Gordon is reading you.....

According to today’s Financial Times….

'The COI, the UK government’s communications agency, is working on a way to monitor what people say about policy on blogs and internet forums for the media briefings it sends to ministers.

The summaries are used across Whitehall from ministers to departmental communications teams, often as an early warning service on issues rising up the public’s agenda. The blog project was in part prompted by departments’ concerns at being caught unawares by debates spread on the web.

Clarence Mitchell, director of the MMU, said though there was debate about the objectivity of some bloggers, several were taken increasingly seriously within government. Mr Mitchell said: “There’s a whole level of debate taking place online which simply didn’t exist before and departments feel they need to be fully engaged in that.”

He insisted any future service by the unit would not intervene in monitored blogs.

However individual departments which took any service might choose to reply directly to bloggers’ criticisms.

The blog monitoring would need a sufficient number of individual government departments to agree to cover the extra costs involved. If this happened, MMU estimates a service could operate by the end of the year.'

Hum, several things spring to mind;

Considering the amount of obviously co-ordinated anonymous trolling in the comments on posts made by the high profile members of the Tory Bloggerati I suspect that there is already a lot of monitoring going on by Sauron’s Orcs.

Secondly as our leaders are not exactly known for listening to anything other than views that resonate with their own I would suggest that this is probably just going to be an enormous waste of our money. Perhaps one could argue that a possible purpose could be to give Mordor’s ‘rapid rebuttal’ units a bit of a head start if they can spot the googly early.

Lastly, to ensure the safety of my children and friends, I just want to add that Gordon is the greatest Prime Minister that this Country has ever been blessed with. His words are an inspiration and shine like a beacon to everyone. Frankly we don’t need to suffer this moribund democratic system any more. Please Gordon just assume the position of head of state as well so we may bathe evermore in your radiance and glory.