The BBC's innovative new website covering the Parliaments and Assemblies of the UK goes live

Those of us interested in the goings-on of both chambers of Parliament and the other various Parliaments and Assemblies of the UK have a new website to bookmark - the BBC's Democracy Live page.

Launched today, apart from live and on-demand video coverage of all the UK's national political institutions (as well as the European Parliament), it promises to use "innovative ground-breaking search technology to allow the public to follow political debates and developments around the areas and issues that matter to them most".

Its search engine is apparently "based on a ‘speech-to-text’ system which allows users to search for clips that focus on specific topics and contributors from the Democracy Live archive". I'm yet to try it out, but it look like it could be extremely useful.

There's also a page linking to all the BBC political blogs - as well as external ones such as ConHome - as well as a great section of "historic moments" where you will find some classic clips of politicians in action. Below I share one such historic moment - when Margaret Thatcher addressed the European Parliament for the first time in 1981 and raised the issue of the need for a UK rebate from the EEC (as it then was). Enjoy!

Jonathan Isaby