Shocking true cost of Miliband’s blog is £40,000 p.a.
Posted by Ellee Seymour on Jun 17, 2006 in updates | 13 comments
Do you remember the shockwaves that reverberated when I revealed that Minister Miliband’s blog cost £6,000 to set up while Boris, like the rest of us lesser mortals, blogs for free?
These juicy facts were revealed by inquisitive Lib Dem MP Chris Huhne who discovered that two members of Defra’s staff were spending 40% of their time working on the blog. Surely they should be sorting out climate change, the farmers late payments, meeting recycling targets etc instead of blogging.
And how can this justify David Miliband’s position as a finalist in the New Statesman New Media Awards where he is a guest speaker? Surely these are grounds for disqualification.
Last year, the award was not presented in the elected representative category because it was felt the standard of entries was not high enough. We know the Tory bloggers lead this field, and I think they do too.
This is Pandora’s report:
“According to research by the Liberal Democrats’ urbane front bencher, Chris Huhne, the amount is somewhere approaching £40,000 a year.
“Huhne has come to this whopping figure after tabling a written question to the recently promoted Environment Secretary’s office earlier this month to ask what sort of manpower was involved in maintaining the site. He was told that two members of staff employed by Defra had recently dedicated as much as 40 per cent of their office time working on it.
“So far, claims Huhne, this also means the blog has cost around £1 a word to upkeep. “How can it cost £40,000 a year of taxpayers’ money for staff to capture David Miliband’s hot air on climate change?” he says.
“Ever since the blog was launched to great fanfare back in March, it’s been heavily criticised. Some politicos complained that the content was too boring, while others claimed it was failing to attract intelligent debate on its message postings.
“A spokesman for Miliband said yesterday: “I don’t quite know how Chris Huhne worked out that figure. At the moment, we think it’s going to be a small percentage of one existing member of staff’s time.”
Thanks Geoff for bringing this tasty little snippet of news to my attention.
Update: Sunday, 18th June. One of my favourite social media correspondents has picked up on this after a nudge from me. See Antony Mayfield. Chameleons on Bicycles followed suit, as well as ConservativeHome.
Are you sure Melissa (who posts much on the content on Boris’s behalf) is unpaid? She says a ‘shoestring budget’, not no budget. But that’s neither here nor there.
The logic of your argument is that government communication should be conducted by volunteers; that is, that we should rely on a volunteer COI to tell us what the government’s policy is on the things that matter to us.
In such circumstances civil servants would, for example, be prevented from telling us how the government intended to vote on whaling. They would be unable to explain the government’s policy for developing local transport in my region.
Secondly, we should avoid focussing too much on politician’s personal sides. Many people believe David Cameron to be a nice guy. But we must never forget he helped write the last Conservative manifesto and should judge him on that.
It would be inappropriate for this, a ministerial blog, to be personal. When Miliband moves on it will cease to be his blog and interesting to see whether his successor keeps it up.
Stephen, Boris’ blog is maintained by volunteers. Here is my post from 29 March when I wrote up about it:
http://elleeseymour.blogspot.com/2006/03/boris-blogs-for-free-should-millibands.html
Have you read Margot Wallstrom’s blog, the EP Commissioner for Communications, she manages to give an interesting and illuminating insight into herself as a person, as well as the work she is doing. It is personal as well as informative.
See: http://weblog.jrc.ec.europa.eu/page/wallstrom/
In fact, by the same measure, Boris Johnson doesn’t blog for free. His blog is maintained by his staff (nothing wrong with that).
So it would be fair to take the proportion of their time spent on that activity and put that proportion of their salaries down as a cost of blogging (in the same way the civil servants salaries have allocated here).
In response to the parliamentary question put by Chris Huhne, Barry Gardiner, Parliamentary Under-Secretary DEFRA said,”The Secretary of State writes his own blog. Two staff in Defra’s Communications Directorate—at Grade 7 and Higher Executive Officer grades—have integrated the blog into Defra’s website, and continue to oversee operation. For the two weeks following the recent ministerial changes, approximately 30 to 40 per cent. of their time was spent on work in some way connected to the blog. This is expected to decrease. The blog promotes a new and more direct form of communication between the public and the Secretary of State.”
So, he writes his own blog and the time spent by the civil servants is connected to the blog, could it be some of it is acting on the comments people are making?
Not really Karen – apparently he has civil servants writing it. Is this what taxpayers in your area want? It might be. Im sure it isn’t what they are calling for in my neck of the woods.
Figures can and will be used how the writer wants them to be used. Sounds like spin to me to deflect from the fact that he’s the first minister to blog. Wasn’t the first MP to blog Labour too? and the first councillor?
Thanks Simon, I will add your link to my updated story on this and as your site looks very interesting, it will be added to my blogroll.
Hi Ellee
Posted about this story too at my new blog: eDemocracy Update.
Was going to trackbak but couldn’t find one!
cheers
Currently Milibands Blog may look plastic, but NuLabour are going to home in on this medium. I predict a lot of new Blogs around election time by ordinary voters who want to praise NuLabour and their 40 great achievements.
(By the way Elle can’t get your RSS Feed to work these days.)
thanks for the mention Ellee and no its not really a blog at all unless its one of those character blogs
Wow. I wonder why he calls it his blog? By the sounds of it, his employees do the work for it, so it isn’t really ‘his’. And it isn’t really a blog – just another propaganda machine that has taken the name.
scandalous!
Jonathan, if I had the money I’d pay you.
DO you think I could have £40k pa to run Tory Radio?