At the e-Democracy conference in London on Thursday, there was as ever lots of talk of ‘innovative’ ways of connecting people and government, although pleasingly there was a different mood around this year on the idea, of which more later.
Anyway, came across this lovely website recently that makes the point really well that ‘the medium is not the message, the message is the message’. You can build the most ‘innovative’ site possible, but it won’t work unless the content of the site is interesting and accessible.
The site is a regular community bulletin from Tisbury and Mere, part of the Wiltshire Constabulary. As such it’s a public sector site, intuitively in need of ‘serious’ copy as much as any other, but the writing style’s brilliant, funny, engaging and open.
There’s loads of it, but my favourite bit so far is the reminder on how to deal with scam letters telling you you’ve won a foreign lottery:
TIMELY SCAM REMINDER
It has been bought to my attention that there is a Spanish lottery scam doing the rounds. Thank you for forwarding the letters but PLEASE, NO MORE! This is a typical scam intending to prey on those whose judgement is blinded by naivety, gullibility, stupidity or greed. There are numerous mail and e-mail scams doing the rounds from time to time, so here is some all encompassing advice on scams.
If you receive a letter in the post notifying you that your Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Mexican, Canadian, French, African, Martian lottery tickets bear the winning numbers and you are therefore entitled to the twenty trazillion top prize I would like you to do the following:
Proceed immediately to the nearest waste receptacle or burning fire and throw the letter and envelope into it with as much gusto as you can muster. Whilst doing this shout ‘SCAM – BUSTED’. You can then cackle wildly like a mad professor and sit with a very smug look on your face for the rest of the day.
If you feel yourself taking any other course of action revert to plan B and follow the next set of instructions:
Immediately slap yourself in the face shouting ‘NO, NO, NO, IT ISN’T REAL, IT’S A SCAM’ until you start to follow the first set of instructions. Remember to keep slapping and shouting until you have come to your senses and changed your course of action.
