This is slightly off-message, but interesting nethertheless. The Liberal Democrats have launched a mobile phone application that invites users to re-assign the £5bn spent on the Iraq war to other areas such as health, education and the environment. Once you've completed your alternative spending plan you can text it in to an online poll.
"Making use of new technology is a good way to engage a section of the population who are used to mobile phones and texting, but don't find most political campaigning of interest," says John Howson, Reading East's prospective parliamentary candidate for the Liberal Democrats.
Obviously this is just a slightly more compelling means of polling the electorate, but the interactivity involved in creating your own budget is actually a very simple form of strategy sim. Perhaps the Iraq War Calculator hints at a future where parties use downloadable games to introduce election issues to apathetic, technology-literate youngsters. It's certainly something that the major charities are investigating - Unicef, for example, has a great little Flash games site which communicates its work to younger audiences.
And of course, the next logical step is voting by text. Indeed, research company Mobile Youth has recently issued a press release on this very subject:
New research form mobileYouth has found that UK teenagers are currently sending over 22 million text messages a year, and with the successful convergence of TV and messaging in formats such as Big Brother, there looks set to be an increase to well over 24 million messages. That's on average of 5 text messages per youth a day.
The ease of mobile messaging and its mass market appeal has not gone unnoticed with companies such as MTV, BBC and ITV having already incorporated the idea of 'text voting' into their TV shows. Politicians may also find that mobile messaging will enable them to reach directly to the youth population, and harness in those who are able to vote but still do not have the motivation to do so.
It is precisely among young voters, aged 18-19 where activity peaks and messaging becomes an essential tool for social activity. Around 77% of boys actually considered themselves 'heavy texters' compared to around 23% of girls, who all routinely send more than 15 text messages a day. On average a UK teenager will spend 20 pounds a month on messaging alone.
I'm slightly concerned about giving teenagers the idea that voting for the next government should be viewed in the same context as voting for the next Pop Idol. However, maybe this is the logical conclusion for a political culture based around sanitised sound bites and shameful pantomime performances at Prime Minister's question time.
