MP Website awards - the results

I have had a tough time recently. I was asked to be a judge in the recent British Computer Society MP Website awards – which meant that I had to plough through over 100 constituency websites set up by MP’s (they even get a tax free allowance for it).

A couple of points spring from this rather arduous experience. Firstly, I disagreed strongly with some of the other distinguished judges over the praise that they heaped on the sites of Boris Johnson and George Galloway, both of which seemed to him to be just extensions of their media careers (even down to selling books and tickets to events), and precious little to do with their constituencies.

Secondly, my main complaint was how dull most of the sites are – just not enough jokes. Two exceptions might be Derek Wyatt and Nadine Dorries, both of them have a light and slightly eccentric touch and are usually worth reading. I’m all in favour of MP’s who take a fairly individual, even iconoclastic line.

You can see a list of the winners and links to their sites by clicking here.

You will, incidentally, look in vain for a constituency site for our Prime Minister. He’s one of about 20% of our MP’s who just doesn’t bother. I call that arrogant.

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