We thought that the launch of PledgeBank might be a bit more low key than NotApathetic, what with it not having the election as a hook, and being a bit more ‘high concept’ and difficult to explain to people. But what do we know, eh?

The job for this week has been getting WriteToThem back up. We’ve now sorted out the Scottish boundary changes and the names of the new MPs, but we don’t have their contact details yet. Today, among sundry other bits and bobs, including debugging thorny Exim problems and other such uninteresting stuff, I’ve been sending faxes to the Parliamentary fax numbers we have for MPs who’ve been re-elected, asking them whether their details have changed. We’re doing that because we don’t know whether those MPs will be in the same offices in this Parliament as in the last, and obviously it would be a breach of trust to send constituents’ mail to the wrong offices. So, I’ve finally reached rock bottom: Chris Lightfoot, junk fax merchant. Sorry, everyone!

(Previous “rock bottom” moment: being telephoned early in the morning by a Labour MP with a rather cut-glass accent. She was calling to find out she had been receiving phone calls from our fax machine — we had the number wrong — at her office. But she didn’t tell me who she was, and, because over the phone she sounded uncannily like an old friend of mine, I assumed that it was my friend on the line. She must have assumed that she knew who I was too, and we exchanged several rounds of pleasantries before comprehension gradually dawned: “This is Mrs — —, MP; who am I speaking to?” Come to think of it, she may even have asked “to whom am I speaking?”.)

Over the weekend, and this morning, I’ve been updating the Public Whip and TheyWorkForYou database of MPs. This was much easier this year thanks, amazingly to Macromedia Flash. The BBC have a fantastic animated constituency map which is made in flash. When you click on a constituency it gives you the results. Now, one little know thing about flash is that it uses XML to communicate with the server. This means that any data it downloads must be in XML.

Further investigating reveals that you can download results data from URLs like http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/vote2005/flash_map/resultdata/200.xml. So I wrote a script to download these and convert them to XML. May I present a list of all the new MPs. Now, just need to wait for them to start talking and voting so we can build up a record of them. Meanwhile, on to some mySociety work; fixing up WriteToThem…

Praise be to Macromedia!

Phew! We’re all knackered after staying up late last night, chatting on IRC while watching the results come in. And eating and drinking. Matthew is in Canada, Chris on holiday on some Mediterranean island. Tom has gone out to doze in the sun and recover lost sleep so he can do useful work again. So it is very quiet today.

I’ve done a minor update to WriteToThem, just taking down the county councils and MPs, and changing all the wording. I think though that what I really need is a nap as well….

Not content with building surprise election hit NotApathetic, mySociety’s keen band of volunteers have been busy recycling the code to produce IVotedForYouBecause.com. Just as NotApathetic was a platform for non-voters to explain their decision, IVotedForYouBecause.com is a place to explain the reasons why you voted for a particular candidate, and a place to make it clear what you do and don’t expect from them. In a few weeks we’ll coalate the responses by constituency, and use WriteToThem.com to mail them to the new MPs.

So, we’ve launched Not Apathetic. If you aren’t voting, here’s your chance to say why. It’s a grouphug.us for political confessions. Much kudos to Sam, Matthew and Matthew who did all the work on the site.

mySociety projects are mainly focussed on improving the quality of civic, community and political life between elections. But back in late 2003 James Crabtree suggested a site which would give a voice to the 40% of citizens who won’t be turning out to vote. There are already plenty of sites trying to encourage people to vote, or even encouraging them not to. Our purpose with NotApathetic.com is simply to give these people a voice. If you know of anyone who isn’t voting, please encourage them to give their reasons. And if you want to help publicise the site, as well as get a sneak preview at our next site, take a look at this.

So, what am I up to right now? As you’ll probably know, the General Election has just been called; as those who aren’t obsessive political geeks will know (full disclosure: I had to look this up) that means that Parliament will be dissolved on Monday 11th April. One peculiarity of our Constitution is that, once Parliament is dissolved, there are no MPs any more (though ex-MPs still get paid, and government ministers retain their posts and their salaries). So my last ten minutes’ work were looking up what FaxYourMP.com said during the 2001 election, and then adding the following note to WriteToThem.com:

Important note about the General Election: there will be a General Election on Thursday 5th May 2005. That means that on Monday 11th April, Parliament will be dissolved. Once Parliament is dissolved, you do not have a Member of Parliament (though your ex-MP still gets paid — nice!). So if you’re going to write to your MP, be quick! Messages sent to MPs which have not been sent by 11th April will be returned to their senders.

We’ll be back as soon after the election as we can manage!

Now that’s done, and I’ve completed today’s service to posterity by writing the above, it’s back to adding the last few features to PledgeBank that we need before we launch. And look out for NotApathetic (coming to a domain name like that, real soon now), too.