Showing posts with label Fantasy Parliament. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fantasy Parliament. Show all posts

Thursday, December 04, 2008

Better than Football

There seems to be a whole cottage industry developing that is trying to engage us with politics. The latest link to be sent my way is to create a Fantasy Parliament, basically you choose who is PM, Chancellor etc and the cabinet members get points for speaking in the House, being promoted etc. The aim, the creators state is: "Fantasy Parliament is designed to help to further re-engage people with the politicians that represent them and the work of the UK Parliament, through a fun game that is free to all. You don’t have to be a professional political commentator to take part – the game has been made for everyone, from parliamentary researchers, to activists, to students, to young people and members of the public". Unfortunately these aims, and wide audience, may be aspirational only. The site is a bit clunky but there is about 100 cabinets in existence on the site so far. The negatives, well you have to search by surname for MPs, you cannot find them by constituency or current job and then when you look at other cabinets and wave the cursor over the 'seat' (pictured is the screenshot of the cabinet table and seats) only their picture comes up: fine if they are all front benchers but if unknown they can be hard to recognise. But if you fancy creating a GOAT (government of all talents), would like to have Jeremy Corbyn in the Foreign office and Vince cable in the Treasury you now have the chance. Incidentally, the top three cabinets (not sure on what basis as every score is zero so far) are very similar to those of either Cameron or Clegg but it is hard to find a Labour supporter. Perhaps this is symptomatic of the government's failure to attract support online, or perhaps no-one actually would want Brown as PM or Darling as Chancellor; or at least not yet. The top 5 MPs are also an interesting list all unknown with the list topped by Hywel Francis - if you are wondering who he is then Google his name and prove the site is workign by making you find information about an MP who you previously was unaware existed :-)