🔄 UK Government U-Turn Tracker v2

A satirical, auto-updating tracker of UK government policy reversals. Now with live scanning, press coverage, and social feeds.

Live at: uturn.to

---

✨ Features

Core Tracker

• 🔢 Live Counter - Total U-turns since July 2024
• 🏆 Minister Leaderboard - Who's responsible for the most reversals
• ⚡ Speed Run Hall of Fame - Fastest policy reversals
• 📅 Timeline View - The full chronological horror show
• 🔍 Filter & Sort - By category, severity, speed

v2 Additions

• 📰 Press Coverage - Links to articles covering each U-turn
• 🐦 Political Pulse - Twitter/X feed of UK political commentary
• 🔍 Live U-Turn Scanner - Check for new U-turns with one click
• 🤖 Daily Auto-Scan - GitHub Action runs at 9am UK time
• 📊 Full SEO - Meta tags, Open Graph, structured data, sitemap

---

🔍 Live Scanning

Click "Check for New U-Turns" to scan UK news in real-time.

First time setup:

1. Click the scan button
2. Enter your Anthropic API key (get one at console.anthropic.com)
3. Key is stored locally in your browser only

The scanner uses Claude with web search to find policy reversals in the last 48 hours.

---

🚀 Quick Setup

1. Fork & Clone

git clone https://github.com/matthewdavidrussell/uk-uturn-tracker.git
cd uk-uturn-tracker

2. Enable GitHub Pages

• Settings → Pages → Deploy from branch → main / root

3. Custom Domain (optional)

Add DNS records pointing to GitHub Pages:

A     @     185.199.108.153
A     @     185.199.109.153
A     @     185.199.110.153
A     @     185.199.111.153
CNAME www   yourusername.github.io

4. Enable Daily Auto-Scan

• Settings → Secrets → Actions → New secret
• Name: ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
• Value: Your API key

---

📁 Project Structure

uk-uturn-tracker/
├── index.html              # Main page with SEO tags
├── style.css               # Tabloid styling
├── app.js                  # Interactive + live scanner
├── data/
│   └── uturns.json         # The U-turn database
├── .github/
│   └── workflows/
│       └── daily-scan.yml  # Daily auto-update
├── sitemap.xml             # SEO sitemap
├── robots.txt              # Search engine config
├── CNAME                   # Custom domain
└── README.md

---

📊 SEO Features

• Meta tags - Title, description, keywords
• Open Graph - Facebook/LinkedIn sharing
• Twitter Cards - Twitter sharing previews
• Geo tags - UK location data
• Structured data - Schema.org Dataset + WebSite
• Sitemap - For search engines
• Canonical URL - Prevents duplicate content

---

🐦 Twitter Integration

The tracker embeds:

• Live search for "government u-turn" tweets
• Links to top UK political journalists:
  • Pippa Crerar (Guardian)
  • Beth Rigby (Sky News)
  • Robert Peston (ITV)
  • Steven Swinford (Times)
  • And more...

---

📝 Adding U-Turns Manually

Edit data/uturns.json:

{
  "id": 14,
  "title": "New Policy Name",
  "originalPolicy": "What they originally said",
  "reversal": "What they changed to",
  "category": "welfare",
  "minister": "Minister Name",
  "dateAnnounced": "2026-01-01",
  "dateReversed": "2026-02-01",
  "daysToUturn": 31,
  "severity": "major",
  "tags": ["tag1", "tag2"],
  "summary": "Witty one-liner about the reversal"
}

Don't forget to update meta.totalCount and the minister's count in ministers.

---

📜 License

MIT License - do whatever you want with it, just like the government does with its manifesto.

---

"We're not flip-flopping, we're being responsive to changing circumstances"
_{— Every government ever}