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ust when politicians thought that they might get some time away from the public gaze, as the electorate grows weary of MPs' expenses, a new watchdog has been born

Drawing on the success of political sites such as TheyWorkForYou, Democracy Live will provide a one-stop shop of political videos, with eight video streams to watch – including proceedings from Westminster and Strasbourg, as well as debates taking place in Holyrood, Cardiff and Stormont.

The BBC's main political blogs, with contributions from its political editor, Nick Robinson, the Europe editor, Gavin Hewitt, and home editor, Mark Easton, will be featured in a comment section. This will also offer a forum for public figures, starting with an article by the House of Commons Speaker, John Bercow, about how to rebuild trust in parliament

If this was meant to be a public conversation, why take so few questions from the web? Was the point here to give Facebook employees a chance to interact with the president, while we watch? Did it really make sense to have Zuckerberg, the owner of the platform, ask the questions (and, it seems, possibly pick them)? For all those people newly paying attention, you have to wonder whether they were encouraged to come back and do it again. In a bit of bad timing for both the White House and Facebook, this happened to be the day that all over the news were comments of a Facebook staffer suggesting that perhaps they had been allowing "too much, maybe, free speech" in countries not accustomed to the free flow of information we enjoy here in the States.