Digitally engaging the excluded

By Tim


Yoosk's business is creating direct, open conversations with leaders. But what do you do if you want people to engage with leaders when they are not online, let alone on Twitter, Facebook or even Yoosk?

Digital inclusion issues have always been very important to us and were especially pressing last week because we wanted tenants of council estates to post questions to MPs participating in our Tower Block of Commons Q and A which we are running in support of the Channel 4 series.

The answer is to hit the streets and ask them face to face. Keith did just that on Friday, armed with camera, he set about trying to persuade tenants in Newtown Birmingham to put questions to Tim Loughton, the Conservative MP who stayed there while the programme was being filmed. Tim will answer these today, in a face to face reunion with Natina James, the very impressive young woman who hosted Tim in her council flat and who has agreed to act as the ‘interviewer’ on behalf of Yoosk users.

The results of Keith’s foray were moving, encouraging but also disturbing. But we are now are hooked-convinced it is essential for Yoosk to establish the partnerships and infrastructure to do this regularly.

Sadly, many people were reluctant to be filmed, although many did express a positive view of the programme and Tim Laughton's involvement. It seems to come down to a reluctance to be seen to be interested in politics by one’s peers, as well as an awareness that the views and questions they might have would not be acceptable if expressed publicly.

For example, Keith found that many questions centred around a recently closed local pub being turned into community centre for a particular nationality and the fact that it was ‘being used as a mosque’. Yet no one would ask this question to camera.

Our mission has always been to reach out to diverse audiences, many of whom are not regular social media users: we recently gathered questions from soldiers and Afghani’s in a feature we ran for the Foreign Office and we have gathered questions from readers of newspapers in partnership with regional titles such as the Birmingham Mail and Halifax Courier. But this is the first time we have deliberately targeted people who would never find us through a website or printed paper. We now have concrete plans for drawing people who are not online into such conversations and welcome enquiries from partners who’d like to work with us on this.

We are also now convinced that our methodology of getting ordinary members of the public, bloggers and campaigners or celebrities to put the questions on behalf of the public is an essential part of our overall approach -just as much as the social media technology. Again, contact us if you are interested in acting as a kind of 'People's Paxman'.

And here are some of the questions which will be answered by Tim Laughton MP and Mark Oaten MP today, put to them by 23 year old single mum, volunteer worker and dance teacher, Natina James. See all the questions here.

You ask David Miliband: the questions so far

By Tim

Tomorrow is the deadline for the first set of questions on Afghanistan to be put to UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband. 

These are being gathered on the Foreign Office website using a Yoosk widget [see below for more details]. Nearly 2o questions have been posted and apart from two, most of them are firmly on topic and very well worded. 

The questions we have so far appear to have been put by users from a range of ethnic groups and nationalities. 

Thematically, I’ve sorted them provisionally into five broad groups, although of course it would be easy to categorise them differently.

A complex regional challenge

The first group reflects people's concerns that Afghanistan is part of a wider regional challenge involving a large number countries. There are questions about the link between Afghanistan and Yemen and the role of the Saudi Arabian government. What is the plan for combating the Taliban in Pakistan- will we get sucked in there? And is the UK satisfied with the cooperation of the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan?

How Afghanistan is governed

The next set of questions concentrates more on the complexity of the political situation inside Afghanistan itself. One question from Rassa asks if Western governments are committed to ‘Afghanisation,  Tribalisation or Talibanisation’. User  Itsmattsmith asks what measures are being taken to move towards state building and away from ‘tribally orientated politics’. These sound to me like fundamental questions for people inside Afghanistan and perhaps not as simple to answer as they sound.

Several questions demonstrate real discontent with the current government and serious worries about the institutions of law and order, questioning President Hamid Karzai’s control over Parliament and the dominance of Pashtuns in the Cabinet (many of whom –as one questioner points out- have had their nomination by President Karzai rejected by MPs).  Other questions focus on corruption in government, as well as the judiciary, army and police.

For me, one of the most interesting questions asks how the Taliban would be involved in any future government- under what circumstances would they not be allowed to stand or enter Parliament if they chose to take part in the democratic process.

Role of religion and culture

This group includes questions on the status and treatment of women.  one user asks to what extent Western leaders analyse and address Islamic philosophy, law and practice when planning how to deal with extremism. 

Economic considerations

A few questions ask about the international community’s plans for combating poverty, with one user focusing on how the situation of Afghanistan is communicated in the UK, with the questioner feeling that coverage of the military situation overshadows issues connected with poverty and development.

A popular question is one that centres around the policy on opium and why with an international shortage of medial opium, the West doesn’t buy it from Afghan farmers.

