Fritter

You remember, of course, the everybody's-doing-it expenses scandal that very nearly brought down the British government this spring. How to bounce back from a fiasco as devastating as that? Like this:

The UK Government is issuing a new 20-page guide urging ministers and civil servants to use Twitter. The guide, which includes information on how to use the micro-blogging platform, is aimed at increasing the visibility of government news and messages online. The guide suggests that ministers should tweet at least twice but not more than 10 times a day, with at least a 30-minute break between messages.

It's a marvelous initiative, especially since all that official twittering is expected to take up perhaps one work hour a day, or some 15% of the time that the assorted cabinet members and bureaucrats would otherwise spend on actual, useful work ripping down what's left of civil liberties in the U.K., and falsifying and redacting expense reports.

Comments

[Phil Nelson]

Here's to the deadlock.

[benpal]

Government by twittering. As long as they don't do the more silly things they are used to doing, why not. Keeps'm busy without doing any harm. But then why sould tax payers pay for twitters?

[Don]

They should go ahead and twitter several hours each day, and do myspace, digg, and all the other web socialization attrocities out there as well - hell, spend all day doing that stuff.

Then, convince politicians everywhere to do the same thing.