IN PARLIAMENT, POLITICS BY PAGER
The British government's weekly Question Time has always been a 19th century affair: charming, wooden and occasionally raucous. But last week the hallowed institution got a jolt from the Labour Party's modern arsenal of database and communications weaponry. As Conservative Prime Minister John Major fielded a softball question about the insurance business, a member of Labour's "rebuttal unit" dived into the party's database and identified the questioner as a paid consultant for the insurance industry. The researcher zapped the news via pager to a Labour M.P. sitting in the House of Commons, producing an awkward moment...
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