Wardman Wire Magazine

You are browsing the archives of 2008 December.

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Front Page Images here and on the Front Page are Courtesy of Sky News.

Gerald found his calling: third sheep on the left in the school nativity play.

Cartoon: Ben Gallagher

Gerald was never very good at guessing presents…

Cartoon: Ben Gallagher

Over Christmas and New Year the Wardman Wire is carrying a series of posts about Political Campaigning and Facebook. In his regular “Gearbox” column, Mark Pack asks why MPs are using Facebook at all, and why they do so in preference to other systems.

When it comes to social media, Facebook is pretty much it as far as MPs go. For example, of the Liberal Democrat Shadow Cabinet members, 100% have a public email address, 90% have a website (the exceptions being in the House of Lords), 72% are on Facebook, 7% blog (and for another 7% there are party blogs covering their portfolio, even though they do not blog personally), and 3% are on Twitter. None have an active MySpace or Bebo presence (though there’s one that is now defunct).

Similar patterns – heavy email use, slightly lighter website coverage, many Facebook profiles, fewer bloggers and Twitter bringing up the rear – occur across all the main political parties.

This is not just a matter of new services taking time to catch on; blogging, after all, has been around for much longer than Facebook and the first politicians on Facebook came years after the first blogging politicians.

So what is it about Facebook that makes it attractive to MPs?

Isn’t that absolutely typical.

The morning I post a long article about Lib Dem Voice with lots of links, and somebody forgets to pay the bill so it gets turned off.

I wonder if Mark Pack’s “Gearbox” column is going to be late?

The “Become Livid” anagram of Lib Dem Voice seems pertinent suddenly.

Lib Dem Voice had an interesting conversation under the title What should political bloggers be trying to achieve?, where Brian Coleman was used as an example of a search term that had been targeted by the Lib Dems in Google. This was the relevant bit of the conversation about Brian Coleman AM, the London Assembly Member for Barnet (the Lib Dems think he is a bit thin up top) and Camden.

The story is that Brian Coleman was the one who had a go at Lynne Featherstone for calling the Fire Brigade when her boiler made a funny noise, and the Lib Dems don’t like him as a result.

I thought I’d have a test on Google to see how we get on competing for a term such as “Brian Coleman” with the Liberal Democrat blogs on their top rated story for Brian Coleman: “Brian Coleman AM and his taxi bills”

(Click on the title to read the whole article)

The Debunking of the Winterval Myth

We do not believe in the Winterval Myth.
We believe that - many years ago in 1997 - somebody complained about the word “Winterval”.
and that Winterval was not conceived as a competitor to Christmas.
It was a season of celebration,
conceived in good faith.
But the Bishop of Birmingham did misrepresent their intentions,
and hold them up to ridicule.
We believe that we must debunk it every single year
and that we must keep alive the memory of the Winterval complaint,
in order to give us something to write about before Christmas.
We do not believe that Christmas is excluded from the festivities
even when it happens, and we will shout our opinion loudly - many times.
We shall start the season of Debunking in October,
and keep referring to it until just before Easter.
We accept the fact that we look like trainspotters
as the price of upholding the Truth.
We believe that a complaint about Winterval shall come again
and that the tabloid press will continue to print a lot of articles about it,
even if we can’t find any.
In preparation for That Day
we shall continue The Debunking of the Myth
in remembrance of a time when it took place
once for all.
We believe in the debunking, the whole debunking, and the media-narrative resulting.
One day we will think again and find something else to write about,
and all our articles shall be made new.
Until that time we shall continue to maintain the memory,
taking the mick and maintaining the thread.
For ever.
Amen.

(with apologies to the Apostles Creed)