The Change We See

Following on from the previous post, I was talking to someone earlier today about how Labour doesn't get the credit it should for its use of new media.

OK, the right-wing have a high profile presence in the blogosphere, with Iain Dale, Guido Fawkes and Conservative Home, which are all basically online diary columns. Labour has better MP bloggers, 'though I say it myself. And Labour is way ahead of the game when it comes to campaigning, with its use of things like the Virtual Phonebank, Google maps, LabourSpace, sites like Go Fourth, and MPs - even Cabinet Ministers - using Twitter actually to engage with people, not just to transmit information.

And before anyone else says it, yes, I recognise where they're at because that's where New Labour was once at, in the Millbank days; but there was a buzz, an excitement, a genuine passion and shared sense of purpose that bound people together then, not just a centralised dictat. (Although there was a bit of that too!) We were on a mission. I don't have any sense of that from the Conservative Party. They want to win. They badly want to win. But why? What's their vision of a Cameron-led country, other than the fact that they've got the keys to number 10 and get to sit on the Aye benches? I see the political positioning, I see the tactics, but I don't see the vision, or the passion. They are dead behind the eyes.

Anyway, that was a digression, which I may return to another day. What I wanted to just flag up was the latest online 'thing' (for want of a better word) from Labour. The Party has ventured into the world of crowd-sourcing with the launch of a new feature, The Change We See.

They're asking party members, supporters, anyone, to post pictures of how their local communities have changed for the better under a Labour Government. So in my patch that would be the City Academy, Bristol Metropolitan Academy, the Brunel Academy, the new Brislington Enterprise College, Barton Hill campus and other school buildings too numerous to list. The Charlotte Keel surgery. The Wellspring Healthy Living Centre. The new Children's Centre in Broomhill. The A420 Showcase Bus Route. The regeneration of Arnos Vale (although people might not quite get why I've posted a picture of a cemetery!)

Have a look at this for starters http://www.labour.org.uk/change-we-see. It's being launched across different platforms - ie Flickr, Facebook and Twitter - as well as allowing people to upload via the Labour Party site or email their photos in, in order to make it as easy as possible for people to get involved. Let those pictures speak for themselves!