Another public service announcement

I regret that either because it isn't an option with Blogger or because I'm inept I can't categorise my posts.

But I can't, and that's that. It means that people who find this blog by searching on "how to have an affair" (and the number of people who do has been an eye-opener) are doomed instead to read stuff like this -

When I had a life I would make time to dip into things like The Onion and keep an eye on things like The Drudge Report. Rebuilding me diminished my peripheral vision, but a sports coach will tell you that this is something which can be exercised and developed like any other muscle. Anyway, for the time being I've given up crawling over other people's blogs (which I did in the apparently vain hope of discovering other people quietly and unassumingly blogging their way through the healing process and moving on).

Via Alice Miles who commentates on parliament for The Times* I have discovered www.mySociety.org. In its own words mySociety builds websites that "give people simple, tangible benefits in the civic and community aspects of their lives". This counts as drivel in my book and I might not have looked further but I'd already seen a couple of the websites they've built and I have confidence in La Miles.

What mySociety does is build unlocked portals to the universe of parliamentary democracy. So step through!

One of mySociety's big projects has been TheyWorkForYou.com which describes itself as "a non-partisan, volunteer-run website which aims to make it easy for people to keep tabs on their elected and unelected representatives in Parliament." Among other things this site provides performance data from www.publicwhip.org.uk, access to voting records, speeches, text searching, and hansard (parliamentary transcripts).

Site users can register areas of interest and receive email alerts when keyword linked subjects are debated.

Another contribution to twenty-first century parliamentary democracy is www.HearFromYourMP.com. People can sign up to receive messages from their MP. When 25 have done so the MP in question is notified that he or she has some constituents who would like a message. When 50 have signed up another message is sent, and another and another until the MP responds.

Alternatively it is possible to use another project (www.WriteToThem.com) to contact your MP directly.

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The first thing I did was enter my postcode in the box under the heading Find out more about your MP. The second thing I did enter my postcode in the right format. If I could make one change to the web site I'd fix that straight away so people don't have to guess.

My local MP is John T Whittingdale. [Actually I made that up. It would be asking for way too much that his middle initial is really T.]

His is the 158th safest seat of 645 in the country. He is the 316th most rebellious MP.

This is his voting record on a variety of key issues that have come before parliament since 2001:

Moderately against introducing a smoking ban. votes, speeches
Very strongly against the reduction of parliamentary scrutiny. votes, speeches
Moderately against introducing ID cards. votes, speeches
Moderately against introducing foundation hospitals. votes, speeches
Quite strongly against introducing student top-up fees. votes, speeches
Moderately against Labour's anti-terrorism laws. votes, speeches
Moderately for the Iraq war. votes, speeches
Quite strongly against the fox hunting ban. votes, speeches
Quite strongly against equal gay rights. votes, speeches

Another quibble: I have a problem with the way they've attached a political label to the anti-terrorism laws alone. The Labour Party is in government and most of the key legislation brought before parliament will therefore be 'Labour' legislation.

Two new services introduced by mySociety on 19 April 2006 which between them provide:

• Identify a Lord who is interested in an issue of interest to you.
• Write to any Lord you want via WriteToThem.com
• View individual Peer profile pages including attendance at votes, most recent speeches, rebelliousness and more.
• Get custom email alerts every time a certain Lord speaks, or when a word or phrase is spoken by anyone in the Lords. Over 5000 people will be mailed with unique updates today alone.
• Produce league tables of which Lord or which MP has spoken words or phrases the most (handy for identifying which members show a public interest in which issues).
• Search, read and annotate Lords Hansard back to 1999

So lots more to play with.