The Crossbencher
No whip. No party. Just the argument.
The idea, in 60 seconds
The press tells you what to think. We show you the record.
Trust in political media collapsed for a reason: evidence and opinion arrive pre-stitched, and you can check neither. The Crossbencher pulls them apart. Non-aligned tools built on primary sources - Parliament, the ONS, the police, the councils - with a link and a fingerprint on every figure. And on top, argument that is openly angled and clearly labelled, never smuggled in as news.
Receipts, not verdicts. The tools show the evidence; you draw the conclusion.
2,592 RECORDS ON THE SPINE · 1,612 HEADLINES CAPTURED · THE PRESS ARCHIVED EVERY 15 MINUTES
1 · It starts as a game
Where do you stand?
Most people meet us through play. One question a day on the Bench - vote blind, then see where the room actually lands, not where anyone tells you it lands. Live from 6am to 8pm, every day.
The bench sat empty
No votes were cast on this edition, so there is no result to show - a percentage of nobody is not a number. The next question opens at 6am.
The fact under the question: the source
Behind it, a daily arcade cut from the record itself - real quotes, real votes, real figures:
2 · Then it gets personal
Your patch, mapped to the receipt.
One postcode pulls the whole picture together: who runs your area, what they spend and with whom, how your MP votes, crime, housing, waiting lists - every figure linking straight to its source. Download the dossier and take it to the parish meeting. This is the map, live:
3 · Then it gets serious
Underneath the fun, a machine that never forgets.
The national press, captured every fifteen minutes and archived before it can be quietly edited. Every Commons vote. Every official figure. This is the live wire - the capture layer, visible:
On top of the record, the house publishes one argument a day - the other side steelmanned first, then answered - and readers argue back in the comments. Opinion, clearly labelled, standing on checkable ground.
Today’s argumentThe Invoice Comes LaterVAT off electricity on Monday, a £2 bus fare on Wednesday, a fifth off the pub's rates on Thursday. The new government's first week was a run of price cuts - and not one of them arrived with a bill attached. The relief has a date. The argument about who pays has been postponed.2,592 records · 14 days of capture and counting. Corrections happen in the open: a fix is a new record that supersedes the old one, never a quiet edit. We built the machine that catches memory-holing - so we made ourselves incapable of it.
4 · And it spreads itself
Every result is a poster.
Finish a game, cast a vote, look up your street - the result comes back as a branded card built to be shared. The same engine runs the X account all day on its own: the question at 6am, the news through the day, the verdict of the room at 8pm. Readers do the distribution; the record does the arguing. These two are being rendered live, right now:
5 · In, then?
Take a seat.
The record stays free for everyone - that is the point, and the credibility. An account makes your Bench vote count. Membership funds the writers and the archive: £10 a month, first two months £5. The first thousand members become Founders - badge, wall, price locked for life - and 1,000 of the 1,000 seats are still open.
Want to be part of it?
Writers who argue plainly, partners, fellow travellers - a line here goes straight to the founder.