political archive
And the prize for worst online campaigner goes to…
Surely the winner must be Francois Hollande, for having built up an email list of 1.5m people for the French Presidential election and then stopping using it. As I found out at the Contested Spaces conference last week, no emails have been sent to it since last June. Oops.
Is this the most expensive bus stop in the world?
It doesn’t look much to the untrained eye: Nor indeed does it look that much to the eye of a bus stop expert. Yet Hexham Town Council is claiming in its accounts that the bus stop is valued at £176,000. Liberal Democrat Derek Kennedy has the story: Councillor Derek Kennedy pointed out the figure, along [...]
What does Obama’s Deputy Campaign Manger think matters in campaigning?
A big part of 101 Ways To Win An Election is about data: why it matters, how to get it and how to use it. So it was interesting to hear the views of Obama 2012 Deputy Campaign Manager Jen O’Malley Dillon on the subject as part of the Contested Spaces conference in London last week. [...]
Tycoon tax: now in force
A little quietly, the good ship HMS Tycoon Tax slid off the policy speculation slipway and into the waters of the real world* with the start of the tax year earlier this month. The full details are over on the official HM Treasury website of how the March 2012 budget announcement has now become law. In [...]
Think you know how Europe works? This man did
From Polish Minister Radek Sikorski, author also of the famous letter about EU myths:
Ban on political TV adverts survives in knife edge 9-8 court vote
An Electoral Reform Society press release reports: The Electoral Reform Society has welcomed news that the ban on paid political broadcast advertising is to remain in place following a knife edge 9-8 vote at the European Court of Human Rights. The Society had warned that lifting the ban would escalate the current ‘arms race’ on [...]
An open letter to Jeremy Browne MP…Part 2: Problems at the Home Office
Dear Jeremy, In part 1 I explained why the Interception of Communications Commissioner is a failed regulator and one the Home Office should be fixing, yet your civil servants have been reluctant to do so. That should give a pause for thought about the proposals Home Office civil servants keep on pushing to extend the [...]
That high tech new HMRC computer system is, er…, just Microsoft Word [photo]
It’s not that often any central government IT system, let alone one from HMRC, gets a glowing write-up in the media. Far too often it’s a case of delays and cost over-runs, so kudos to the team who have pulled off this result: A £45MILLION super-computer has helped Revenue officials grab back an extra £2billion [...]
UKIP voters most likely to demand fictitious legislation be repealled
YouGov has repeated an illuminating piece of research carried out in the US, asking people if they think a fictitious piece of legislation (the Public Affairs Act of 1975) should be repealed and also seeing how people’s views vary if the repeal is associated with different parties. Overall, the British public come out ok: Some [...]
An open letter to Jeremy Browne MP on civil liberties… Part 1: The failed regulator
Dear Jeremy I doubt that in amongst all the ludicrously large number of issues that pass across the desk of a minister, and a Home Office one no less, you will have noticed a small victory I scored over the Home Office recently. But I hope you’ll give a pause for thought to the implications [...]
