Posted on April 7, 2009 by Paul Evans
Following on from the moan about the ‘level playing field’, here’s the next in the ’causes of centralisation’ theme: The minor crisis in the legitimacy of professionals.
Crudely speaking, where civil servants, teachers, police, and judges used to be expect their judgements to be respected, and used to exercise more perogative powers than they do now, [...]
Filed under: Centralisation, Public administration | Tagged: Producer capture, Professionalism | No Comments »
Posted on April 2, 2009 by Paul Evans
So much is changing so quickly. Newspapers and broadcasters are changing. Governments now communicate using radically different means to the ones that were practiced a decade ago. Here’s Exhibit A.
We now have free interactive tools that enable us to hold huge multilateral conversations based upon collaborative filtering and reputation management. We can find useful strangers [...]
Filed under: Centralisation, Obstacles for democrats to overcome, Political parties, Web 2.0 and democracy | Tagged: Decentralisation | No Comments »
Posted on March 25, 2009 by Paul Evans
A few weeks ago, Roy Greenslade picked up on a growing opposition to Council-run free newspapers.
As he notes, the opposition comes both from smaller political parties locally, and from commercial rivals that are being edged out - as they see it.
Elsewhere, we are seeing growing demands for a journalistic ‘bail-out’ - and not just from [...]
Filed under: Centralisation, Council services, The media | Tagged: Advertising, Journalism, Local newspapers | No Comments »
Posted on March 18, 2009 by Paul Evans
Iain Dale has a roustabout interview with Ken Livingstone. Here’s a snippet:
“…although there will be mistakes, a real, massive devolution would start bringing good people back into local government, but there’s got to be financial change as well. 97 per cent of all tax collected in Britain is collected by Gordon Brown. When I told [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Centralisation, Public administration | Tagged: Bureaucracy, Civil service reform | No Comments »
Posted on March 16, 2009 by Paul Evans
About a year ago, I heard snippets of a radio programme that really stuck with me.
I didn’t make a note of the name of the programme at the time (I was driving), and it has taken me best part of the last year plugging away at the few contacts I have in the BEEB’s political [...]
Filed under: Centralisation, The media, Transparency | No Comments »
Posted on March 10, 2009 by Paul Evans
It looks like a bit of a headline grabber, but the proposal to allow users to provide instant feedback on public services may enable government to break out of the cycle in which one bad news story about a council on an (unreliable!) national news medium can trump all of one’s experience of local services.
The [...]
Filed under: Centralisation, Public administration | 1 Comment »
Posted on February 22, 2009 by Paul Evans
Do keep an eye on the Google Reader page that I’ve set up - I’m trying to track as much of the blogosphere’s comment on local democracy as I can - particularly where there is anything that touches on interactivity.
If you have your own shared items, please send me an e-mail from the gmail account [...]
Filed under: Centralisation, Public administration, Web 2.0 and democracy | No Comments »
Posted on February 19, 2009 by Anthony Zacharzewski
Part two of a series of articles on the Conservative green paper on local government, which are also appearing on the Democratic Society blog.
Section one of the green paper discusses local housing and economic growth. The Conservatives’ proposals are:
enable local authorities to benefit financially when they deliver the housing that local people need;
give local [...]
Filed under: Centralisation, Councillors, Political parties, Public administration | No Comments »
Posted on February 17, 2009 by Paul Evans
It is very hard to take the UK Conservative Party’s claim to be a localist party seriously today. Many of these steps will seriously weaken the powers and status of local elected representatives without providing any empowerment of ordinary citizens by way of compensation.
All of the following issues are features can be portrayed as fitting [...]
Filed under: Centralisation, Democratic renewal | No Comments »
Posted on January 27, 2009 by Paul Evans
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 »
Posted on January 23, 2009 by Paul Evans
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 »
Posted on January 13, 2009 by Paul Evans
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 | 3 Comments »
Posted on January 9, 2009 by Paul Evans
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 »
Posted on January 7, 2009 by Paul Evans
Before politics stopped being fairly boring in the late summer last year, the book of the year looked like it was going to be Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s Nudge. It’s still worth a look when you need a break from Robert Peston - and one of their areas of interest has been ballot design [...]
Filed under: Centralisation, Democratic renewal, Elections, Obstacles for democrats to overcome | 1 Comment »
Posted on December 31, 2008 by Paul Evans
Broadly, the Conservative Party are proposing a greater degree of operational co-operation with neighbouring councils in order to earn the right to retain more of their Council Tax revenues.
In speaking to the proposals, Eric Pickles is clear that this would not involve any changes to political structures, or any reductions in the number of local [...]
Filed under: Centralisation, Public administration | Tagged: Conservative Party, Local Government reform | No Comments »
Posted on December 29, 2008 by Paul Evans
I’m never sure whether think-pieces work when the audience is on holiday. Personally, the old adage about getting a busy person to help when you need something doing can be adapted here: If you want to get people’s attention with a new idea, don’t pick a time when they are relaxing to pitch it. If [...]
Filed under: Centralisation, Democratic renewal, Public administration | Tagged: Civil service reform, Localism, Progressive politics | 1 Comment »
Posted on December 13, 2008 by Paul Evans
BBC Radio 4’s Analysis programme - and the podcast - are essential listening for anyone with even the slightest wonkish tendencies.
Just after posting on ‘cognitive polyphasia‘ a few days ago, I listened to this programme from their archive about the problems that devolution is creating for parties that were established as ‘national’ parties. One of [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Centralisation | Tagged: Devolution, Political parties | No Comments »
Posted on December 12, 2008 by Paul Evans
These couple of sentences leaped out of an article by Polly Toynbee recently:
It was pollster Ben Page who first used the phrase “cognitive polyphasia” to describe what pollsters find all the time: most people hold several entirely contradictory beliefs at once. They want local decision-making but are adamantly opposed to a postcode lottery….
Another example of [...]
Filed under: Centralisation, Obstacles for democrats to overcome | Tagged: Decentralisation | 1 Comment »
Posted on December 9, 2008 by Paul Evans
One of the founding questions behind this blog is this:
Is the decline in local journalism damaging local democracy?
Well, the consistently good Polis blog managed by Charlie Beckett is addressing it with some energy here. Charlie worked at ITN, C4 News, LWT and the BBC. The post linked to here is a guest post by George [...]
Filed under: Centralisation, The media | Tagged: Decentralisation, Journalism | No Comments »
