Daily Archives: May 20, 2008


According to an article in the Crewe and Nantwich Guardian: While activists are descending from all corners of the country to Crewe & Nantwich to help with their partys’ by-election campaigns, volunteers from the Public Whip have set up an online questionnaire to help people make up their minds about who to vote for. The webpage: http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/byelection compares people’s opinions to the way each party has voted in Parliament on a selection of important issues that have been in the news in the last five years. It uses the web-site www.theyworkforyou.com as a source of data. As Julian Todd of Public Whip explained “An election is the one time people have a direct say in what the politicians do. Unfortunately, with slick sound-bites and colourful leaflets focussing on one or two key points, it’s easy to forget the bigger issues that will be decided by the MP who eventually wins […]

Web questionnaire aims to help voters make up their minds


Richard Ford writes in The Times: A massive government database holding details of every phone call, e-mail and time spent on the internet by the public is being planned as part of the fight against crime and terrorism. Internet service providers (ISPs) and telecoms companies would hand over the records to the Home Office under plans put forward by officials. The information would be held for at least 12 months and the police and security services would be able to access it if given permission from the courts. The proposal will raise further alarm about a “Big Brother” society, as it follows plans for vast databases for the ID cards scheme and NHS patients. There will also be concern about the ability of the Government to manage a system holding billions of records. About 57 billion text messages were sent in Britain last year, while an estimated 3 billion e-mails […]

‘Big Brother’ database for phones and e-mails