Blog

by Matt Chocqueel-Mangan

You have been asking for it, and we’ve been promising it! Yes, finally you can view all of the policies from every party! You can order them by Issue (all Crime policies, for example) or by Party (all Labour policies), and any policies that you selected are highlighted too.

You can access it via your results page - just scroll to the bottom and you’ll see the Policy Browser link. And don’t forget to let us know what you think.

I’m also pleased to say the policy summaries have (almost) all been updated following the release of party manifestos last week.  For your interest (!) and for the benefit of further transparency, I thought it would be useful to give you some brief insight into how the updates have been handled. It’s been a joint effort, so special thanks go to Edd Moore for his excellent journalistic eye for providing a crucial second opinion.

Obviously being ‘policy summaries’ we’re not trying to include every policy in full detail, but for each party it has been pretty easy to identify their key points, and treat them all in a consistent and fair way. As before, we have pulled out (up to) the first eight main points from the relevant sections, just lifting text as it is and removing any party name references.

A brief note on each party;

BNP: We were told on Tuesday by their press office that their manifesto release has been been delayed until Friday. We’ll have to update this separately as soon as it’s out.

Conservatives: All sections have been changed, although there was no heading / section in their manifesto covering Immigration so this was taken from their website. Possibly some points are too long as we stitched a few together to make sure there was room to cover different subjects. The summaries are with their Deputy Head of Press, so any amends they request will be incorporated immediately.

Greens: They confirmed that there were no changes to make to the policy summaries (which they had previously checked), so there has been no need to update them. That was an easy job!

Labour: Fortunately the layout of their manifesto makes it easy to pull out the key points. I haven’t heard back from their press office after sending the the updated summaries as requested but, as with the Conservatives, we’ll make any amends they request as soon as they come through.

Lib Dems: All previous points that aren’t now in their manifesto have been removed. Their Head of Policy very obligingly edited out non-manifesto points for us and we added extra points from the manifesto where there was room.

UKIP: Quite easy to get the key points out here to. Mainly just re-prioritiesd in accordance with their manifesto, which they have also kindly checked and approved.

by Alistair Holt

For all of you who would like to get a bit more involved with Vote for Policies, and help us spread the word, we’ve collected some goodies together especially for you!

Over on our new Get Involved page you will find easy sharing links for your favourite social media sites, a Twibbon which you can use on your Twitter avatar and Facebook profile picture, a set of posters for downloading, printing and sticking up wherever you can find some free space (windows, noticeboards, your friends back *shh*) and a tasty desktop wallpaper to brighten up your computer screen.

We’ve been considering opening a little shop where you would be able to buy Vote for Policies t-shirts, mugs, badges and stickers, which would all help promote the site and get the message out there. It would also help support the site financially. Please let us know in the comments if this is something you’d be interested in. If we have time and there’s enough interest, we might well get this up and running soon.

We really appreciate the fantastic support we have already been receiving from you all, and with a little more, we can take Vote for Policies even further. Thank you!