There is a certain irony in the Tories holding an internet driven open primary in Clacton to select their candidate and UKIP HQ imposing Douglas Carswell, the prophet of iDemocracy, as their candidate. Carswell will be pleased his ideas are being taken up…

Can anyone spot a major news story from this week that Ed Miliband’s Twitter feed missed?

Sky are going all interactive for the new Adam Boulton evening show Sky News Tonight, launching on the first of the month:

“In a first for a major nightly news programme, Sky News Tonight will have comprehensive parallel output on social media, where users will be able to view – and engage with – a host of extra content that will follow, complement and enhance the live TV output, in real time.Viewers will be able to interact with the programme via Sky News’ social media platforms which will give them the power to engage in the discussion, contribute to the debate and even influence the agenda of the show. “

Given the number of people who sit watching TV whilst on Twitter now, it seems like a logical step. The show will also feature high profile interviews conducted from Westminster, at the far more reasonable time of seven through until nine – another reason not to stay up for Newsnight.

Westminster Public Affairs have done their annual Twitter tot up. When they’re not on holiday, the 461 MPs online sent a total of 718,431 tweets in the last year. “Over this twelve-month period MPs spent a combined total of over 115 days (or more than 2774 hours) sending Tweets.” That’s an awful lot of time wasting… 

So who are the biggest blabbermouths?

Well apparently George Galloway – who recently described being an MP as tedious – comes out on top with 16,399 tweets.

The top-Tweeting Conservative MP is Michael Fabricant with 11,311 tweets – some of them costing him a job as the Vice-Chairman of the party.

Shouty-crackers Karl ‘anger management’ Turner is seemingly as much of a gobsh*te online as he in Parliament and on trains, topping iLabour with 12,577.

While Tim Farron’s campaign to convince everyone he is a thoroughly nice bloke, while simultaneously knifing his leader, sees him top the LibDems with 14,741 Tweets.

Wasting time on the internet is meant to be Guido’s job.

Remember those crazy Snapchat guys who turned down a $3 billion offer from Facebook for their zero revenue firm? Bloomberg reports they are now in funding talks which value the app at $10 billion. Data from Business Insider shows that 1 in 3 US smartphone users between the ages of 18 and 34 are using Snapchat, twice as many as nine months ago and considerably more than Twitter. If Facebook had bought them out Mark Zuckerberg’s company would now own the three most popular social networks in America…

This morning as Labour continue their summer assault the Tories are reminding everyone of the Labour Party’s own doubts about Ed Miliband with a new website, JustNotUpToIt.com:

The interactive map is populated with pins, click on a pin and a local Labour critique of Ed pops up. The map is, to coin a phrase, Ed’s One Nation Labour in their own despairing words. Have a browse here…