mandate blog
Politics of the pink vote
Posted by Alex Finnegan at Fri, 03/07/2009 - 11:51am in UK politics
The rainbow flags will be flying in Soho this weekend as London celebrates Gay Pride.
Not wanting to miss an opportunity, Westminster's politicians have been falling over themselves to prove their gay credentials.
What should your online priorities be?
Posted by Mark Pack at Fri, 03/07/2009 - 9:47am in Internet
Effective use of the internet requires a meld of two factors: what do you want to get from it and what does your audience want from you?
You don't have to take your audience's current needs as an absolute given - you can hope to alter them over time - but similarly you can't take your own online needs as absolutely set in stone, because they need to reflect the realities of what your audience is like.
Take one silk purse...
Posted by Nick Laitner at Thu, 02/07/2009 - 2:43pm in UK politics
Ben Brogan has a superb piece in today's Daily Expenses, in which he makes the case that Britain's stature on the world stage may gently slip away if the Conservatives (and others) continue their relaxed approach to hard power issues.
Children of the Devolution
Posted by Craig Harrow at Wed, 01/07/2009 - 4:06pm in UK politics
Today marks a decade since the SNP matriarch Winnie Ewing, as the oldest MSP, began proceedings in Edinburgh with the famous declaration that "The Scottish Parliament, adjourned on the 25th day of March in the year 1707, is hereby reconvened'.
So much has happened in ten years: we have had four First Ministers; "father of the nation" Donald Dewar died in office; his successor Henry McLeish was forced to resign over an office expenses scandal, then his replacement Jack McConnell was beaten by Alex Salmond.
Digital exclusion: how tough a problem is it to crack?
Posted by Mark Pack at Wed, 01/07/2009 - 11:23am in Internet
The issue of digital exclusion – and its close correlation with wider social exclusion – has been steadily moving up the public policy agenda over the last few years. Last year the Government published a detailed report into digital exclusion for example. But what do the latest internet access statistics tell us?
The starting gun is fired
Posted by Theo Blackwell at Tue, 30/06/2009 - 6:05pm in UK politics
Mandate blog was on hand to witness Gordon Brown launch what was first dubbed in Whitehall his 'National Plan' for 2009/10 - now called Building Britain's Future.
Starting his nationwide tour, in a quickfire speech Brown cited a letter from a UK pensioner who had written to him praising improvements for various members of their family through the NHS, the introduction of the Minimum Wage, university expansion, more apprenticeships, Surestart and pension credits.
Habitat and Twitter: what are the lessons to learn?
Posted by Mark Pack at Fri, 26/06/2009 - 3:17pm in Social media
Habitat’s been in the news, in a bad way, for its recent foray into the world of Twitter.
Blame it on the rolling news channels
Posted by Nick Laitner at Fri, 26/06/2009 - 11:58am in
One of the upsides of being a saddo news junkie is when you happen across a genuinely big story as it is breaking. So it was last night, as I was flicking mechanically between Sky News and BBC News Channel as the Michael Jackson story was first coming through, initially as "unconfirmed reports that Michael Jackson has been taken to hospital".
So what does business and religion have in common?
Posted by Brooke Clarke at Fri, 26/06/2009 - 11:38am in Faith
On Wednesday night I attended a talk by Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs International Investment Bank, Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach at St Mary’s Primrose Hill on “Taming Mammon: the moral dimension of money”.
Lord Griffiths is a committed Anglican and chairman of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lambeth Trust. He argues that in dealing with the present crisis it’s not enough to look for purely technical solutions. “What interests me are the ethical, moral and spiritual dimensions of money” he said.
Facebook: big but poor
Posted by Mark Pack at Thu, 25/06/2009 - 3:05pm in Social media
It's become almost a cliché to illustrate the reach of social media by comparing Facebook's number of active users with the population of different countries. The comparison certainly looks striking. Facebook has "more than 200 million active users". If it were a country would make it the fifth biggest in the world, ahead of Brazil and behind Indonesia.
