UPDATE: I just received an email from Tangent PLC’s executive director threatening potential legal action for my Tweet earlier suggesting that Gordon’s Brown website wasn’t very well designed:

I respectfully suggest you delete that tweet, issue no more similar ones and generally try to sell your products in a more professional way. I really don’t like the prospect of either a public slanting match or legal action, but if I need to protect my company’s business and reputation, I will.

Nice, I really don’t like being threatened. I am a tiny, tiny start-up business and I was not making a commercial point. A large PLC, working with the Labour party, which is afterall about fairness, threatening to sue a very small company because of a subjective comment on quality of design is really bad form in my opinion.

Since I wrote this piece for Progress in the Autumn of 2008, I have been known in the Labour party as somebody who has quite clear, sometimes forceful thoughts about how we should communicate with new media & the Internet as a party. I may rub some people up the wrong way with my comments, namely Labour HQ, Tangent One (Labour’s IT provider) and previously Derek Draper (although we did make up, not with a kiss mind you…), but I do it in good faith.

I believe that in the 21st century, the Internet is no longer a plaything of the geeks & nerds. In a political context it is now one of the most important tools in any political party’s tool belt for campaigning, fund-raising and engaging with the public. I believe Labour has failed time and time again to fully grasp how to engage with the Internet. They offer up excuses, be it the lack of funds to pay for fancy websites or as one of Gordon Brown’s special advisers told me in a private meeting in No. 10 last September, the fear of “pissing off Rupert Murdoch” if we under-cut the traditional media in favour of new media (this was just days before the Sun trashed Gordon Brown in a highly embarrassing Conference Week front-page). I will not stop publicly saying what I think until I believe Labour has succeeded in becoming a 21st century party. This extends beyond Labour nationally and even into the leadership race, where the vast majority of online activity is dismal in quality and strategic terms.

Tangent One (parent company is Tangent Plc) provides the “WebCreator” platform which, in return for a monthly fee provides a website content management system and templates for MPs, CLPs, Councillors, PPCs and the like all around the country. WebCreator is a cash-cow for Tangent, and is an added revenue stream for the company which develops some brilliant websites for the likes of Levi’s, Channel Five, Cadillac & Borders, and also provides Labour’s national web development services. I don’t take it lightly, but I think it’s time to recognise how much better the WebCreator service needs to be in this day and age. In an age where design on the Internet is crucial, are websites like the following up-to-scratch for communicating political message and engaging with electorates effective:

- http://iwc2.labouronline.org/164931/home (Sheffield Labour Party)
- http://www.brentlabour.org.uk/ (Brent Labour Party)
- http://www.ianaustin.co.uk/ (Ian Austin MP)

These are just a few examples. Anybody who uses the WebCreator system gets a very similar, not very well design web template which actually turns constituents off rather than makes them feel they can engage with their local Labour Party or their Labour MP. The website that inspired me to write this post is the new website for Gordon Brown MP, former Prime Minister and Labour leader:

- http://gordonbrown.org.uk

I apologise if I’m blunt, but this website is not befitting of a former Prime Minister. It has an unprofessional feel to it, and doesn’t portray the image of a statesman and one of Labour’s biggest figures. Tony Blair’s is far better, and it isn’t a Tangent website. It is not about money before people start throwing that excuse in the air. It would have taken an hour for one of Tangent’s top designers to sit down and design a site for our former leader. And when the party has given Tangent so much money over the last few years, you would think that would come for free and without prompting from me.

I’m sure Tangent means well, but it is time for them to stop providing shoddy websites to the Labour community. Eventually there will be an alternative to the anti-competitive Tangent/Labour HQ relationship which makes it hard for Labour politicians to choose other providers, but until then Tangent should in good faith, start providing a better quality service to its most important client.

I know it’s not exactly fashionable nowadays for a Labour member like myself to welcome with open arms a policy of a Conservative Mayor of London. But I’m going to go ahead and do it anyway. The Barclays Cycle Hire scheme, launching next Friday (July 30th) has the potential to revolutionise the way we get around this great metropolis. How long have we looked on to cities like Copenhagen, Amsterdam & Zurich with their fancy bicycles and cycle-friendly policies, while we put up with uncivilised busses & tubes?

That it took Boris Johnson, London’s somewhat entertaining, but according to some a serious thinking, Mayor to bring a London-wide cycle scheme which will be accessible to millions of people, is a shame. That doesn’t mean we should look down our noses on it though.

From next Friday, people all over London will have access to bicycles in many local neighbourhoods across town. I’ve already spotted two of them very close to where I live. For an annual membership of £45, users can take a bicycle from their local “docking station”, cycle to their place of work, a restaurant, the shops or a meeting with friends for up-to half an hour completely free. When you consider the amount of London that can be covered in 30 minutes by bicycle, it’s clear that this scheme has the potential to replace thousands of bus & tube journeys per year, and simultaneously improving the health and well-being of Londoners.

As the London Cycling Campaign points out here:

…cycling reduces the risk of coronary heart disease and stroke and promotes good mental health.

Everybody recognises that London is oftentimes a grumpy, frosty city, home to millions of people in too much of a rush to smile, take a deep breath and enjoy the wonders that wandering through this amazing city can bring. If cycling improves the general demeanour of even a small percentage of our commuting population, it will be a great benefit to us all.

Ken Livingstone and Oona King, who are both running for Labour’s endorsement for 2012’s mayoral election should recognise the benefits that this cycle scheme should bring, regardless of the fact that Boris Johnson brought it into being.

This Londoner for one, can’t wait to give the new scheme a spin.

It struck me today, while doing some basic maths, that the estimated total amount of money required to pay for all of the tuition fees (at current levels) for all UK & EU students in the UK (around 1.9 million) would only be around £5billion. I previously assumed that it would be much, much more than this. Let me put this number in perspective:

- £5bn is 1/30th of the total amount of revenue the Treasury raises from income tax;
- £5bn is just under 5% of all national insurance contributions raised per year;
- £5bn is the total amount raises from petroleum, air passenger & spirits taxation revenue;
- £5bn is a tad over a tenth of what the UK spends on defence each year.
* Source: Wikipedia.

Considering that UK students currently have to saddle themselves with tuition and living cost debt, often more than £30,000 worth before they even get onto the jobs market, isn’t it time that we looked at other ways of paying for university education? It is already the case that students in Scotland (either home students there or EU students residing in Scotland) have their tuition fee subsidised by the public purse. It is unethical, unfair and constitutionally baffling that a student in England or Wales should have to break their back with debt when a student in Scotland does not.

When Vince Cable introduced the idea of a graduate tax, I wrote here that I agreed in principle with the idea. But in practice there are a range of problems, not least the fact that the tax effectively “stops at the border” and that EU students, with the legal right to be treated equally with UK students, would be able to study here and then leave having received in-effect a free university education.

The whole of society benefits when a large proportion of its citizens receive university-quality education. It results in better doctors, better engineers, managers and scientists, amongst others, which makes the country run better.

Instead of saddling 18 year olds with tens of thousands of pounds in debt, and instead of a clumsy change to the tax code, why not just raise all taxation by 0.8% across the board to make university education free at the point of use? Now that would be progressive…