About the Department of Social Scrutiny

The Department of Social Scrutiny (DoSS) started life as a double-page spread for Buzz, the regional listings magazine for the South West I edited way back in 1998. Original copies of the magazine are now estimated to be worth almost nothing.

Some years later, socialscrutiny.org span out of those pages, reconfigured as an entry for a website competition - Channel 4's Comedy Circuit - which it went on to win in 2003. The original, tiny site is still hidden away somewhere on the vast Channel 4 website. If you are interested in seeing how that looked, I'm sure Google is your friend.

After all the C4 fuss died down, I started to host DoSS myself and regularly updated the material. DoSS is now at least 25 times the size of the original site and growing all the time.

In July 2004, the site received its first major overhaul with new features and sections styled "Britain: What A State". In October 2005, Britain: What A State hit the shelves as a book published by Boxtree. For more details on that, go here.

In August 2006 - a bit later than planned, the site received its second major update - to simplify the layout and navigation and calm down what had evolved into a busy presentation. The website layout is now completely written in CSS - which will greatly simplify re-designs in the future - while the content is served dynamically out of a number of databases.

In November 2006, the UK domain - socialscrutiny.org.uk - which had previously just mirrored the original site, was set up for the exclusive use of the Red Tape Recorder and accordingly designed as a 'flavour' of the original: this is what you are looking at right now.