Jonathan SchofieldMar 1

Coming to you from just north of the sea, at the bottom of Portsmouth South, a preview of a thing I have made.

It’s a resizeable interactive hexmap of UK constituencies:

- It builds upon the hexmap layout developed by Open Innovations: https://open-innovations.org/blog/2023-08-03-hexes-for-the-next-general-election
- But instead of SVG, it’s rendered from JSON using CSS grid, and each cell is a `<button>` that can open an info panel.

It’s a work in progress for something I’m collaborating on. Hopefully, more on the interface later this month.

Show threadJonathan SchofieldMar 1

…a bit more on the intent. The hexmap is a support for a new democratic campaign tool we’re calling On The Record.

At the heart of On The Record are instances of a ‘twollock’, which is a neologism for ‘Tightly Worded Legal Clause’.

Each twollock is a precise form of words that *should* be in a bill passed by the UK’s House of Commons. If it were included, and the bill passed and implemented, it would *measurably reduce carbon emissions*.

#climateDiary

Show threadJonathan Schofield

…A twollock is necessarily precise, so probably not catchy and maybe a bit wordy.

So each twollock would have a ‘placard’, a proxy phrase with which to campaign ahead of a known legislative timetable.

An example placard is “No new UK waste incinerators”.

Such a phrase would be sent into the public domain through channels we have at our disposal, as well as broader social media, where members of the public would be asked to *register* their stance on the proposal…

Mar 1 at 5:43pmIvory for iOS
Show threadJonathan SchofieldMar 1

…The hexmap thus becomes one way to make visible the level of public support for the twollock and, crucially, to create highly visible pressure upon each MP to take a stance too, ahead of the vote.

Some key facets are hoped to be:

- it’s not an “email your MP” tool
- it’s not a petition, it’s a public register
- although a degree of public anonymity will be supported
- it’s not a hand wavy campaign, it’s precise and dovetailed with a legislative timetable…

Show threadJonathan SchofieldMar 1

…
- it may begin to grant people a sense of agency within our inadequately representative democracy
- it will draw together in a single place and make presentable scopes of info about our Parliament which are rather fragmentary and dispersed at present, and in so doing may in itself create a positive feedback loop.

We’ll see I guess 😃

Show threadJonathan SchofieldMar 1

…If any of this sounds like something you’d like to help build, I’d love to hear from you. There’s a lot to sort out.

There is *no money* in it. All contributions are pro bono

Show threaddorian f mooreMar 1
@urlyman very intriguing, would love to help if i can.
Show threadJonathan SchofieldMar 1
@dorianfm cool. Thanks. I’ll send some further details during the week 🫡