Jive Talk

Ren Reynolds notes the unintentional humor in MP Tom Watson's site for teens, which includes the following pitch for the online bureaucracy of the virtual state.

Get involved - to the extreme!

The BBC politics for kids/teens site is, like, totally wacked! Ditto for the Parliament education site, which even has a section for younger yoof. Fanta-stick!

YoungGov is totally the business for having your say, and there are even wicked Youth Parliament sites for the UK, Scotland and Europe.

(Hey, chill with the anti-Europe vibes already! You totally won’t be able to wear the word ‘fcuk’ on your shirt anymore if we break our connection with France, y’dig? ROFFLE!)

So, cut it with the bling bling and do something for the community, man. Join in and take action with any of the groovy sites we’ve listed, or just drop Tom a line for a quiet rap by the electronic e-mail. Tom’s well-up on the Interwebnet, and he won’t harsh your buzz or dis you down the line.

Although -- in general -- British government websites tend to be less rhetorically tone-deaf than their American counterparts, one wonders how a child doing a school report would feel about the mazes and puzzles of sites like this one that do little to link information literacy and citizenship.  How about online materials that teach young people how to use search engines as a more productive alternative?