Just a quick post because I really should be getting on with human rights revision just now, but I saw this headline on the top of a UK Home Office press release from a couple of years ago:

Talking CCTV brings voice of authority to the street

Did no one in the office feel like spinning this one a bit to play down the authoritarian side a bit?

I’m sorry, I just couldn’t resist writing that title for this post, even if it sounds like something Nigel Farrage would write. Anyway, an interesting project by the name of Europatweets.eu has sprung up, sort of after the model of Tweet Congress and TweetMinster, to bring all MEP’s tweets together on one site. There is a certain degree of criticism of politicians using Twitter as a way of communicating with constituents, but I’d say that any way to increase the number of people who can communicate and interact with their representatives, is probably a good thing. Clearly when politicians meet Web 2.0 technologies and there is an en masse adoption of those technologies, we won’t always end up with everyone making the best possible use of them—as Nancy Pelosi demonstrates in the clip below—but there are plenty of examples of Twitter, blogs, and social networks being put to really good use alongside traditional communication channels. I don’t know how many of his constituents read it, but the Bickerstaffe Record is a great example of using modern tech to actually tell people what is going on (even if there are just a smidgen of partisan thoughts in there).

Anyway, back to Europatweets. Is it going to become as popular and well known as Tweet Congress or TweetMinster? Almost certainly not, but even if it’s just for the politicos, a dash more personality and conversation in European politics might be a good thing.

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Moldova students smash parliament.

So as Western Europe shifts to the right, the East moves left. I posted something on this topic back in February.