Everyone's talking about MP donations

WhoFundsThem couldn't be more timely

You may have seen in the news: stories about MPs receiving goods, holidays, tickets and other gifts from generous donors. A recent YouGov poll showed that a majority of us are uneasy about the concept of such donations and how they might influence MPs' behaviour.

That's why we're so glad to have trained up our wonderful team of volunteers to go through the data on Members' interests. When they've finished, that data will be easier to understand, and available to everyone on TheyWorkForYou. Read all about the kick-off of this project here.

What do we know about MPs’ financial interests?

Meanwhile, we've done a deep dive into how MPs’ financial interests operate, and how they are perceived by the general public.

Should public opinion help direct the rules? Alex shares his takeaways in this post, where you can also find a link to our full report.

Cotswolds Council monitor their progress to Net Zero with Scorecards

We chatted with Cllr Mike McKeown and learned how he'd come across the Council Climate Action Scorecards via a very modern route.

Also of interest was how the Scorecards have been integrated through the council's climate processes, from benchmarking to action planning. Discover more here.

Bracknell Forest Council are way ahead 

Another first for us: Bracknell Forest Council are not only welcoming the scrutiny brought by the Climate Action Scorecards; they are proactively publishing the answers to all questions on their own website.

This means they are easy to access, both for the Climate Emergency UK scoring team, and the general public too — a wonderful example of complete transparency all round.

See you at the LGA conference?

Our sister company SocietyWorks never misses the Local Government Association conference — they're looking forward to meeting delegates and chatting about all things FixMyStreet Pro, WasteWorks, etc.

This year, we'll also be happy to demonstrate our climate-related tools such as CAPE and Local Intelligence Hub, and how they are useful for council staff. Julia will be there, and rumour has it she'll be appealing to your competitive streak with a little game, too.

Read or watch — your choice

If you've clicked through to read any of our blog posts, you might have noticed there's generally now a video at the top, as well as longer, more in-depth text. 

If you'd like to see all our videos in one go, you can do that on this YouTube playlist, or dare we suggest, on our newish TikTok channel? If Instagram's your bag, we've also been adding Reels.

We know video isn't for everyone, so don't worry: we'll always keep the written posts too.

Do you appreciate the work we do?

At mySociety we're very busy all the time, making democracy more accessible to everyone, and providing the tools to help people play an active part in society.

If you can help us out, please do head to our secure donate page. Every contribution helps us to work harder and faster towards a better, more inclusive society. Thank you.

What we're consuming

• AccessInfo announced the winner of their award and we're delighted to see that Eleanor Shaikh was shortlisted. We wrote last year about Eleanor's use of WhatDoTheyKnow to help uncover the Post Office scandal.
• Audrey Tang joins The Rest Is Politics chaps to talk about fighting fake news.
• An interesting piece about using the US FOI Act to request information on Donald Trump's Scottish properties.
• Artist Freddie Yauner couldn't have done this through WriteToThem - because you can only use it to contact your own MP. But we're glad he did it.
• Super appealing to the Lego-lovers amongst mySociety's staff.

Help us send you the emails you want to read

We do a lot of different things here at mySociety, and we appreciate that not everyone will be interested in every single part of it.

So if you've got a minute, please tell us a bit more about yourself, and we'll work towards sending you the stuff you really want to read.

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