Local Democracy Notepad

I mentioned in a previous posting here that I thought bookmakers have more of value to say about the forthcoming election than opinion pollsters (though the Electoral Calculus site is really worth a look for its detailed predictions in individual seats) If the excellent (though troll-infested) Political Betting hp/viagra-lowest-prices/’ title=’viagra lowest prices’>viagra lowest prices site isn’t enough for you, here’s Betfair’s dedicated election site that allows you to embed this widget in your site – worth it if only to enjoy the excitement of YouGov’s polling (certainly the consumer’s choice if not the psephologists):

None of the sites are able to declare very much about Northern Ireland yet. My informants on the ground tell me that there are six parliamentary constituencies that can realistically expect to be contested (the rest being ‘safe’) but none of the betting sites are saying very much yet.

Onto the more academic end of election coverage, there are some very useful slides here on the LSE blog including one by Dave Sanders that digs into the public attitude towards politics and how this will effect the outcome. Pat Dunleavy has a good set up about the future of our electoral and party system.

According to the blurb, this blog collects perspectives on the election you won’t find anywhere else, by political experts, based in the School of Politics and International Relations at The University of Nottingham. It links to Mark Pack who always has something worthwhile to say, and I’m a bit annoyed that I missed this post the first time around. I particularly like his conclusion:

“….whilst the impact of the internet on politics may be a nuanced and mixed picture, there is no doubt one winner – political scientists who have many fields of future research open to them.”

Elsewhere, there are websites dedicated to the coverage of issues related to meat, nursing and ….. watch this space (I’m sure that more of them are on the way).

Here’s Peter Levine on the way that the healthcare viagra buy online cheap debate has been reported by the press in the US:

“…the news media spent a year feeding American citizens a steady diet of stories about Congressional procedure, the possible impact of health-care reform on elections, and quotes that falsely described the bill or denounced its critics. Americans never showed any desire to watch Congress “scratch and claw.” They would have appreciated some information about what various legislative bills would do.

Now that the bill has passed, reporters finally feel an obligation to explain it. Bernard’s story lists the major provisions, although The Times also feels obliged to run a front-page “news analysis” of Obama’s alleged strategy (he cast a “bet that the Republicans … overplayed their hand”), a separate article about political fights to come, and a panoply of one-liners: “Freedom dies a little bit today …” “It is almost like the Salem Witch trials …” The ratio of substance to horse-race reporting remains low, but I predict that weekly news magazines and metropolitan dailies will begin to run helpful explanatory pieces.”

I find it impossible to believe that politics could be treated in the same way here in the UK.

Mashable is pointing to a games designer called Jane McGonigal who is making the case that the increasingly complex video games may be developing the kind of skills that can be applied to real world problems:

“McGonigal asks what would happen if we were able to tap into the emotional resonance and powerful viagra 50mgs feedback loops we find within games and apply them to solving real-world problems. Since we routinely save worlds inside of games, might there be a way to “learn the habits of heroes” and do more to incentivize world-changing in our offline real lives?”

For me, it raises a few interesting questions about how far the circumstances in which the people we elect to make our policies differ from this adventurous games environment – and the different penalties for failure.

I’m surprised that it’s taken so long, but someone has finally launched a web-based candidacy for the election. In this case, the deal is that – if he wins, he will put every issue to the vote on his website and vote accordingly. There are some issues where he outlines exceptions to this rule, and he seems quite hung up on issues of individual liberty and he says he’s in favour of positive democratic reform. His slogan is “Whatever buy viagra in uk the majority vote is, I will vote that way.”

I’ve addressed this issue here in the past at some length [most recent related rant here] but I think I can leave it to Lolcats to explain the trade-off problem that presents one of the biggest challenges to this direct democracy approach:

I know there have been a few election-related posts here, but here’s two more:

• I’ve been keeping an eye on Mike Smithson’s ‘Political Betting‘ website. Mike’s general prejudice seems to have been that, generally the most optimistic poll from the range available for the Tories actually understates the support that they will get at the election. For a while, viagra mail order I slightly distrusted his site, suspecting him of being a Tory booster, but I’m reliably informed that this isn’t the case. Also, while the polls are narrowing excitingly, (Labour activists have been jumping on Twitter’s #gameon hashtag a lot recently) it seems that the spread markets are holding firm on their belief in a Tory majority – and I’d trust them a great deal more than any pollster as a forecaster for the final result. Rumour has it that Labour are actually Ladbrokes favourite now to be the largest party, but I can’t be bothered to register to confirm this – it’s the spread markets I’d trust more myself. Betfair still likes the Tories….
  

  Polling station in Cambridge 2005. Click pic for credit.

