Tom Watson (politician)
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Thomas Anthony Watson (born 8 January 1967) is a politician in the United Kingdom. He is Labour Party member of Parliament for West Bromwich East and is principally known for being the first MP to start a blog.
Tom Watson was educated at King Charles I school, Kidderminster and worked as a marketing officer and advertising account executive on leaving school. In 1993 he began to work for the Labour Party as National Development Officer for Youth, later going on to be National Political Officer of the AEEU trade union.
He was elected for West Bromwich East in 2001. In 2003 he included a weblog on his website. Attention was drawn to it by a page in which he parodied attempts by professional politicians to communicate with younger readers, entitled 'Teens!', which included such phrases as "We know that you're too busy fighting off your biological urges and being l33t hax0rs to Get Involved, but politics is cool, m'kay?". In 2004 he won the New Statesman New Media Award in the category of elected representative for using his weblog to further the democratic process.
Tom Watson was campaign organiser for the Labour Party in the Birmingham Hodge Hill by-election in July 2004, in which he succeeded in narrowly retaining the seat in difficult political times for the party. His streetfighting political style and the personal attacks on the Liberal Democrat candidate led to criticism, but he was appointed again to lead the campaign in the forthcoming Hartlepool byelection.
Watson was appointed as an Assistant Government Whip on September 9, 2004 and was nominated as a Top Toadie by The Guardian Diary on January 6, 2005 [1] (http://www.guardian.co.uk/diary/story/0,,1384084,00.html).
External links
- Tom Watson (http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/) official blog
- Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: Tom Watson MP (http://politics.guardian.co.uk/person/0,9290,-7104,00.html)
- TheyWorkForYou.com - Tom Watson MP (http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/tom_watson/west_bromwich_east)
- The Public Whip - Tom Watson MP (http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/mp.php?firstname=Tom&lastname=Watson&constituency=West+Bromwich+East) voting recordsv:Tom Watson