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/RSS FeedOn March 4, we launched new data on TheyWorkForYou, making MPs’ financial interests easier for everyone to access and understand.
This wasn’t an easy undertaking! To explain the difficulties we encountered, and the recommendations we have for the way MPs declare their interests, we also put out a report.
At our launch event, we chatted through the challenges and our recommendations, together with Rose Whiffen of Transparency International, and Chris Cook from the Financial Times.
Links
- 📄Our report, Beyond Transparency.
- 🙏Donate to mySociety, so we can do more of this kind of work.
- 📺Rather watch this as a video instead of a podcast?
Transcript
Myf Nixon 0:01
Hi, Myf here, Communications Manager from mySociety. At the beginning of March, we launched the findings from our WhoFundsThem project. And you know what? This was a major undertaking for mySociety. (more…) -
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It’s March 4 2025, and we’re releasing a bunch of new data on TheyWorkForYou, around each MPs’ financial interests: that’s whether they have second jobs, what donations helped them campaign ahead of the general election, and whether they’ve received gifts such as Taylor Swift tickets.
In the course of assembling this data — with the help of our brilliant team of volunteers — we’ve come to understand exactly what the problems with the current system of reporting are.
If you’re seeing this on the morning of release, we’ll also be launching a report at 1pm today, and you’re welcome to join us. (Don’t worry if you’re too late; we’ll be sharing the video afterwards. Just make sure you’re signed up for our newsletter to be alerted when it’s available).
Don’t forget to check out your own MP, to see who funds them, on TheyWorkForYou.com. And if you have any questions about this project, the data, or MPs’ financial interests in general, send them to us at whofundsthem@mysociety.org.
If you appreciate this type of work, please help us do more of it by making a one-off (or even better, a regular) donation. Thank you!
Transcript
[0:00] Julia: If you’ve ever wondered if your MP has a second job, what donations they received, or if they were one of the ones that got a free Taylor Swift ticket, we’ve got the answers for you. (more…)
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In this super-short episode, we look at three recent examples of how the Council Climate Action Scorecards are bringing measurable change. The Scorecards are a joint project between mySociety and Climate Emergency UK, and you can visit them at councilclimatescorecards.uk.
Here are the three blog posts where you can find more details about all of these examples:
- Cotswold District Council working together with residents (and if you’re local, find details of how to get involved too)
- Scorecards spark carbon literacy training at South Cambs council
- Gedling Borough Council appreciate the gravitas the Scorecards bring
If you value the work we do at mySociety, please donate.
Transcript
0:00 [Myf:] I’m not really a data person. I’m a Communications Manager, right? So my currency is words and pictures, but my colleagues at mySociety are real data people. (more…)
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In our second video interviewing subjects of the book Our City: Community Activism in Bristol, we talk to journalist Joe Banks, who was able to find a real anomaly in the council’s approach to developing the oldest part of the city.
He did this both by looking at information other people had requested, and putting in his own Freedom of Information requests, on mySociety’s WhatDoTheyKnow website.
Details of the book can be found on the Tangent Books website.
You can read lots more about Joe’s investigation into St Mary Le Port, and other local topics, on his website.
If you value the work we do at mySociety, please donate.
Transcript
0:05 Myf: I’m Myfanwy Nixon, communications manager at mySociety. We’ve been talking to some of the people featured in this book: Our City, community activism in Bristol, edited by Suzanne Audrey. (more…)
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We Love Stoke Lodge is a campaign group in Bristol, and the subject of one of the chapters of the book Our City, edited by Suzanne Audrey. Many of the campaigns featured in the book used WhatDoTheyKnow and FOI to uncover vital information to support their campaigns. Hear Helen Powell describe the group’s experiences of campaigning to save a beloved piece of land for public use, and what they discovered thanks to FOI.
If you value the work we do at mySociety, please donate.
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/RSS FeedmySociety staffers Zarino, Gemma and Myf discuss the TICTeC Session “Fostering inclusive approaches to technological innovations for climate action”, in which Pryou Chung of East West Management Institute gave real life examples of how seemingly positive climate initiatives can go badly wrong when financial structures and baked in biases provide an incentive to overlook indigenous people.
