An interesting discovery: Phil Woolas, the Minister for Climate Change – I never knew we had someone with this portfolio – writes a blog called Bali Diary.

He started it in mid November.

Woolas works at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the same government department where Foreign Secretary David Milliband started blogging.

(Milliband’s blog is still up. More than just still up, in fact: check it out. And take a look at eight other blogs from people in the Foreign & Commonwealth Office.)

Bali Diary is very much under the radar, it seems. It’s not easily discoverable on the DEFRA site. DEFRA is one of the government websites I keep my eye on and I missed any news about this blog.

More important is why does the latest post say ‘Tell us what you think…‘ and yet commenting and trackbacks are closed on every single post in the blog, including that one?

Climate change is a massive topic so it’s good to see the man in charge in the government employing a social medium to engage with people directly.

Except he’s not.

I would have thought that, if you ask people to "tell us what you think" in a blog, you’d make it easy for them to do that. Ok, the post includes Woolas’ email address so it must be private feedback he’s after.

That makes little sense to me. You don’t need a blog to get that.

Discovered via Ellie Seymour, who has a lot more to say.

Related topic: UK Government & Social Media… Ones to Watch.