Chances of success

The final group of questions are related to the likelihood of eventual success or perhaps the impossibility of success. They ask about the real effectiveness of fighting ideology and non-western values with military action, the historical lessons of the Russian occupation and wider lessons of post war western military intervention, including the Korean War.  Yet other questions reflect users concern that the UK's intervention does not have popular support.

There is another day to go until Mr Miliband answers the first set of questions so keep them coming. 

Ask David Miliband about Afghanistan.

by Keith

We are pleased at Yoosk that the Foreign Office are once again using the Yoosk platform to gather questions for David Miliband.

In the run up to the London Conference on Afghanistan on the 28th of January, the foreign Office are inviting questions on the subject of UK foreign policy in Afghanistan. To post a question or to browse trhe questions other people have been asking, you can visit their page here.

We are excited about this for two reasons. Firstly of course, because we believe that everybody should have the right to ask our politicians questions, and especially about matters as important as foreign policy in countries where our troops are fighting and secondly because of nthe technical aspects involved.

In the past, the Foreign Office have used our dedicated FCO page but on this occasion, they needed the Yoosk page to display inside their own website. This threw up a number of issues around page size and user journey but we are happy to say that our web team have managed to resolve those issues and got the page up and running on time for the FCO deadline of earlier this week.

We now have two sites running with yoosk embedded within them - the Birmingham Post embedded yoosk earlier last year - and we can see that this is the model that people are going to be turning to more and more. For this reason we are developing an API which  will be available soon and will allow this kind of integration to be performed by anyone. We will be posting more about the API here once we are nearer completion but in the meantime, if you have any questions or comments about it, please feel free to post them here.

Voting begins in our 'Britain's Best MP' Campaign

by Keith

At the beginning of December, we started our 'Britain's Best MP' Campaign. The thinking behind it was to highlight that, despite all the negative press surrounding politics, there are MPs out there who genuinely do a good job for the UK.

We asked users of our website to send in their nominations for Best MP and to send us the questions they would like to put to the nominees. All eight nominated MPs agreed to answer and you can compare what they said on our home page now and cast your vote in our Poll, which will be ‘live’ until the 31st December.

These are the MPs you nominated.

Douglas Carswell (Con Harwich), Lynne Featherstone (Lib Dem Hornsey and Wood Green), Tom Harris (Lab Glasgow South), David Howarth (Lib Dem Cambridge) Chris Mullin (Lab Sunderland South) Bob Russell (Lib Dem Colchester), Gisela Stuart (Lab Birmingham Edgbaston), and Jo Swinson (Lib Dem East Dunbartonshire).

And below is one of the questions which threw up some interesting answers:

'How do you think Uk democracy could be improved?'



Tom Harris has a pessimistic view that just changing the electoral system won’t engage more people in  democracy because, as he says, the ‘democratic process isn’t of interest to most people.’ Is this the case though, or is it just that nobody has yet found a way to present the democratic process in an appealing way?

This is what we are trying to do – make politics a bit more fun and engage more people. We let our users choose the questions which will be asked, have introduced voting, we try and keep answers short and publish them in an easy to view format and then we allow feedback on the answers.

We are not the only ones either, with ideas to liven up the political arena, with Simon Cowell possibly getting involved next year. Until he does though, and telephone voting becomes the norm in political debates, please nip over to our website and take part in our old-fashioned online poll and cast your vote for ‘Best MP.’

MPs R Us: visiting Parliament reveals a very human mix of personalities and behaviours

We’ve seen the headlines, read the comment threads, heard the conversations in the pubs and over the dinner table: MPs are not like us, they are not good people.

A quick Google search for the phrase ‘MPs are Scum’ gives 137,000 results.

A similar search using the word ‘Vermin’ returns 40,900, the C-word gets 25,000 and ‘MPs are Bastards’ tops them all with 183,000. Admittedly, sometimes it is the odd MP calling other people scum but most of the time the abuse is aimed firmly their way.

Here’s one that stands out: http://raedwald.blogspot.com/2009/05/lets-trash-these-troughing-scum.html

“These MPs are scum. They are thieves. Their avarice, their grasping mendacious filthy peculation of public funds, their troughing porcine deception, their self-serving self-righteous....”

There’s more but you get the picture.

Intrigued, as we all are by evil and nastiness, this week I ventured into the Commons to meet five of these ‘troughing scum’ and here’s what I found:

-An MP who was obviously so tired he was struggling to keep his eyes open but who still managed to chair a meeting and to ask some intelligent questions .

-A genuinely warm and open young MP who was quieter than usual and who seemed pre-occupied at the meeting. She later tweeted that she was ‘ a bit miffed at being dropped from the BBC Question Time panel at 48hrs notice-because of the Iraq enquiry’. I’d be disappointed too.

