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Think Before You Tweet

June 30, 2009

Blade values many Web 2.0 tools, but takes a cautious view of social media. He has signed up to Facebook, but perennially wonders whether to deactivate his account, and as for Twitter, he has yet to take the plunge. His hesitancy can only be confirmed by this tale from Legal Blog Watch of an American divorce lawyer whose services were publicly terminated by a client via a Tweet. “My lawyer = horrible. Need the name/number of a good one in Atlanta” wrote the client – and 19,305 people, her Twitter followers, wondered why.

The moral is clear. Think before you Tweet. Or, like Blade, refrain from signing up to Twitter. In a year or so it’ll have been replaced by something else anyway.

Pictured courtesy of Flickr user Camh: Tweets that could have been. Luckily, some weren’t.

The New Austerity

June 29, 2009

Everyone is paid too much. Everyone is having too much fun at work. People have forgotten that work is about austerity, boredom and greyness. It is time to return to the values that saw England ranked 27th by FIFA in February 1996.

That is the conclusion we have reached here in the Swordplay labyrinth as MPs reel from impending legislation prohibiting laughter in the House of Commons and BBC executives lament a new edict from on high telling them if they are seen to be enjoying themselves they will be sacked.

Coming soon – the Top 10 New Laws to Make Everyone Accountable, Not Just Accountants.

Pictured courtesy of soartsyithurts: the kind of socks secretly worn by BBC executives – and now, at last, banned.

MPs in Secondary Income Shock

June 29, 2009

The Telegraph’s crusade to boost its circulation and revenue – sorry, expose the corruption endemic in British politics – continued on the weekend, with the Sunday Telegraph publishing details of sundry second (and third, and fourth, and even fifth) jobs held by MPs.

Yes, that’s right. Many MPs are paid for doing things besides submitting imaginative claim forms to Parliament.

This outrageous situation exists because current rules allow MPs to have lives beyond Westminster. Naturally, the rules are subject to other rules, which say that MPs must disclose all their outside employers and directorships in the Register of Members’ Interests. However, the pesky politicians don’t have to detail how long they spend on the work. And they only need to give an indication of much they are paid if the job relates to their work as an MP.

What is to be done? We revert to the idea mooted by someone, somewhere, as the expenses’ scandal kicked off: let us create a purpose-built block of flats for the MPs, or commandeer one near the House of Commons, and make the MPs live there. Let us install CCTV in every room in every flat, in the stairwells and doorways too, so that we can see exactly what they do at all times of the day (and night). Let us pass legislation banning the MPs from doing anything other than serving us, the public. They do not need other jobs or interests – we are what matters. In this way, free of distractions, claim forms or secondary income, the MPs will be sure to do a brilliant job.

Pictured courtesy of Flickr user Dave Halley: a block of flats at Walton-on-Thames. MPs have rejected it as their proposed new collective home because, as they admitted with uncharacteristic honesty, “it’s just far enough from Parliament to enable all kinds of commuting claim scams.”

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