On 10 July, as MPs were in an end-of-term euphoric mood, BT Public Affairs ran the second BT Technology Challenge quiz between teams of MPs and journalists, on whether MPs knew anything about technology.
The challenge was sparked off by an article in the Guardian by an irresponsible journalist on 9 March 2006 headlined “Techno world has MPs beat” http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/mar/09/idcards.insideit. Last year, the MPs amazed everybody and refuted the claim. John Robertson’s team of ‘Telstars’ beat the journalists on the last question, which was “who was the first MP to blog”. The answer was of course Richard Allan, then LibDem spokesman on IT, but now Cisco’s representative on PITCOM.This year, three teams of MPs competed: the “Broonies” led by Dr. Ian Gibson MP; the Telstars, led by John Robertson, now joint chairman of the newly converged All-Party Group apComms; and Rt. Hon. Alun Michael MP, leading the “Clunking Fists”. (The names of these teams indicate a Labour bias to what should have been a cross-party evening!) Eight MPs were in these teams, most of them being PITCOM Parliamentary Members. More MPs would have attended but for an anti-Terrorist Bill in the House that evening. They were replaced by their PAs, which could have been a competitive benefit, as PAs tend to be more techie than their bosses. One curious thing was that none of the MPs competing were from the 2005 intake. one might have expected that these new MPs would be more computer-literate than their more senior colleagues, particularly because some of the class of ’05 had had distinguished pre-parliamentary careers in software companies. The team leaders should start grooming these immediately for next year’s quiz.This time, the journalists won convincingly. This was largely because the questions, posed by Stuff magazine/Gadget Show impresario Tom Dunmore. were relentlessly techie: like what does MPEG mean and how many tunes can you fit on 80 gigabits? There were some historical questions like when did Sir Tim Berners Lee launch the http protocol and the World Wide Web. But there were no questions related to public policy, like “when did Hansard first appear on the Web, or “how many regulators were replaced by OFCOM”. The journalists would have been phased by such questions. The MPs can console themselves that who wins such an event depends entirely on the balance of the questions.All three MP teams were knocked out, and a sing-off between the journalists in the shape of a karaoke rendering of Life on Mars, was won by the dulcet tones of Charles Arthur, leader of the “Guardianista” team, being preferred over BBC online’s technology correspondent Darren Jones. Rory Cellan Jones, who led the BBC “Terabyte” team, felt his team “wuz robbed”: “they should have chosen Men of Harlech” as the song to sing.Oxfam will receive £1,000 as the winning team's nominated charity and the compere, Tom Dunmore, has donated his fee to Amnesty International's Stop Violence Against Women campaign.The Guardian’s triumphalist report on the proceedings and the subsequent blog are at: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/archives/2007/07/11/sing_when_youre_winning.html#comment-592678BT’s description, including a podcast of the event, with an interview with Alun Michael, is at: http://www.btplc.com/Thegroup/Publicaffairs/UKPublicAffairs/IntheNews/IntheNews.htm
Richard Sarson
