venta

A couple of times recently I've mentioned http://www.theyworkforyou.com, and been surprised at the number of people who don't know about it. It's dead simple: type your postcode in, and get a random bunch of information (eg voting record on big issues, attendance record, links to speeches, contact details) for your MP.

All right, admittedly the internet is for porn but the next thing it should be for is this.

Pushing information around - and sorting the relevant bits of information out of huge stacks - it what computers and the internet are good at. I am aware that they need a bit of help, and there's a big crowd of volunteers and (these days) paid people behind TheyWorkForYou pushing stuff into databases so my searches can pull it out again.

Via TheyWorkForYou, I also found a system whereby you can ask to be emailed when your MP speaks in Parliament. There are also handy interfaces to find what's been said on topics that interest you. This information has, of course, always been available but only to someone with the time and patience to ferret through Hansard. Speaking strictly for myself, I have no idea how one gets one's paws on those printed transcripts and have never bothered. But online and searchable? Bring it on.

For all our current government's blathering about the need for reform, and for stricter rules, I feel that this is where MP's accountability is going to come from. People like me - who, with the best will in the world, I wouldn't describe as politically active - keeping an eye on what the person I've democratically elected[*] to look after my interests is up to. Does what they say match up with what they do ? Are they ever actually showing up to vote on things I care about ? Are they, in fact, looking after my interests ? It's almost enough to make me feel enthusiastic about the election.

Even better, people with the time and inclination are grabbing the information available and putting it out in handily digestible formats. Having recently bestirred myself to write to my MP to ask for action on the Digital Economy Bill and had a reply via minion of his stating that:

There are undeniably some good points to this Bill but there are several aspects which give me severe misgivings and concerns. I think it is ridiculous to take this before the House for one day's debate as this would allow insufficient scrutiny and I think this would be best returned to the House by the next Government.

... I feel I can now be justifiably grumpy that he didn't actually go along to the debate yesterday. How do I know this? Because some nice person has created http://www.didmympshowupornot.com to answer just that question.

[*] As a point of order: as you may know, I moved about 6 months ago. So I didn't actually democratically elect my current MP. Judging by his record on TheyWorkForYou, he's an idiot. He's not only on what a colleague of mine refers to as the idiot list, he's one of the people who organised it.