So in case you don't know: Mark Reckons is actually written by Mark Thompson - no, not that Mark Thompson but this Mark Thompson. Neither of whom are Mark Pack, Mark Pack or indeed Mark Pack .

All clear? Good.

The launch of the report included handing out a set of prizes, as Mark Thompson has reported. Particular congratulations to Lynne Featherstone (Lib Dem MP for Hornsey & Wood Green and now a Home Office minister) who scooped the prize for Best Use Of Digital Campaigning By A Candidate. In various ways I've been helping Lynne with her websites since I hand-crafted the HTML for her very first back in 1999. I talked a little about the latest revamp at the Social Media 09 conference last year - see more details here.

Anthony's report for Orange is short, clear and yet also packed full of useful lessons. As he says in his introduction,

The problem in analysing the role that digital media plays is that the question is too often posed in a binary fashion. Is it traditional campaigning or e-campaigning? Is it old media or new media? Digital media in modern politics is not a replacement of old media and campaigning. There is a mutual dependence and integration between the two.

Orange's Digital Election Analysis

On it I intend to put up any interviews or other sorts of footage involving Lib Dem members and candidates that I can generate. I am also happy to post any relevant footage from other Lib Dem activists that might be of interest more widely.

You can see Lib Dem TV here.

It includes extensive listings of political blogs broken down into different political categories.

Although some of the individual ratings inevitably raise eyebrows, flicking through the lists is a good way of stumbling across blogs that are new to you - and especially those that don't fall into your own usual political and reading comfort zones.

You can buy a copy of The Total Politics Guide to Political Blogging in the UK 2009-2010 from Amazon.

Tim Newark, of the Taxpayers' Alliance, accused the council of "experimenting" with public money.

This is a rather strange comment because  what's the alternative to "experimenting" with public money? It's to only do things that you are nearly certain will work. Anything else, well that is an experiment.

Yet we're surrounded by challenges that the public sector has faced for years: how to provide good quality health care without costs spiralling upwards, how to raise literacy levels amongst the the most deprived communities, how to cut repeated offending amongst criminals and so on.

In each case, if there was a sure, solid answer we'd have cracked the problem years ago. Far from experimenting being a bad thing, it's vital. The alternatives are either to think that doing what we've always done will somehow start working - or just to give up in despair and believe that nothing can be done better. It's incredibly arrogant to think that either all our public spending patterns are perfect (and so no need to experiment with any changes) or to think that your plans for changing them are so 100% certain surefire winners that no experimentation is involved in them.

Back in the real world, trying out different approaches is a good move, not a bad move.

It's also rather ironic for the Taxpayers' Alliance to be against "experimenting" with public money given that their overall approach to public spending would, if implemented, be a massive break with the past. In other words, it too would be an experiment. Somehow I doubt they really meant to say that it would be wrong to put into practice their own policies...