Watch Pryou’s presentation for yourself here.
If you value the work we do at mySociety, please donate.
Transcript
0:05 Myf: I’m Myf, I’m Communications Manager at mySociety.
Zarino: I’m Zarino, I’m the Climate Programme Lead at mySociety.
Gemma: I’m Gemma, I’m mySociety’s Events and Engagement Manager. (more…) -
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TICTeC, the Impacts of Civic Technology Conference from mySociety, runs for just two days – but those two days are packed with civic tech practitioners sharing insights and experience from projects along the world.
We share most of the sessions as videos on our YouTube channel, and to help you decide what to watch first, we’ve asked mySociety staff to pick their favourites and chat about what they found so interesting. In this episode, Alice, Gemma and Myf discuss “Have you empirically improved transparency and accountability?” from Sean Russell of OpenUp South Africa. (more…)
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We’ve got updates from Julia on this Parliament’s first Register of Financial interests, showing what second jobs and gifts, etc, MPs have declared; and on the startlingly diminished list of All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs).
Meanwhile, Gareth tells us how to get a discount on WhatDoTheyKnow Pro, and we hear from AccessInfo about a new award – the winner will be invited to Madrid to present their work.
Alongside all of that, Myf explains how a WhatDoTheyKnow user harnessed the power of Reddit to verify the responses they were receiving to their FOI requests.
Enjoy!
Links
- Blog post on the Register of Financial Interests spreadsheet; and more details on what it contains
- Blog post about Reddit, WhatDoTheyKnow, and Physician Associates
- Blog post on the diminishing number of APPGs
- AccessInfo Impact Awards
- Full details on how to get a discount on WhatDoTheyKnow Pro by linking to your outcomes
- Our TikTok account
- Our Bluesky account
Music: Chafftop by Blue Dot Sessions.
Transcript
[0:04] Myf: Hello. Thank you very much for tuning in.
[0:07] This is our second monthly collection of news and updates from mySociety, and my name is Myf Nixon. I’m mySociety’s Communications Manager.
[0:15] This month, I’m going to share with you five pieces of news — two from our democracy work, and three from our transparency side. (more…)
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It’s our first ever podcast at mySociety! Heeey how about that?
Myf, our Communications Manager, runs you through all the stuff we’ve been doing at mySociety over the last month. It’s amazing what we manage to fit into just 30 days: you’ll hear about a meeting of Freedom of Information practitioners from around Europe; our new (and evolving) policy on the use of AI; a chat with someone who used the Climate Scorecards tool to springboard into further climate action… oh, and there’s just the small matter of the General Election here in the UK, which involved some crafty tweaking behind the scenes of our sites TheyWorkForYou and WriteToThem.
Links
- TICTeC videos on YouTube
- TICTeC photos on Flickr
- Browse the TICTeC 2024 schedule, find slides etc
- Matthew’s post on updating TheyWorkForYou on election night
- Sign up to get an email whenever your MP speaks or votes
- Democracy resources and our future plans in Alex’s post
- Local Intelligence Hub lets you access and play with data around your constituency
- Matt Stempeck’s summary of the Access to Information meetup
- Our summary of Matt’s summary of the meetup
- Updates from all those ATI projects around Europe
- New in Alaveteli: importing & presenting blog posts; request categories and exploring csvs in Datasette
- Fiona Dyer on how volunteering for Scorecards upped her climate action
- Where to sign up if you fancy volunteering as well
- mySociety’s approach to AI
- Contact us on hello [at] mysociety.org if you have any questions or feedback.
Music: Chafftop by Blue Dot Sessions.
Transcript
0:00
Well, hello and welcome to mySociety’s monthly round-up.
My name is Myf Nixon, Communications Manager at mySociety.
0:11
This is part of an experiment that we’re currently running where we’re trying to talk about our work in new formats, to see if that makes it easier for you to keep up with our news. (more…)
