David Maddox: First Lord of the Twittery (aka For Foulkes Sake 6)

He may look like a congenial old(ish) buffer whose idea of modernity may not stretch further than the introduction of the wireless, but the Baron of Cumnock, Lord George Foulkes, MSP for the Lothians, can lay claim to being the most cyber active politician north of Hadrian's Wall.
I gather his lordship has become the first member of the upper house to become a twitter, which has a slight irony considering that many of his opponents have long thought he was that without the last "ter".
It seems having his own Facebook page, Youtube TV channel and blog were not enough for him.
And I'm realiably informed that this is the form of communication that is going to outstrip Facebook in 2009. Apparently twitters tweet, which is to put out lots of quick messages about themselves or whatever interests them of no more than 140 characters.
I understand many politicians have already become twitters, so much so that there is a special tweetminster website - http://www.tweetminster.co.uk/ - where MPs happily tweet to one another.
Whilst we are at it, there is also another new bit of cyber wizardry available for those who want to hold ministers to account.
Visitors to http://www.yoosk.com/ can post a question to anybody and if enough people ask that question of the same person, the website will go and ask the person in question. Not surprisingly it is dominated by political questions and has had responses from UK ministers including Foreign Secretary David Milliband, who sent in video replies. The quality of the answer is then rated by users of the site, just in case the politicians think they can get away with one of their traditional fob offs.
Currently no Scottish ministers have been held to account this way, but one suspects it is only a matter of time before it happens. Take this as a warning Alex Salmond.
By the way, if you wish to tweet or become a twitter go to http://www.twitter.com/.