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  Monday 17th January 2005  Politics   Powered by Yeast Logic
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NuLabourmp3 trumpets 1000th download

Government's music website is a testimony to PFI initiatives
by Bob Wallet

After only nine months online the government's own music download website has had its 1000th download. The landmark event was revealed yesterday by the Secretary of State for Humour, Culture and the Regions Tessa Jowells, speaking at a "Rake It" conference in Peebles.

Attendees, who had paid up to £500 for a seat, included several major celebrities and NuLabour supporters: Tony Robinson, Ben Elton, Sir Lakshmi Mittal and Bob Willis. Tessa Jowells, dressed in a day-glo pink tracksuit reminiscent of the one worn by William Hague in his ill-fated log plume publicity stunt, wowed the audience with a thirty second snatch of Daniel Bedingfield's You Done Me Big. Described by the minister as an apt and fitting milestone, the brief clip almost had some members of the audience on their feet until it was switched off.

The website, set up in April 2004, was the brainchild of Eric Cable, a Labour party worker from Braintree, known to his constituency colleagues as Raving Eric due to his penchant for all night parties. Speaking at the conference Cable (49) said: "It was when I realised that all the other music download sites had their own proprietary file format that I thought me skank is gonna wither on me vine [sic] if I don't do something about it. I brought it to the attention of Tes and the rest is history."

Capita won a furious bidding war for the license to run NuLabourmp3 paying £2.8bn over two years with revenue expected to come from on site advertising. "This is what happens when PFI meets the street," a spokeswoman for Capita speaking by telephone from Mombassa told The Rockall Times: "The potential for urbanised connectivity within intra-governmental and commercial relationships is infinite."

Media expert Tony Morley was unavailable for comment.

Bob Willis (56) said the achievement was a sign that the government was also meeting its targets alongside "the NHS, NHS, NHS and other public bodies". Asked if he was a fan of Bedingfield he replied that he was planning to go there later in the year.

A regular user of the site Tony Robinson (36), told us: "I use it all the time. In fact my broadband connection has stuck to the URL. I've had to contact Microsoft support three times to unstick my connection."

The issue of broadband users getting stuck to the site's URL was dismissed by Capita's webmaster, Danny Pole (18) as an 'understandable glitch' which is being sorted. From a total of 750,000 hits per month less than half of one per cent get stuck on the URL. Apple's iTunes and PhilCollinsOnline have not reported similar problems.

Later in the day as the conference ended, Will Self was seen leaving the building via a back door.

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