One of my favourite political bloggers, Shuggy, has a short post up here about opinion and it’s validity (or lack of). My own favourite variation on this is the view that ‘opinions are like a*seholes - everyone has one, but no-one really wants to hear them.’ (an aphorism that I can’t recall the source of [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Conversational localities, Distributed moral wisdom, Web 2.0 and democracy, What makes a good representative? | No Comments »
Here’s Wandsworth’s Councillor James Cousins on the value of interactivity for councillors:
“What is surprising is not just how many local people were tweeting, but how many were eager to engage and use Twitter to communicate with their councillor. While I often sit in a draughty library with no-one attending my surgery it is quite the [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Conversational localities, Councillors, Web 2.0 and democracy | No Comments »
My friend Will has e-mailed this from the Washington Post to me - It may cheer Steph up a little to know that he’s not fighting a purely British problem….
“Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Obstacles for democrats to overcome | Tagged: Lockdown, Obama | No Comments »
There’s a terrific post here, authored by Dave Briggs - brimming with positivity and enthusiasm as ever. It’s a really good round up, and a good introduction to what is possible for users that already have their heads in the right place.
I’d add a number of observations to it that I hope make sense.
Firstly, I’ve [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Centralisation, Obstacles for democrats to overcome, Web 2.0 and democracy | 1 Comment »
Shorter version: If you’re a politician, it may be a good idea to get into blogging. But do it under a pen-name! It’s safer that way, and it will make you better at your job.
This is an old-ish question nowadays. And as the big question around social media at the moment is ’should everyone Twitter‘, [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Web 2.0 and democracy, What makes a good representative? | Tagged: Blogging, Machiavelli, Chatham House Rule | 1 Comment »
It’s Friday. Time for a bit of a laugh.
This ‘Yes Minister’ YouTube provides a rough outline. Annoyingly, I can’t embed it here, but it’s worth a visit…
And on the wider perception of councillors, here’s Vic & Bob’s take:
Joking aside, if there is one thing that desperately needs rebranding, it’s the very [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Centralisation, Councillors | Tagged: Councillors, Yes Minister | No Comments »
In a very good edition of BBC Radio 4’s ‘Analysis’ programme towards the end of last year, the columnist David Aaronovich recounted a programme that he produced in the 1980s featuring the Archbishop of York, John Hapgood.
The Archbishop, as far as I can see, had the kind of views that would appeal to a Guardian [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Consultations, Conversational localities, Deliberative democracy, Distributed moral wisdom, Pressure groups | Tagged: Certainty, Distributed moral wisdom, Eavesdroppable, Groupthink, Irony, Neutrality, Podcast, Wisdom of Crowds | 1 Comment »
A while back, I noticed a nice short post from Aussie blogger The Mild Colonial Boy quoting De Tocqueville:
“It may easily be foreseen that almost all the able and ambitious members of a democratic community will labor unceasingly to extend the powers of government, because they all hope at some time or other to wield [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Centralisation, Obstacles for democrats to overcome, What makes a good representative? | Tagged: Attracting talent | 2 Comments »
Here’s Suze, musing on the question of how far blogging is having a positive impact on journalism. Suze concludes that it’s too early to tell, but she says a lot of interesting things on the way.
For me, here’s the big question: Does the emergence of a decentralised space with fewer barriers to entry (ahem: Web [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Conversational localities, Deliberative democracy, Democratic renewal, Web 2.0 and democracy, What makes a good representative? | 5 Comments »
There’s something of a tactical voting campaign going on to ensure that Melanie Phillips doesn’t win a UK blog award. It’s hardly a life-or-death issue and I’m sure that Melanie’s people are doing the same thing, so good luck to them.
The same award scheme is in place in the US, and only one of the [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Web 2.0 and democracy, What makes a good representative? | 9 Comments »
I’d been planning to do this blog for years, but the thing that finally nudged me to get on with it was this story (my first post) about how an MP’s online allowance was docked by the Parliamentary authorities because he used it in the way that you would expect politicians to use such an [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Centralisation, Obstacles for democrats to overcome, Petitions, Pressure groups, Public administration, Transparency, Web 2.0 and democracy | 3 Comments »
Here’s a good post from an Australian blogger on the question: Is adversarial politics damaging to our democracy? (It’s actually an update on a previous post with that title). Here the adversarialism is opposed by a more attractive ‘deliberative’ model of the kind advocated here. The flipside of this argument is put very well by [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Consultations, Deliberative democracy, Democratic renewal, Neutrality, Pressure groups, Public administration | Tagged: Adversarial politics, Discretion in politics, Independence, Standards Board, Transparency | 2 Comments »
This is the first in a new feature for this blog. I’ve approached some of my favourite democracy / participation bloggers and given them a choice of a few questions. The first to step up to the challenge is Steph Gray.
Steph blogs at Helpful Technology, and offers a fantastically informative round-up of the things that [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Democratic renewal, Public administration, Web 2.0 and democracy | Tagged: Memes, Innovation | 2 Comments »
My friend, former Hansard Society e-democracy watcher Ross Ferguson says:
A local government will fall head-over-heels in love with the promise of eDemocracy and launch into an ambitious project to put digital front-and-centre of its democratic processes and service provision. It will be facilitated with next-generation municipal ICT and it will capture our imaginations but it [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Consultations, Councillors, Deliberative democracy, Democratic renewal, Obstacles for democrats to overcome, Public administration, Web 2.0 and democracy | No Comments »
Labour-leaning ginger-group Compass is inviting policy proposals to be submitted and debated on this site and at meetings around the country.
The site says that the proposals will then be voted on by the Compass membership - forming the policy priorities for the organisation to campaign on. The successful polices will sit alongside the narrative that [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Consultations, Deliberative democracy, Pressure groups, Web 2.0 and democracy | Tagged: Compass, The Labour Party, The left | No Comments »
It’s a view that doesn’t get much support amongst the blogosphere, but there is a Parliamentary perspective upon democracy that is rarely advanced or defended. Listening to the BBC’s Moral Maze programme - this week’s question “Can there be too much democracy?” (you will need to hurry - it’s not archived and will only be [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Direct democracy | 1 Comment »
If ever a review were overdue, it’s the one that Hazel Blears has just announced (though it was heavily trailed in the ‘Communities in Control’ White Paper) into the rules that determine what publicity councils can and can’t do.
I’ve visited approximately 100 local authorities in the UK, trying to persuade councils to help councillors take [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Democratic renewal, Obstacles for democrats to overcome, Web 2.0 and democracy, What makes a good representative? | Tagged: Publicity rules | No Comments »
If one argues (and I do) that democracy is at it’s most effective when people who are elected are making decisions, and that those decisions should be made without undue pressure from campaigners and lobbyists, one rapidly finds oneself explaining that this doesn’t mean that the public can have no influence on policy in the [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Consultations, Deliberative democracy, Pressure groups, Web 2.0 and democracy | Tagged: Point-of-view-shifting, Visualisations | No Comments »
Democracy blogs
