands in the till?

There have been suggestions that Michael Martin was not up to the job, that he was lacking in either the intellectual capacity or the authority to command respect in the House. These allegations may have some substance and perhaps time had run out for him.

The question remains though, to what extent was the Speaker perceived to be the problem or representing the blockages to reform?

There is a big task ahead for the next Speaker to help to begin the process of restoring faith in politics, Parliament and the role of MPs - it would have helped if MPs hadn’t put themselves in this mess in the first place.