Local Democracy Notepad

I think that a lot of election commentary is missing something important about how we vote. As some commenters here have said, in the past, ‘at elections, we order our preferences’.

That makes this really interesting. Nick Clegg doesn’t seem to be strongly objected viagra super active plus to in the way that Gordon Brown and David Cameron are. Could the Lib Dems win my a landslide?

Digest these figures……

Update: What if Clegg could convince a significant number of us that he was winning.

This is a guest post by Hugh Flouch of Harringay Online

People love living in Harringay, but there are a few quality of life issues that won’t get the attention they need unless citizens and elected representatives enter into a democratic compact to fix them. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that this is the time to be having the conversations which can build towards that covenant. Local websites provide a great forum for them.

So, starting in viagra canada February, at Harringay Online we’ve been building up our stock of information on the local elections, from how they work to what we can find out about the candidates. I don’t want the elections to completely dominate the site, since by no means everyone is interested, but I do want to offer people, perhaps for the first time ever, an opportunity to find out who the local candidates are and what they might do if elected. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve tried to boil down the killer argument in the whole ‘blogger v journalist’ debate, and it runs something like this:

Take the best article you’ve read in a newspaper recently. The one that was well-written and argued and the one that met a particular canadameds.com need that you have personally. You can be almost certain that a better article was written somewhere on the blogosphere. The only problem is finding it. As social bookmarking and ‘collaborative filtering’ improves, you will increasingly be able to access a personalised stream of these articles that will partly negate your need for a newspaper.

To illustrate the point, here’s a great post by James Cridland on how you can weave your own personalised radio station together. That’s the sort of innovation I’ve been awaiting for years (more in ‘innovation’ below). And then, to add a bit of flavour to the argument, here’s something on how journalists can build their own reader-communities. And while we’re on the question of the media, here’s some breaking news; Murdoch’s paywall idea isn’t suicidal after all. Murdoch isn’t stupid and isn’t afraid to think differently and take on big beasts. Who knew?

So. Great blogging: take the last couple of days as an example. I’m interested in how far politics is about the clash of social forces rather than the public discourse around the ishoos. Here, Peter Hetherington (admittedly, writing for the evil MSM) has a post on how local v central is a cross-cutting issue. Ingrid has a very perceptive question: Hang on, isn’t there a local election happening at the moment as well? And wasn’t teh Hinterwebs supposed to create a space that allowed the local to re-emerge? My only quibble with Ingrid is buried in the notion of the availability bias. Read the rest of this entry »

The Tories have launched their manifesto today with a lot of the material discount viagra levitra from their 2009 Shift Control document [pdf] making the final cut.

It may be worth pointing to Anthony’s detailed crit of this document (below) as a good deal of it is relevant today.

• Shift Delete
• Command backspace
• SysRq F12
• Home PgDn
• Escape End

I’m looking forward to reading a few crits of what has made the final cut, but in the meantime, here’s a purely personal observation on this: Read the rest of this entry »

Firstly, Catherine has an interesting post up here. No conclusions yet, but definitely worth following.

Secondly, Tom Watson – in one of the final votes of the last Parliamentary session – rebelled against the government for the first time in his career over the Digital Economy Bill. I’d say I’m in a minority in admiring Tom’s reluctance to break the Party Whip on anything, and I thought this tweet at the time reflected particularly well on him. Now he is crowdsourcing his personal viagra medication manifesto on digital matters using Uservoice (read this post first though).

Thirdly, Anthony – an occasional star here – has established this site – Talk Issues – under the auspices of The Democratic Society to promote a less personality-led approach to the forthcoming election. Read the rest of this entry »

… or you get the politicians you deserve pt2.

Like a million other people, I attended the London demonstration against the Iraq War in early 2003.

And like a viagra professional pfizer hefty minority of people there, I had a few concerns about a lot of the opposition to the war as well as about the war itself. I won’t rehearse these now, but I blogged about it elsewhere a few years ago.

But the thing – on that demonstration – that particularly annoyed me was the ubiquitous ‘not in my name’ placard. It’s a question that has been nagging at me ever since. Why did I find a throwaway slogan that annoying?

This came up again recently. Reading Dave Osler blogging about the attacks on the Moscow subway recently, this bit jarred:

“The first point to make is that those whose lives have been ended do not include Putin, or any of the military commanders behind the wars in Chechnya. Almost all the dead will have been office cleaners and shop assistants and others in routine employment.

Those are by definition the only kind of people to be found on tubes in rush hours, and they were no more complicit in Russia’s crimes then their London counterparts on 7/7 were responsible for the invasion of Iraq.”

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a bit slow with this one, but just to close a loop that was opened a few weeks ago here, those Civil Service Social Media Guidelines are now public.

Over at Puffbox, Simon seems slightly pleasantly surprised:

“But whilst there’s a requirement to limit ‘civil servants’ participation  in  a professional capacity in social networks’, I don’t necessarily read that as the draconian ban it might have been. So natural viagra pills whilst the government online community’s unanimous decision to go quiet is perfectly understandable, and unquestionably the safest thing to do, I’m not sure the guidance actually demands it.”

My own view is that – even though the guidance doesn’t demand it, the natural risk aversion of British civil servants are fairly well-known for erring on the side of caution on these things.

When I was given an insight into what it could be a few weeks ago, I wrote about it here in unequivocal terms and got a few interested phonecalls from journalists as a result. I was given a bit of a hint that – fearing a bit of teasing, they decided to wait until the election was announced before publishing them. Remind me, how did Jo Moore put it again…?

Maybe this blog played a small part in toning the whole thing down a bit though?

… or ‘we get the politicians we deserve, pt1′:

Via Mick, this is worth a look over at the Daily Mail for people who recycle The Independent.

