Downing Street Says… is an unofficial site that lets you read summaries of lobby briefings (the UK version of the ‘gaggle’, for USanian British politics junkies.) Currently Mr. T Blair’s spokesman is maintaining that ‘nothing has changed’ in the cash for honours enquiry, despite evidence to the contrary. Oops.
Open Secrets is a searchable database from the Center For Responsive Politics of who gives and gets what, and how much, in the US political system.
“a non-partisan website run by a charity which aims to make it easy for people to keep tabs on their elected and unelected representatives in Parliament, and other assemblies.”
You can find yiour MP, see how they’ve voted, search Hansard, watch bills as they come up for discussion, and be emailed straight away when issues of interest come for discussion in Parliament.
a small independent not-for-profit research and publishing group which undertakes research on the social and environmental impact of large corporations, particularly multinationals. We aim to expose the mechanisms by which corporations function and the detrimental effects they have on society and the environment as an inevitable result of their current legal structure…..As part of our research work at Corporate Watch, we profile large companies, industry sectors and lobby groups. Company profiles include details of a company’s personnel, office locations, industry areas, lobbying activities, corporate crimes and links to further information.”
The Bloggers Handbook, from Reporteurs sans Frontieres, gives essential knowledge to those bloggers whose environment is a little more dangerous than sitting in Mom’s basement snarfing Cheetos:
“Reporters Without Borders has produced this handbook to help them, with handy tips and technical advice on how to to remain anonymous and to get round censorship, by choosing the most suitable method for each situation. It also explains how to set up and make the most of a blog, to publicise it (getting it picked up efficiently by search-engines) and to establish its credibility through observing basic ethical and journalistic principles.”
All these are powerful tools for progressive bloggers to cast light in dark places. They’re the sort of thing the internet was made for. Have fun.
