| Website | whistle.co.uk |
| @whistledotcom | |
| Category | Communications |
| Phone | 02075340544 |
| info@whistle.co.uk | |
| Employees | 10 |
| Founded | 7/09 |
| Description | Making politics open |
| TOTAL | $1.2M |
| FUNDING TOTAL | $1.2M |
| Seed, 4/10 David Khalili Crispin Henderson Seamus Lyte | $1.2M |
Whistle was set up to offer a ‘one stop shop’ for political information, activism and debate.
Whistle is a tool to help people learn about, challenge and change the politics of today. Users can connect with politicians, discuss issues and shape their community.
The website provides individual profiles on all currently elected UK politicians, allowing users to communicate directly with their MP’s through blogs and forums, create their own election campaigns and support the causes that matter to them.
Be it the local pub or parliament, people don’t always see eye to eye when it comes to politics. Whistle provides a forum for people with both similar and completely different views to find answers to everyday problems they face. We bridge the gap between politicians and local people by making politics open, clear and relevant.
Whistle’s founding values Access to the Process
On average, people only participate in the democratic process once every four to five years. A typical MP’s surgery in the UK occurs approximately twice per month, inherently limiting the access of constituents to their MP. The average size of a constituency is 74,000. On the basis of two surgeries per month, an MP would be unable to have contact with more than 500 of their constituents. This clearly shows how the ‘ordinary person’ has limited access to the political process. Challenging and changing this situation is integral to Whistle’s vision. Whistle provides an elegant solution to this widespread problem by greatly facilitating access between people and politics.
Transparency
The UK MP’s expenses scandal of 2009 has shown the current lack of transparency within the political system. The resulting outcry and subsequent headline coverage of the scandal demonstrated the need for remedial action. One of Whistle’s core mission statements is to provide detailed policy and activity information through its researched politician database. The ability for users to voice these concerns and create campaigns to support causes that matter to them, or even run for election through the Get Elected! platform in order to ‘correct the system’ is a core functionality built into the website.
Levelling the Playing Field
Barack Obama raised $745m worth of donations from the Internet alone to win the US Presidential election in 2009. This exorbitant amount of money is seldom available to political candidates, creating a structural imbalance regarding access to political office. While the US represents the most extreme example of this, access to funding and marketing channels often play a role in the fortunes of candidates throughout the world. In uniting all politicians under one roof and providing a Get Elected! platform that is easy to use and cost effective, Whistle gives individual candidates and politicians greater visibility and more widespread appeal, allowing anyone to have the potential to get elected and be a force for change.