Pic: Click for credit

“Academics …. found that “not giving straight answers to questions” scored an average of 8.45 when people were asked how much of x.php/generic-viagra-us/’ title=’generic viagra us’>generic viagra us a problem it was on a scale of zero to 10. “Making promises they know they can’t keep” scored 8.13, the same rating as “misusing official expenses and allowances”, while “accepting bribes” scored 6.43.”

I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry about this. It ignores the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance in a way that no-one with an ounce of sense should do.

For me, perhaps the dominant theme for this election – as with many previous elections – will be the Prisoner’s Dilemma – or the BF, as outlined in this slightly homophobic post.

Read the rest of this entry »

As a prelude to a bit of election-related fun research, I’m compiling a list of the different attributes that we expect to see combined under the bonnet of the perfect MP.

Just for the avoidance of doubt, I don’t expect any candidate to fit firmly into any of these categories – I’m going to be looking to see what different attributes we are expecting from them.

Once I’ve finalised the list, I’m going to do a ‘constant value’ survey on this blog – giving you all a fixed number of ‘tokens’ to spread around the different character-types. It would be interesting to see what voters want from their politicians – and I may repeat the exercise with local councillors at a later date.

Please note: This list / descriptions are rich in prejudice (mine). If you can come up with a better list, counter-proposals, better descriptions, etc, let me know in the comments?

Now, are there any that I’ve missed so far?

• The judge – a learned and experienced civic leader, hearing different arguments from constituents, weighing them and reaching a decision that everyone has to accept most of the time. Wouldn’t expect to take sides and would expect to refer constituents to the Citizens Advice Bureau: “It’s my job to make the laws – show me if they’re not fair and I’ll try to change them – but I’m not your social worker”
• The juror – an everyperson who has to be studiously fair-minded. A juror has  to be free of any personal interest in a case and should step aside if this is not the case. They expect evidence to be presented to them, then they then reach a decision based upon their own informal framework of fairness rather than a rigid and mechanistic application of the law. We don’t have high expectations of them as individuals, but in groups, we are reasonably confident of their ability to be wise and fair
• The people’s politician – sticking up for the silent majority – knows what people really think and will always stand up to the self-serving elites. Less interested in what metropolitan elites think and more in tune with the natural wisdom of the people who write to them. A good ear for popular discontent.
• The monk / nun – someone who is a (perhaps) improbable example of virtue to all of us. Hair-shirt types with a fairly inflexible and easy-to-understand morality. You can depend on them though….
• The entrepreneur - lively, adventurous, risk-taker. Careful – but not that careful. Good with figures and tight on spending. Creative and lateral-thinking, win-more-than-they-lose, expect hefty remuneration and like to be in charge.
• The entertainer – clever, witty, not over-ideological but a good conversationalist – likely to be generally even-handed and able to bring the best out in people. Trusted, mostly….
• Beacon of virtue – a successful high-profile individual who stands up against corruption rather than getting involved in ideological debates. Using their wealth and success in the public interest
• The includer – someone who goes out of their way to make sure that everyone has the chance to have their say – outgoing, open-minded and non-doctrinaire and terribly earnest
• The social worker – takes up cases of the less fortunate people who visit their surgeries. Lots of time spent on casework and letter-writing. Spends more time solving constituents problems than attending to high-flown matters of state up at Westminster.
• ‘Our scoundrel’ – on the logic that ‘if they don’t know how to look after themselves, they won’t be able to look out for us either’. This MP pulls the odd flanker to get a bigger budget for a local project and probably awards a few of the contracts to a few associates. But so what ? We got an a better MRI Scanner for our hospital than the jobsworth who represents the constituency up the road, didn’t we?
• Tub-thumper – not necessarily conventional views, but always worth listening to. Strong views – often controversial and provocative. Good at getting people talking and starting a debate. Fairly fixed in their views and hard to budge when they think they’re right
• Youth Club Manager – works long hours, keeps any eye out for the more vulnerable kids on the estate. Firm, fair and pragmatic. Probably  not a genius but not overly dogmatic either. This MP cares about others so that we don’t have to.
• Senior-serious-smart – a combination of the old-fashioned head teacher / bank manager /mandarin. A good chess /poker player. Knows how things are done and how to organise a department. Makes their own decisions because they know things that you don’t. Know that you don’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.
• The party activist knows that there is no ‘i’ in team and understands the need for consistency. Accepts collective decisions and sticks to them. Used to think that politics is about a clash of big ideas (and still does sometimes) but also knows it’s about striking a balance between principle and electability – after all, if you lose elections, all of your moral posturing is for the birds.
• The gamer – a problem solver. Very creative and lateral thinking. Doesn’t need paying much but a bit of social status would be nice. Takes lots of risks, fails a lot with serious consequences for all. But a good gamer can make a massive impact on a problem in the end by looking at things the way that others wouldn’t
• Think tank director – funny-shaped head and really irritating little square glasses. High level thinker, politically astute and business-savvy. Knows what works and is able to sell ideas. Knows how to create strategic paths to bring make gamechanging policies work.
• Community activist- someone who knows how to get things done at a street level. A bit nimby-ish but very keen on the local environment. Nose-in-everything, won’t-take-no-for-an-answer, personal-hygiene-not-a-priority, writing-a-bloody-letter-to-The Guardian, member of Greenpeace, heart-in-the-right-place-though and we’re glad there are a few like them around…
• Community warden – someone who goes around making sure that bureaucrats do their job. Finding examples of things that should be done but aren’t. This MP makes sure everyone knows their entitlements and responsibilities and a gallery of these can be seen on Glum Councillors.

If you click around the categories and tags (below) you’ll find more articles on this general subject ….. (it’s not a new one here)