-An MP who talked about locking himself in his house and drawing the curtains in the face of a barrage of press attention, and of the effects of all this on his family. This MP is very respected by a great many entrepreneurs and innovators for his willingness to listen to their problems.

-A down to earth and deeply committed woman who breaks all the stereotypes of how a typical MP looks, talks and behaves. If it wasn’t for all women shortlists, she almost certainly wouldn’t even be an MP.

-An ‘old school’ MP who is incredibly knowledgeable about China and Vietnam and who clearly wants to see the UK act as a force for good in those countries. What struck me was that he didn’t have a computer anywhere in his office , so no fancy gadgetry for him on expenses.

All these people were very different in personality, behaviour and politics but they all seemed to share a commitment to serving the public and their country. They have one other thing in common: they are not scum.

Are most of MPs flawed? Certainly. But then, aren’t we all? Help us find Britain’s best MP by interviewing them with your questions- find out how by clicking here.

The Yoosk Leadership Contest: help us find the country's best MPs

By Tim

Britain’s Best MP

‘UK Politics is broken’ is the all too common refrain we hear from the media. ‘Something must be done.’ Very often though, that ‘something’ is to sit back and highlight the negative rather than focus on the positive and the best way to ‘fix’ things.

Have some MPs abused the expenses system? Yes. Are all MPs bad? No. Many are hard working people, trying to do their best for their constituents.

We at Yoosk want everyone interested in politics to help us find the MP's who are the best examples of what a good MP is and does.. Then, in conjunction with The Independent newspaper we are going to interview them and find out what makes them tick. What are the experiences that shaped them, what values drive them, how do they behave and what makes them different?

Here's what we want you to do and how it will work:

1. Send us your nomination and a brief reason why you have nominated this person by clicking here or you can twit your nomination to #bestMP or add your nomination in a comment at the end of this post. Or you can just visit the site to see who has been nominated and add your vote.

2. Nominations close on the 27th November.

3. You will then have an opportunity to question the top 10 nominated MP's. Yoosk and the Independent will get the answers and publish them here and on Yoosk. You will have the opportunity to rate answers and the MP's performance via the yoosk website..

4. The winning MP will be the person who finishes at the top of the Yoosk Performance League Table which you can see on the top right of the Yoosk Home page on the closing day 17th December.

We are not looking for what makes a good party leader or how politicians rise to the top of factions or cliques. We think those are different qualities. We are looking for your ideas on the MP's who really stand out as strong, independent and principled voices, who can act with a degree of selflessness and who in doing so, show us a better way.

Yoosk offers a very open forum where both question and answer have a dynamic and an immediacy. ....... and I believe it is important (particularly in these times when we politicians are somewhat unloved) to be out there to show everyone that we do care and care passionately -  which is the reason that I am sure we all got into politics in the first place!' 

Lynne Feathjerstone MP

Why are we doing this?

When it comes to politics and the connections we the public have with the MP's and Councillors who represent us, Yoosk is very much about individuals rather than parties. We like Lynne Featherstone (LibDem), Deirdre Alden (Conservative prospective parliamnetary candidate) and David miliband (Labour) because of what we have personally witnessed: an obvious commitment to listening and engaging with the people they represent.

We want to do our part in making sure we get the best individuals in the next Parliament, irrespective of which party forms a government.

Reasons to be Cheerful..

By Keith

Trying to get Public Figures to answer questions from our users can often be a difficult task - we still haven't succeeded in getting any answers from Gordon Brown for example.

Whenever we get some answers, we see it as an achievement, but occasionally there is extra cause for satisfaction such as when the answers are particularly thoughtful or insightful as were these answers from Mathew Taylor, or when we manage to obtain answers for people who would not normally have a chance to get their voices heard. See this question (the asker of the question is no relation btw) posted to James Purnell and these questions posted from Jordanian citizens and answered by David Miliband.

In the interview which Jonathan Walker conducted with Siôn Simon last week (blogged here earlier) one of the questions came from Alison Smith aka Pesky People who is an ardent campaigner for the rights of disabled and deaf people to have full access to the Web, and after having her question answered, Alison told us this:

'Asking this question means that we are on Siôn's radar and he has been in touch to meet with us. This will enable us to influence, campaign, demand and highlight the digital injustice and discrimination we face. Digital Britain doesn't include Disabled or Deaf people and the discussion of digital inclusion is very tokenistic.'



Having met Alison, I know that she is a determined person and am sure that her persistence is the main reason that she has secured this meeting with Siôn but it's good to know that maybe Yoosk has helped in a small way.

If you would like to know more about Alison's campaign, you can visit her blog here. Nobody could argue against the justice of her cause.