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International

‘Miss Me Yet?’ Bush Poster Asks

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This political poster is gaining traction particularly on conservative blogs in the US.  It features a grinning George W. Bush and was initially discredited as a photoshopped hoax, but it’s really out there on the Interstate highway 35 in Minnesota. Mary McNamara, the manager at Schubert & Hoey Outdoor Advertising, the company which leases out the billboard, said  “The ad was purchased by a group of small business owners who wish to remain anonymous.” However, “some people in the group were Obama supporters.”

It is proof that you no longer have to spend a fortune on political advertising (this is a one of poster execution) to get attention.  It just has to be funny, insightful or engaging, even if the answer to the question in this case is…not really.

General, Social web

How Long Before We Vote Online?

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Brown has fuelled the debate on electoral reform by proposing the Aussie style alternative vote (AV) system for parliamentary elections.  If it happens this may be the last time we put a cross on a ballot paper as the AV system is a preference vote that requires numbers in the boxes.  But should we be using those dreadful little pencils at all.  Isn’t it about time that we started to look at electronic voting from our PCs or smartphones?  If we can safeguard bank transactions surely we have the wit to make online voting secure. 

Cost cutting measures will see many of the official counts not even starting until the morning after the election (it is cheaper to pay counters for day time work).  In the event of a hung parliament there is a real danger that the election won’t be decided until all of theses votes are in.   Though there is little doubt that the media and the exit polls will have an accurate prediction minutes after the booths close. 

Why aren’t the major parties talking about electronic voting?  Is it perhaps because it is a short step from electronic voting every five years to regular referenda on line and a more direct style of democracy?  No that really would piss on the collective chips of our elected representatives.

Labour, Social web

Why Sarah Brown’s Million Mums Won’t Save Gordon

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In the run up to the US presidential election Obama was building a fan base on social networks like Twitter and Facebook, using his infamous blackberry to tweet from the trail.  Not so for the major contenders in the UK 2010 election. Cameron has stated his belief that “too many twits make a twat” (although airbrushed campaign posters seem to have a similar effect).  Gordon Brown flirted with the service a couple of years ago but now prefers his wife to do the tweeting.

Gordon has form for wheeling Sarah in when the going gets tough and the media picked up on the ‘social Sarah‘ effect during the Last Labour conference.  The party apparatchiks will be well aware that Mrs B has amassed well over a million followers on Twitter.

Sarah Brown like the leader of the opposition is an ex PR person and there is anecdotal evidence that Sarah’s twitter account is being used as a PR channel.

  • Sarah tweets a lot. Eight times yesterday.  This is an acknowledged way of building a fan base.
  • The page is linked to the Million Mums campaign to enlist people to speak out against needless deaths of women in pregnancy and childbirth around the world.
  • Old tweets are deleted – there is nothing earlier than December.

If Labour does believe it has an ace up its party sleeve with this twitter account I think they are mistaken.  A million is a big number but there are lots of foreign accounts and plenty of spam bots amongst them, neither group boasts a vote in the British plebiscite.  More than half of registered twitter users are inactive.  Furthermore if Sarah Brown deviates from her stated aim of raising awareness to counter deaths of women in pregnancy and childbirth and gears up to be part of the vote machine she will lose credibility and authenticity – and on social networks people deal in the currency of the authentic.

Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, Social web

MPs Gear Up to Campaign on Twitter … Oh No They Don’t

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‘MPs turn to Twitter to talk to voters’ shouts the headline on the Daily Telegraph site today.  If the august, if conservative (small ‘c’) columns of the Telegraph are saying it then it must be so.  Well it aint.   Yes there are lots of MPs on Twitter now, if you call just over a hundred out of 646 MPs a lot.

Taking its most of the stats from Tweetminster the Telegraph also notes that John Prescott has over 13,000 followers (at the time of publication it was actually slightly under).  Hardly enough to guarantee  a Labour landslide.   With months to go before the US presidential election the candidates were counting their online support in terms of many hundreds of thousands.  Most MP candidates have a few hundred followers.  In fact @Election10 beats a lot of them hands down.   The online influence of bloggers like Guido is far greater than any MP or parliamentary prospect.

There are only weeks to go and whilst the web will undoubtedly play a bigger part than ever before it’s not the MPs who will be setting the agenda, least of all with their paltry twitter followings.  

Social web

Ianucci’s Tough Tweets for Tony Blair

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Barrister Philippe Sands has cooked up a series of questions for ex-PM Tony Blair as he prepares to face the Chilcot Enquiry into the war on Iraq.  They were published Guardian.co.uk yesterday.  Creator of ‘The Thick of It’ and “hard man of political satire” Armando Iannucci has shrink wrapped them and is using twitter, where he has over 34,000 followers, to publish them.  So far he is up to three out of ten and the are gritty to sat the least.

