Have @ it, Parliament!

Bill Flanigen | July 28, 2009

The British government, via a report with about 25,000 characters, is encouraging civil servants to tweet, according to the Associated Press. Laughably, the report "warns against using Twitter simply to convey campaign messages." That'll sure stop 'em. It appears that some of the civil servants are too technologically challenged to heed the advice, anyway:

Tom Watson, a Labour party lawmaker who is one of the House of Commons' most active bloggers, said Twitter could be a valuable tool for Britain's Labour government.

But he said the guidelines showed how levels of familiarity with the Internet varied widely in the government's Whitehall offices.

"There are some very bright, digitally enabled civil servants who unfortunately have to write these documents for their bosses, the mandarins, who still get their secretaries to print off their e-mails so they can read them," Watson told the BBC. 

Here's to a tweeting Britain: may it enjoy one, two, many Hoekstras.