Local Democracy Notepad

Pic from 'recycled scissors (click for original)

… so to speak. According to the Huffington Post,

California’s direct democracy fetish is stepping into new areas viagra tablets including the practice of infant circumcision for religious purposes.

It brings up a number of interesting issues. On the one hand, it raises questions for libertarians – often the most vocal advocates of more direct democracy. The Huffington Post quotes one Heather Wisnicky saying:

It’s your choice, it’s your child…government can’t rule us on everything we do,”

So there’s the oppression of minorities argument for starters. It also addresses some wider issues around family law – the secularist argument that our children must choose their religion for themselves. On balance, I’d probably agree with that one, but we have to ask where it will end. Read the rest of this entry »

Apologies again for the light posting.

I’ve female viagra cream written an extensive round-up of the main arguments (that I can think

of) against referendums.

The full post is over on Slugger O’Toole and a slightly edited (shorter) version is on Liberal Conspiracy. Both were published yesterday.

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 »

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:

So it seems that a government advertising campaign is to target climate change sceptics. Certainly, policymakers appear to be hitting problems in bringing the public along with measures to address this issue, and it’s not very likely that ‘business as usual’ within the democratic process will deliver sustainable development.

So there are great hopes pinned on the English and Welsh Sustainable Communities Act 2007, which entered into force in October 2007.

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The Sustainable Communities Act began life as a Private Members Bill which received cross-party support.

The Act is designed to promote the sustainability of local communities. The basic idea is that local authorities who have opted into the Act make proposals which they consider could contribute to promoting the sustainability of local communities. Read the rest of this entry »

Hollywood Bvd: The Boulevard of broken dreams? (Click for pic credit)

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Douglas Carswell MP and Daniel Hannan MEP, along with a few others, may wish to have a glance at Tim Garton-Ash’s latest – this time answering the queston ‘why has California got itself into such a mess:

“…its prisons are overflowing; the energy-guzzling way it meets its water needs takes a staggering 19% of the state’s now expensive electricity; it has six of the 10 worst cities in the US for air pollution; its public finances are a disaster. Year after year, its legislature has failed to agree a budget. Its deficits make Italy look like a paragon of fiscal prudence. And this summer, it generated incredulous headlines around the world when the state started issuing IOUs. The government of one of the most richly endowed territories on earth, home to Hollywood and Silicon Valley, a crucible of innovation and the eighth largest economy in the world, was broke.

Why has California got into such a mess? Some analysts say: “Too much democracy!” In California’s eccentric version of direct democracy, all kinds of extravagant public spending are mandated by so-called initiatives, proposed by anyone who can gather enough signatures, and passed by a simple majority of those who bother to vote on them, while the state’s revenue-gathering possibilities are curbed by the same method.”

Do go and read the whole thing if you can? My one quibble is with the term ‘too much democracy’ – there seems to be an underlying assumption that direct democracy – something that, in practice, excludes the vast majority of the population from any kind of influence – is somehow a higher – if overly idealistic – notion of democracy.

California has become totally unmanageable – arguably because of this assumption. Here’s what would be in the post if Messrs Carswell and Hannan get their way….

Eduardo Da Silva the cheat. Are phone-ins better at discussing sport than politics? (Click for pic attribution).

Matthew Taylor has a good post up about the architecture of morality, and it’s all the better for the fact that he’s chosen an important issue (football) to illustrate his point.

Personally, I spend six days a week tut-tutting about the way that popular political discourse is convened and managed. Panel shows on TV and radio, high-volume blogs and forums, demagogic columnists, leader-writers and the selective letters pages are all regular bugbears for the bloggers who contribute to this site and many of my favourite blogs.

On the seventh day, however, I rest. I spend the afternoons that I don’t have a ticket for the mothership shouting at Radio Five Live and occasionally I make a half-hearted (never successful) attempt to Have My Say on the 606 Show. It’s often exasperating to listen to, but some of the callers pre-occupations are spot on – particuarly (returning to Matthew’s starting point) about diving in the penalty box.

On big moral issues, a highly public shouting match always hits the problem of the ‘hard to reach’ and ‘hard to avoid’ groups. So you get what Tom Freeman calls ‘quality uncontrolled audience participation’ – slightly unrepresentative views from contributors .. “..frothing at the mouth at what some council somewhere is doing to stop ordinary British hardworking families from setting fire to Muslims’ heads, because of so-called health and safety.” (A line too good not to pinch – from here). Read the rest of this entry »

Brian Barder’s excellent – and comprehensive – opposition to ‘participatory democracy’ has been up and commented-up for long enough to be worth a second visit if you’ve seen it already.

My only problem with it is that posts such as this probably have an obligation to advocate consultation – in it’s most creative and energetic form – to ensure that the monopsony enjoyed by civil servants, think tanks, pressure groups and political parties can be disrupted. Discussing this with a council leader the other night, I heard a very interesting corrollary to the ‘hard-to-reach’ demographic that his council is concerned about when it consults.

We have a bigger problem with the ‘hard to avoid’ group. Our old friends, the active citizens…

Here’s LD’s co-blogger Anthony writing (or rather, quoting) from his main blog on the growing ‘pressure group industry’:

“The flourishing of associations is the denial of mediation. Taken to its logical conclusion, the slogan of the movement is: for each individual their own association, and by that very fact, no association at all.”

It’s often easy to forget that political parties are the counterweight to pressure groups. If the role of political parties were to diminish in the way that many would like them to do, would we (as individuals) have more influence over policy – or less?

Perhaps the key to this is a public education campaign that assures people that an equal say in policy making only provides us with the expectation of a tiny amount of influence – and this is the best possible outcome for all of us?

How far does the way that some politicians and organisations raise public expectations – the clarion call to Have Your Say – damage the quality of liberal democracy?

Direct democracy experiment MyFootballClub was featured in recent online movie Us Now. You’ll remember the MyFC website took over Ebbsfleet United (the former Gravesend and Northfleet) and promised its members all the experience of running a real football club, team selections, transfer listing players, and the rest.

According to a piece on the When Saturday Comes blog, the experiment is not doing so well. Apart from a decline in membership, which is having an effect on the club’s already shaky budget, many of the democracy elements of the operation have been junked. The website members no longer pick the team, and now have ceded some power over transfers to the management, which is appointed by the MyFC website owners.

When Saturday Comes opines:

you have to wonder what the future holds for MyFC if the power afforded to members keeps being eroded. With Daish regaining some control of transfer policy, and the headline grabbing – but ridiculous – concept of fans picking the team having long been consigned to the dustbin, there is little incentive to persuade new investors to part with £35 per year, especially as the club look set for another season at the wrong end of the table.

A site commenter makes the best point of all – that an operation like MyFootballClub, started on the Internet without a particular club in mind, was never going to create a common bond strong enough to keep people participating through the bad times:

If it had been a supporters’ trust that bought the club, then perhaps this could have all been avoided. By going from internet-concept first, and THEN casting about for a team after members had been brought onboard, the erosion of support has been swift but not unforeseeable–how is a “member” in California or Australia supposed to feel any sort of bond with this side? After clicking yes/no a few times, how likely would they be to stay engaged? In their world of YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, surely the same denizens couldn’t be expected to focus on a mere non-league football team in little old England for too long.