The Wardman Wire

To the Hansard Society website in search of the new Report on MPs Online: Connecting with Constituents , without huge expectations following on from the Hazel Blears “Cynical Nihilistic Political Bloggers” debacle (*).

Oooh. Look. They are having an event with Mark Pack, Jonathon Isaby and Derek Draper. Good.

Click.

Sigh.

Yes, of course, I’ve told them. I may be grumpy, but I’m not unconstructive. But it is a hell of a big contact form:

and the damn thing even makes me agree to their data protection policy for “Your online booking form for the online campaigning event is offline.”

* That was the one where she made this speech:

It was a speech about “political engagement” which was:

• Not streamed online, despite the technology being available, being free, and being used routinely by bodies such as the E.U. And that they were requested to do it by me a week (I think) beforehand.
• The transcript was not on the website for some time, despite being available (my copy fell off the back of a national newspaper).
• Needless to say, the similar critique of the National Papers to that made of bloggers got nowhere near the websites of said National Papers.

Or, to put it succinctly, it looked and quacked like a blogger-mugging. Someone from inside the Westminster bucket was talking to other people inside the Westminster bucket about other people she didn’t like who were also inside the Westminster bucket. And all the bloggers everywhere else actually doing political engagement were collateral damage.

Fortunately Old Holborn gate-crashed it, so at least we have evidence that the event happened.

I spent some time on the phone to the Hansard Society people before that event trying to get the thing made available on line.

Can I suggest some online political engagement this time?

I feel better now.