MP bloggers uncaged

Welcome to the thousands who have dropped into this blog for the first time today.

I hope you were not disappointed that I am not snarling abuse at fellow MPs. Yesterday’s tribute to Alan Simpson was close to fawning.  That will teach me not to destroy a journalist’s story. That’s how this slightly misleading story started. A web journalist rang me yesterday with a possible scandal. One Parliamentarian may have used his publicly funded blog to promote a commercial interest. I read the blog and the comment was so oblique that a charge of mis-use would not stick. End of scandal.

The journalist robbed of his story persisted and searched for a new one. He asked about restrictions on the use of public money on MPs’ blogs. I told him my experience. I had decided to make mine a freebie 18 months ago and posted a notice on my home page. The web  story was correct in that I was asked to remove all articles that were critical of MPs. But it was my decision to keep the site free of censorship and pay the bills myself.

Commons’ censors also harassed Derek Wyatt. The splendid Derek deservedly won the British Computer Society’s award tonight for the best MPs site. He has a phenomenal number of hits and his site is packed with stickies. He took on the Commons Authorities about his content, which they thought was party political. The sultry and sexy Derek has produced his own enticing videos. He is parliament's riposte to the John Sergeant sex bomb.

The most mind freezeingly boring websites are the overtly political ones. Once I conducted a scientific analysis of the percentage who read political leaflets. It was 3 out of 25. That’s not the percentage of those who receive the leaflets but those party members who were delivering them. If they do not read the crap, no one else will. Many of the early MPs’ blogs simply regurgitated party propaganda and were unread.

The impression in the BBC web story was that I was being punished for my excesses brought out the best in e-mails from strangers. They rushed to my defence. Great

The blog charges on. Independent. Liberated. Opinionated.  Un-censored. Fun.

New and undemocratic

We like to kid ourselves that adjournment debates will one day have an intelligent response from ministers. They are answered by clueless junior ministers who read platitudes prepared by civil servants.

Although tonight I urged Mike O’Brien in the Grand Committee Room to throw away his civil service brief and answer the debate, he stuck to the script. 

The senior Tory Chair of the Public Accounts has written that parliament must have a chance to debate a wholly unwarranted and possibly illegal subsidy to the American company spending £17 billion clearing up Sellafield.

Yesterday in the Commons Mike O’Brien said parliament moves slowly. They do when introducing essential renewable energy. Then they crawl at the speed of an arthritic sloth. But when it's dumping a multi billion pound insurance liability on taxpayers, their reactions are as swift as a striking cobra.

On Monday next, this outrage will be completed and the deal will be done. It has passed through parliament without touching the sides. Only one MP has been allowed to comment. That’s Edward Leigh and he is not happy.

There was no defence to the claim that in future Chairs of Select Committees will be allowed to take decisions that by-pass all other parliamentarians.

It’s new. It’s undemocratic. It’s got to be stopped.

Comments

[Paul Flynn]

Thanks Chris. The Week in Westminster gave me a generously great amount of time to get my points across.

I am very grateful to them. The item was a serious one but they included lots of the entertaining stuff as well.

Thank you Matthew and producers

[chris morrell]

Hello Paul ..just heard you on "Week in Westminster".. how pathetic can they be about things?
Berating you for what amounts to colourful description!..just ignore them...web-hosting (as anyone should know) costs very little anyway..(average of less than a fiver a month!?)Political advertising budgets should be slashed to just a few thousand pounds.. Maybe the massive mobilising of activism and donations that Barack Obama realised can,at last wake our lot up to the new reality!
I will check out your recommendations...
Chris Morrell

[Click here]

"Labour MP rapped for his 'rude' blog"

[patrick]

Richie
Do the other manics know that you have turned up?

[Paul Flynn]

If this is our maddest hour,Richard lunacy pays off. We have gone from 17 points down in the polls to three.

[Richard EDWARDS]

As another blogger (nby) has just written, "if the New Labour lasts for a thousand years, this will be their maddest hour" So true.

[Paul Flynn]

Roger, I am also concerned about these proposals. they seem hopelessly impractical and based on a mis-understanding of this business. Most of the sex-workers oppose the changes.

[John Lilburne]

Well done, Paul, keep it up.

[Roger Thornhill]

Now, Paul, do you "get" why you and all the other MPs were sent "1984"?

It is NOT ABOUT SMOKING but about oppression of the individual, discarding of due process (warrants), RIPA, SOCA, Terrorism act 2000, systematic organisation of "society" to condemn via PC legislation and browbeatinng. And now Harriet Harman pushing through an utterly BOGUS set of laws using downright falsehoods disingenuously dressed up to appear as fact - even on C4 last night she tried to give the impression that 70% of women in brothels were trafficked against their will. FALSE. Put Harman next to a liar and you would not get a cigarette paper between them.

[Anonymous]

Well done for keeping the blog going, but given recent events in here, I can't help but find the irony in this statement funny:

"They don't understand the net. They simply don't get it. It is like 1984."

[mattwardman.myopenid.com]

>The blog charges on. Independent. Liberated. Opinionated. Un-censored. Fun.

Yay! The fun continues.

Life would be much simpler without those damned Communication Allowances *and* the Ashcroft Money.

Rgds

[Sion Davies]

Hi,

I’d never heard of you before this morning when the Today programme mentioned the attempts to censor your blog.

So I had a look at it and read the post about Obama’s speech.

I agree. It was superb. And I hope his achievements will match his ambitions.

I agree with you too, it is a sort of Year Zero, but I see him picking up where Bobby Kennedy left off.

Look at this –

Bobby Kennedy speaking at the Ambassador Hotel,

Los Angeles, June 5th 1968, minutes before he was shot and killed:

I think we can end the divisions in the United States.

We can work together …

we can start to work together again.

We are a great country,

an unselfish country and

a compassionate country …

So, my thanks to all of you,

and it's on to Chicago!

And let's win there.

Barack Obama, hours after his election,

speaking at Grant Park, Chicago, November 4th 2008 :

Hello Chicago!

… This victory alone

is not the change we seek.

It is only the chance for us to make that change.

… So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism,

of service and responsibility

where each of us resolves to pitch in and

work harder and look after

- not only ourselves - but each other.

It cannot happen without you,

without a new spirit of service,

a new spirit of sacrifice...

Change has come to America.

And yes, it's been a long time coming.

I have no idea if Barack Obama feels the connection.

Bobby’s widow, Ethel, referring to Barack in 2005, said :

“I think he feels it.
He feels it just like Bobby did.
He has the passion in his heart.
He’s not selling you.
It’s just him.”

Wishing you well,

Sion