American Idol-alum Kellie Pickler has done the unthinkable. She’s united all of Europe, without having to resort to warfare. She’d obviously make a great MEP.

“Europe is a country.”

“They all speak French.”

“I don’t think France is a country.”

When told that the answer was Hungary: Like “I’m hungry?”

Kellie Pickler appeared on ‘Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader’ – and humiliated herself. It’s worse than even the Miss South Carolina/Miss Teen USA debacle.

Kinda like Labourhome, eh?

It’s got a clean look and is much more accessible this time ’round (esp. by non Internet Explorer users), but it’s still very much politics1.0. People demand unscripted politics, as they do with reality/unscripted TV. To put it bluntly, Anthony Minghella or Dave The Chameleon just don’t quite cut it, and if the hoi-polloi want the news, they’ll watch the BBC.

Btw – you don’t have to register on the front page, just click on the “enter” link to check it out.

Everyone’s going to start comparing it with 18DoughtyStreet, but I won’t. The argument here is rather tricky – can/must we segment these two projects as right-wing vs left-wing? Aren’t they doomed to fail considering people want to choose the issues they’re passionate about? Isn’t 18DS already a huge success given that the owner is very likely to have not lost any capital on the entire project, and it has rapidly disrupted (or at the very least, altered) the market? They’ve also got two entirely different models. 18 Doughty Street attempted the citizen-journalism initiative, but didn’t follow through. CampaignTV seems to be going down the route of focusing on high-quality video content, and since I tell everyone to focus on what they do best, a big kudos goes out to Silverfish. Now if only they understood the Web. There isn’t going to be a huge revival of the “left” – a conception I’m almost entirely convinced doesn’t exist in the mindset of people in my generation (+/- 1).

Picture credit – uncov, if I remember correctly.

What is similar is the fact that both these two projects are angling for the political share of the user-generated video pie. The downside to this is that you can’t easily compete with Google/YouTube, and that’s a pretty bleak outlook. Even if one did try, Google Video Search would end up indexing the video anyway.

Interesting sidenote: I did notice that clicking on any of the Labourhome banners on CampaignTV won’t actually transfer you to the intended site.

Next article: E-democracy and bullshit. Politicians want to pummel their opponents – they couldn’t give a hoot about engaging with retarded puppies.

Anything exciting going on at all, chaps?

For those who don’t remember (it only was <3 weeks ago, ya know), the Conservatives had convinced themselves (and lots of other people) that October 25th was D-Day. Of course, the entire country was gripped by election-mania: was the PM going to call an election? Everyone had something to say - everyone but the Prime Minister, that is.

Update November 1st: There was going to be an election, today, as well. Did anyone know anything? Guess not.

None at all, my dear. The blogosphere in 2007 has proven to be a better opposition to the Government than the Conservative Party under David Cameron.

One only needs to look at Tenacious Dave’s recent NHS scandal (or gaffe, depending on which CCHQ researcher you ask) to understand the dynamics of a self-correcting blogosphere up against a self-proselytising clique of second-rate part-timers.

Sweet baby Jesus…

I’ve just added in the entries for the UK Parliament, the BBC, and the Tory HQ (CCHQ), Number 10 Downing Street, the Guardian, IPPR, Trinity Mirror Group, News International, and the Scottish Parliament (I’d add more but I really do have to get back to work).

Really juicy Wiki spin jobs are being reported on a Wired wiki. The most interesting bit I found was that no one at Number 10 had anonymously edited a wiki page.

*I’d classify this as a semi-mashup, since most of the data is already easily accessed via Wikipedia anyway.

Tim Ireland’s right on this one. So sign the petition, click here to claim your e-activist credentials.