10 Qs for T Blair. No1:Was regime change an aim? Campbell diary Apr 2nd ’02 records you said it was, tho’ Straw agrees that aim is illegal.

Q2 for TB: Advisor Manning records Jan23 ’03 yr support for Bush even if no UNvote. Mar ’03 you tell House of C no decision taken. Explain.

Q3 to Tony Blair: On Sep 24th ’02, you told Commons Saddam could get nuke ‘within a year or two.’ No intel ever claimed this. Explain.

It remains to be seen whether Chilcot is as tough on Tony as the man who co-created Alan Partidge (albeit with the help of a leading QC).

Social web

Eye Spy with my Little MP

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Eye Spy MP is a twitter account that grasses up MPs.  It is a crowd sourced project that let’s anyone tweet anonumously via @eyespymp (that’s right it does read like eyes pymp) whenever they chance up on MP doing whatever they are doing. 

It’s anonymous because you email your MP spots to tweet@EyeSpy.MP with the details in the subject line.  This is then tweeted by the account.  Ingenious.  Launched just a day ago we’ve had John Prescott on the train to Hull, George Osbourne taking tea in Portcullis House and Eric Pickles eating doughnuts.  Not revolutionary stuff but it’s early days and there’s potential.  

A similar twitter account called Parliament Spy appeared briefly before disappearing into the ether with the allegation that the source’s may have been open to compromise. Eye Spy is apparently more secure. It may be the work of the ill-fated Parliament Spy or not.  Perhaps those wot know might like to comment?

Conservative

DIY David Election Poster

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David Cameron poster

It has become a feature of UK general elections for parties to demonize (remember Tony Blair and his Demon Eyes or Hague in a Thatcher wig?) the leaders of the opposing parties in poster campaigns.  Now we can all have a go.  One place where you can get started is the ‘Make Your Own David’ application at AndyBarefoot.com.  He doesn’t support Labour or the Conservatives.  LibDem then.  There have been over 30,000 versions so far.  We rather like this interpretation that was drawn to our attention by the Sunday Times columnist, India Knight. To view a selection of the best posters go to mydavidcameron.com.

Labour

Top Flight Backing for Hewitt Hoon Bid

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Former cabinet ministers Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon are urging Labour MPs to hold a secret ballot on Gordon Brown’s leadership in advance of the 2010 general election slated for this May.  They have written to all Labour MPs saying the issue must be resolved.

The text of the message states “As we move towards a General Election it remains the case that the Parliamentary Labour Party is deeply divided over the question of the leadership. Many colleagues have expressed their frustration at the way in which this question is affecting our political performance. We have therefore come to the conclusion that the only way to resolve this issue would be to allow every member to express their view in a secret ballot.”

Both Hoon and Hewitt are exceptionally experienced political operators who would not make such an unprecedented attach on the leadership so close to a general election unless they had senior level support, most likely from within the cabinet.   It is even more likely that they have the backing one of the potential successors to the Brown leadership. 

After an apparent split with the Prime Minister and a somewhat bizarre period of political silence, Lord Mandelson has returned to the fold in the last 24 hours which rules him out from any association with the plot.  Or does it, there is no more arch a politician in the Labour camp than the ‘dark prince’?  

Initial observations say the plot is doomed to failure but either way if such deep divides remain at the top of the party hierarchy this may well extinguish the faint glimmer of Labour sustaining enough seats and votes to avoid outright defeat.

By-election

Conservatives Get Result In Norwich North

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Tory candidate Chloe Smith has won the Norwich North by-election with a majority of more than 7000 and at 27 becomes the youngest MP in the House of Commons.  The result comes some 12 hours later than might have been expected due to the unusual step of delaying the count until this morning.  

The seat had been Labour since 1997 when Ian Gibson was first elected.  If the results of this by-election were replicated across the country at the general election, the Tories would be on course for a majority of 100. 

The full results are as follows:

Peter Baggs (Independent)     23

Thomas Burridge (Libertarian Party)      36

Anne Fryatt (None of The Above Party)     59

Bill Holden (Independent)     166

Laud Howling (The Official Monster Raving Loony Party)     144

Craig Murray (Put An Honest Man into Parliament)     953

Chris Ostrowski (Labour)     6,243

April Pond (Liberal Democrat)     4,803

Rupert Read (Green)     3,350

Chloe Smith (Conservative)     13,591

Glenn Tingle (UK Independence Party)     4,068                    

Robert West (British National Party)     941

 The Times reported that the post defeat in-fighting in the Labour party senior ranks began even before the scale of the defeat was officially announced.  The Guardian has been reporting live throughout the morning and predicted the share of the vote between the main parties well ahead of the official announcement.