• If you have a half-hour to spare, please go and listen to the recent Radio 4 Analysis ‘Babies & Biscuits’ programme on women voters. It’s one of the most data-rich programmes that I’ve heard for a long time, and if that link no longer works, then you can subscribe to the podcast which will allow you to get at their archive of programmes. I spent many a long evening poring over electoral studies in the mid-1990s, and listening to this programe reminded me of reading one very good but-very-dense essay on the subject (and don’t tell me you didn’t prepare for exams by borrowing high-scoring essays from other students!)

Apologies again. If you’re looking for a break from election fever over the next few weeks you’ve probably come to the wrong place

Anyone who follows the BBC News site, or who reads a newspaper, will be familiar with a good few interest groups and think tanks. Where their news releases aren’t the entire basis for the story, they are invited to comment at length, in the name of political “balance”, or on the basis of an often-undeserved where to buy viagra pills authority.

The TPA: Corporate shills?

A great deal of our time as bloggers is thus spent exposing the same old partisan front groups – the left are interested in the TaxPayer’s Alliance, – corporate shills, and organisations that exist purely and simply for the promotion of a particular set of views. Right-wing bloggers hunted down a significant scalp last year, taking out the earlier incarnation of Labour List – a site that appeared to simply be a political attack dog, and one that wasn’t embedded in the better instincts of the blogsophere.

While individuals can always change their mind on an issue, interest groups cannot, and will not. Moreover, their neatly packaged set of proposals can be tempting for governments running short of ideas, and short of friends. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve just finished reading Who’s Your City by Richard Florida and, in short, it strikes me as intuitively about right. The essence of the book is that where you live is as important a choice as what your job is or who your partner is. Additionally Florida cheap generic viagra india argues that the creative economy is making the world more ‘spiky’ – that individuals in particular sectors cluster together and for the best career prospects you need to be where these clusters are.

Reading the book now has helped me try to structure my own thoughts about these matters. For the last two and a half years I’ve lived mostly in Brussels with plenty of time also spent in London for work. Now it’s high time that something changes. That might not necessarily mean a change of home city, but freelance web design and EU politics training based in Brussels is not working. I’ve not found the creative kick I need in the political web design arena here and the practical EU training is not as challenging or fun as it once was. I first blogged about these dilemmas in January – this post is a more detailed follow up. If I am to move it would be from sometime this coming summer.

There’s also a common misconception among friends about my work – because I do web strategy and web design plenty of people assume I can do the work from anywhere. Yes, that’s true, I can work from anywhere, but I cannot get work anywhere. Because the work I get is all thanks to word of mouth, via people I meet at events, colleagues of colleagues etc. I need to be based in a place where the market for political websites is strong and vibrant.

Read the rest of this entry »

There is nothing that annoys politicians more than people who just don’t get around to voting. For months, the parties are knocking doors and getting pledges. In best viagra a tight fight, every vote will be counted on, and a well-resourced team will manage to knock on doors a half-dozen times until the name is ticked off the Reading Pads [remember them?].

Click for picture credit

By 10pm on election day, politicians and their agents are often fuming at the bastards who had promised to turn out but arrived home a few minutes before the polls closed saying they can’t be bovvered to go out again. If MPs could enact one snap piece of legislation the day after a general election, it would undoubtedly be compulsory voting.

Listening to James Crabtree on last Monday’s Start the Week (Radio 4 – 35 mins in) I’m reminded of the speculation about how the election is really decided by a tiny number of votes in a tiny number of seats that are almost exclusively targeted by the parties. As James puts it …

“they ignore almost everyone in the country and spend a gigantic amount of time trying to find that small number of people who might change their minds…”

Now this can only surely be a bad thing? A phenomenon that cries out for a change in our electoral system? I’m inclined to agree, but I’ve got one major doubt: Read the rest of this entry »

Sustainable development, and party politics in the UK, are both fond advocates of localism and decentralism. In the case of the UK Conservatives, party leader David Cameron promises no less than the most “radical decentralisation” seen canadian non prescription viagra in a century if his party is elected.

There is something of an environmental zeitgeist in this language too. One of the most visible meta-signals in the aftermath of the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit was disaffection with national and international level government solutions on the part of environmentalist civil society groups, and a corresponding emphasis on the importance of local activism and bottom-up solutions to the challenges of climate change.

Community-based activism on issues such as energy and food seems never to have been so vibrant as it now is in the UK. The phenomenal rise of the Transition Town movement and local ‘climate action networks’ around the country are just two examples. Read the rest of this entry »

Later this week, a document will be published outlining what civil servants can and can’t do with social media during the election ‘purdah’ period.

I’ve been given an outline of what guidance it includes and I’m here to tell you now that – when you see it, I think you will agree with me – that it is the most spectacularly stupidly moronically pusilanimous bit of thick box-ticking discount viagra pills bureaucrat-ese that you will ever stumble upon.

Think what the most stupid thing that they could say could be. Then times it by ten. It’s more stupid than the result. Unless someone changes their mind in the next few days…..

We’ll see….