• UK| Has Twitter claimed its first political scalp?
  It seems so after the news that Stuart MacClennan, a Scottish Labour candidate, has been sacked by his own party because of offensive comments expressed via Twitter. On Twitter MacClennan, a young Constitutional affairs researcher, has cursed leading politicians, described pensioners as "coffin dodgers" and made remarks on slavery that has been defined from "unfortunate" to "racist: an apology wasn't enough to save him form firing. On the Guardian Simon Jeffery has a point:

Craig Newmark flew straight to Los Angeles from Dublin in order to share his thoughts on using technology and social media to improve government at the Gov 2.0 Camp LA this past weekend. Newmark, who writes frequently on the topic and has recently been quite active in bringing attention to problems in the Veterens Affairs area, came to speak from a customer service perspective. Although I've seen Craig speak a few times about that, he always adds new anecdotes and provides additional angles on the problem showing how much he thinks about it on a regular basis. But for him, it boils down to the basics. "A lot of customer service is obvious stuff. It's just listening to people." This was the afternoon core conversation on Saturday. (See my earlier post about the conference in general and what transpired the first morning.)