In a recent letter to residents of the Mapesbury ward of Brent Central, Labours' candidate Angela Griggs slings a little mud on expenses. Apparently complains have been made to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner about Sarah Teathers' expenses in relation to her constituency office. Now we know Sarah’s expenses are squeaky clean - check TWFY.com and compare the ACL to Dawn Butler and her £66,000….
Today I’ve accessed three different MySociety websites: TheyWorkForYou, WriteToThem and WhatDoTheyKnow. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without these powerful tools: MySociety are indespensible and we’d all miss them if they weren’t here. I was using WriteToThem to contact Sarah Teather to urge her to support Early Day Motion (EDM) 2141 that her parliamentary colleague Jo Swinson has tabled. FREE OUR BILLS CAMPAIGN, 22.07.2008, Swinson, Jo That this House believes it has a duty to publish Bills in such a fashion that they can be accessed as easily and as early as possible by the public; notes that the non-partisan Free Our Bills campaign is urging the House to publish bill texts in a new electronic format to improve accessibility and public scrutiny of legislation; further notes that the changes requested would have no impact on the content of Bills, nor upon the process by which they are currently made; considers that the new format could be delivered cheaply and quickly; acknowledges that the Leader of the House’s office did not accept a prior request for new formatting from mySociety, nor provide an explanation of why the changes could be made; and calls on the Leader of House to ask House of Commons Clerks to work with Free Our Bills campaign staff to commence publication of Bills in the new format....
Daniel Finkelstein puts the boot into the Lib Dems and encourages leadership machinations ahead of the party conference season, goading Ming into a long walk along a short pier. “Remarkably few people will shout through to the kitchen: ‘Hold dinner for a moment, love, Sarah Teather’s on.’ " - I must be one of the remarkable few.
Sarah Teather and other Brent Liberal Democrates have joined facebook. I’ve poked her, have you? I wasn’t expecting to see our Sarah on Facebook… A few years ago electronic networking wasn’t on her list methods for constituency communications. How things change over time: the ubiquity of the term “social networking”, meaning a twittering, bebobuzzing space for me to show my face on the internet, has overtaken “blogging” in terms of its penetration into the nations daily lexicon....
This story got me posting as I’m a new father and my daughter is breastfed. Sarah was campaigning earlier this week with the NCT in support of their call for legislation to enshrine a woman’s right to breastfeed in public in England. The Scots have such legislation (must have been a devolved competancy) but in England and Wales breastfeeding in public is not protected. Both myself and my partner are in support of this legisation and support the NCT’s campaign....