Here’s an idea for making the goings-on in Parliament more accessible: podcast them.
Questions to ministers would be a good session to use it for. Set up an automated system to record the half-hour/hour long sessions of question times for the various different departments, encode them into MP3 files and make them available online. Set them up with categorised feeds so that listeners could subscribe to all of them or just the departments they’re interested in. This doesn’t just apply to the UK Parliament, of course: it would also be a useful service for the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and London Assembly.
Turns out that the ever-innovative theguardianunlimited have this set up already for PMQs – search the iTunes podcast directory for “pmqs”. I guess they make it available manually, but I’d be interested to know otherwise.
” I guess they make it available manually” – I’m pretty sure they pull it off the parliamentlive.tv web stream, as there are frequently gaps in the recording and stutterings.
Have you seen that Today in Parliament is now being Podcast?
Indeed – the latest one appears to skip around Ming’s question.
I noticed that on your blog – very useful as I don’t get LW at home. I’ll have to subscribe. Next I’ll need an iPod…
I think it’s an excellent idea. Not only does it make them available quickly and easily to all but it is also in a format that will appeal to the yoof.
Shame that with all excellent ideas, the chances of them being implemented by those in charge are virtually nil…