Leanne Wood’s Adventures in Cyberspace

January 20, 2008

Leanne Wood seems to have disappeared down a virtual rabbit hole in cyberspace.

This week the Plaid Cymru Assembly Member’s blog disappeared off the face of the Net.

It is like a Lewis Carroll story with the eponymous heroine disappearing into another world.

So therefore we dub this news story, Leanne Wood’s Adventures in Cyberspace.

The story of Leanne’s Adventures begins with her election as Plaid Cymru Assembly Member for South Wales Central in May 2003. The domain welshpolitics.com was registered on her behalf by a Porth-based business.

After her election it became her key platform for publishing online.

The choice of the domain name welshpolitics.com was very questionable as it failed to convey immediately the purpose of the website, which was to publish material by one individual politician.

Much of the content published via welshpolitics.com was predictable and pedestrian stuff : press releases, party political guff, the occasional stage-managed photo with party activisits masquerading as Nationalist supporters.

welshpolitics.com was presented in sections… press releases, photos, forum, links, and a cymraeg (Welsh language) section. There was very, very little Cymraeg on the website. Clicking on the link to the ‘cymraeg’ section merely translated the content of a few section icons, the content remained English language.

The forum section of welshpolitics.com was as a lively as a church graveyard and the mailing list was mis-configured. Having received several very colourful spam emails from this Assembly Member’s mailing list, we wrote to her office and the company hosting the website drawing their attention to the problem.

Blogging Bug Arrives in January 2006

Blog fever hits the Welsh Assembly and in January 2006, Leanne Wood catches the blogging bug.

She starts using the blogging service at typepad.com to publish a blog and podcast. Here is a copy of the Press Release.

The decision to broadcast audio was, as the press release correctly claims, innovative. Leighton Andrews, the Rhondda AM, would subsequently try to out-blog his Plaid opponents by publishing a video-blog dubbed “Rhondda TV” in October 2006.

Confusion about the use of Internet Domains

All this innovation came at a price. The price was confusion. During 2006, Leanne Wood was effectively using two domain names to publish material online, viz (1) welshpolitics.com; and (2) leannewood.typepad.com (to be precise, this is a sub-domain which is hired, the domain typepad.com being owned by a blogging service).

The welshpolitics.com website was tinkered so that a frames-based redirect occurred. In other words, people visiting the site welshpolitics.com would read content published and managed via the Typepad blogging account at leannewood.typepad.com

It was a mess. Which domain do you use to list a politician ? Their blog ? Their main website ? Their blog embedded within their main website ?

Welshpolitics.com Disappears

Around mid-2007, the domain welshpolitics.com was allowed to expire. Domains are hired for a period of a year or more. welshpolitics.com seems to have been registered from mid 2003 until mid 2007 - four years. There were no announcement that this domain would cease to exist, it simply disappeared. It was subsequently re-registered by a company specialising in making a ‘quick buck’ selling domains with a good page rank on Google, such as welshpolitics.com

In January 2008, a search on Google, the world’s biggest search engine, reveals around 800 web pages that continue to link incorrectly to Leanne Wood’s former website at welshpolitics.com. Many of these websites are published on behalf of elected Plaid Cymru politicians. From a communication point of view, it is a disaster.

Back in a New Blogging Saddle

In September 2006 a new domain was registered on behalf of Leanne Wood AM called “leannewood.org“.

This was a much more sensibly-named domain name. Choosing a name is not rocket science.

Once again, this domain was used to incorporate blog articles from Leanne Wood’s blog at leannewood.typepad.com

Leanne Wood’s farewell Christmas Blog message

On a scale of one to ten, the rabidity of Leanne Wood’s Republicanism would measure an eleven.

Thus it was no surprise to read her Christmas ‘goodwill’ message for Queen Elizabeth II, posted on her blog on 27th December 2007.

Shortly after this, her blog disappeared. Once again, no warnings, nothing, zilch, dim byd, wedi diflannu.

Bring on the Plaid men in White Coats

Today, the website at www.leannewood.org uses a simple frames-redirect technique to mirror verbatim content from Plaid Cymru’s official party website at www.plaidcymru.org.

It is worrying to think that the men in white coats at Ty Gwynfor, Plaid Cymru’s Headquarters in Cardiff, now speak for this Assembly Member.

As far as we can tell, there isn’t an independent website or blog that we can find associated with this Assembly Member.

Internet Guidelines for Assembly Members

Disappearing websites and blogs are the equivalent of walking away in the middle of a conversation.

Since the taxpayer’s money pays for an Assembly politician’s websites, we expect value and prudence, and common sense.

Even the lowliest of Assembly Members (with expenses) costs the taxpayer around the price of 5 teachers, a few nurses, or one doctor.

The National Assembly for Wales should debate Guidelines on the use of the Internet by Assembly Members. These Guidelines should provide advice on how an Assembly Member conducts their affairs in Cyberspace. Anonymous attack blogs, like Natwatch (apparently funded by a leading Labour Party Assembly Member and his young researcher) bring the political process in Wales into disrepute. But equally, using one’s personal political blog, subsidised by the Welsh taxpayer, to attack the Queen at Christmas is hardly constructive politics. We deserve better.

Filed Under Media Analysis, Politics, Wales, Welsh Assembly

Leanne Wood’s Adventures in Cyberspace

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