Category Archives: Online politics

Smiles all round in Cowley Street Towers as the party’s WordPress plugin competition is taking off with several very interesting submissions so far. Remember: you have until 29 February to submit your own plugin(s) for the chance to win £200.

WordPress is increasingly widely used by Liberal Democrats, whether it is to run websites or blogs. One of WordPress’s strengths is the huge range of plugins available. The party has made a small number of Liberal Democrat specific plugins available too (see www.libdems.org.uk/tools), however there is scope for many more.

Hence this official party competition:

1. The competition will run until 29 February.
2. You can submit as many WordPress plugins as you wish.
3. They must all be original, and not have been published previously.
4. A prize of £200 will be paid to the plugin which, in the views of the judges, is most helpful for

…

The Red Box blog has recently started over at The Times. It’s looking like it will turn out to be quite a good blog. I say that not just because it’s got both this site and Lib Dem Blogs mentioned in its blogroll (thanks Sam!) but also because of stories like today’s – where the blog provides the full exchange of emails over the George Osborne donations story. Providing that sort of background detail is one of the areas where political news blogs can really shine.

As James Graham has pointed out, Peter Hain’s internet operation has verily been shaken to its foundations and, er…, changed his website. The taxpayers of Britain will be sleeping more easily tonight.

Warning: this posting may contain traces of irony.

Looks like when I said Peter Hain had four problems at the moment, I should have said five.

His website – www.peterhain.org – says at the bottom, “This website is funded by the Communications Allowance”. Now that’s ok in itself – MPs are allowed to use the funds they receive to communicate online. However, what they’re not allowed to do is to use the money for party politics.

So it’s a bit of a problem, that the site says “please use this site to join the debate about Labour’s future.” …

Perhaps spurred on by the party’s leadership contest, there has been a flowering of new Liberal Democrat blogs over the last couple of months along with several former bloggers starting up once more.

In no particular order, here are the five new or renewed blogs from the last two months that have most caught my eye:

Jo Anglezarke: already a veteran of The Voice’s Golden Dozen round-ups, Jo’s blog ranges more widely across politics than many Liberal Democrat blogs – reaching beyond the confines of the latest Liberal Democrat news to frequently talk about policy and rarely penning a boring sentence.

Based on the amount of traffic they’ve passed on to www.libdems.org.uk in 2007, the top five local Liberal Democrat sites were:

1. brentlibdems.org.uk
2. ealinglibdems.org.uk
3. lorelyburt.org.uk
4. vincentcable.org.uk 
5. sedgefieldlibdems.org.uk

Congratulations to Brent on once again pulling in such heavy levels of traffic. No great surprise that the Ealing and Sedgefield Parliamentary by-elections propelled those sites into the top five, nor that Vince Cable’s high profile as acting leader lifted his site too, but impressive that Lorley Burt’s site has shot up the rankings.

In the second-half of 2006 the top five were:

1. brentlibdems.org.uk
2. northamptonlibdems.org.uk
3. eastsurreylibdems.org.uk
4. bristolwest-libdems.org.uk
5. rochdalelibdems.org.uk

I only ask because of this intriguing Google Ad I came across on the Daily Telegraph’s website. The first two adverts I can understand, but the third seems a little desperate…

The party’s extranet is a resource for party activists, elected representatives (including councillors) and staff and the home for artwork, campaign materials, policy briefings and also resources to accompany the party’s big national campaigns, such as the crime and health ones.

Access is open to all party councillors, staff, approved Parliamentary candidates, local party Chairs, EARS officers and Membership Secretaries, trainers and up to eight other nominated people per local party.

Full access details are on the site and if you’ve not yet registered, you can kick off the registration process online too.