Archive for the ‘Populism’ Category
Is the milk out of the bottle?
Apologies for the very light posting here. Normal service will be resumed shortly – hopefully.
In the meantime, can I direct you over to viagra best online store canada this post over at Left Foot Forward – well worth a read:
“The election results show a total fragmentation of the political landscape. They produced, what we might call, a horrific Coalition Sudoku. There are at least four coalition options, involving more than four parties. But none of these options will be an easy representation of the will of the
electorate, nor a simple ticket for stable government in times of financial crisis and populist revolt.”
Elections bring the best out in bloggers
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 »
Elitism gone mad
That Matthew Taylor is so, like, out of touch. Here’s what he’s got to say about ‘Britain Thinks‘:
“My slightly elitist concern that BritainThinks doesn’t encourage its participants to ask themselves whether their opinion is wanted, useful or soundly based is reinforced by the site’s slogan….
‘if you’ve got an opinion, here’s where to stick it”
Like Matthew, I’ve no idea how such a plainly stupid project has attracted the investment or energy that it has obviously used up in getting off the ground. Looking at it, you do wonder if it’s some clever campaign designed to illustrate Matthew’s point.
Are we a lynch-mob who won't vote for a bunch of 'hangers'?
Don Paskini has a post up here that I’d like to be able to agree with. I’m very comfortable with his logic but remain to be convinced about the details of his arguments.
Do 'Dog Whistle Politics' really work? (Click for pic credit)
He’s picking up on the popularity of banker-bashing and placing it beside the short-term popularity that politicians believe that they get by being tough on immigration.
Some commentators, like Danny Finkelstein for the Tories or David Aaronovitch for Labour, would argue that it is still the case that occupying the “centre ground” of British politics means steering clear of taxing the rich like Foot and Kinnock or banging on about immigration like Hague or Howard. They point to David Cameron’s emphasis on ‘detoxifying’ the Tory ‘brand’, following in the footsteps of Tony Blair and New Labour.
I think that in fact the centre ground has shifted, particularly since 2007, and that Labour and the Tories have in practice agreed a new and more populist consensus which is much tougher on immigration and in favour of higher taxes on the rich.
Now I don’t have any evidence to back up what I’m about to argue – this post is all conjecture – please bear with me here?
Climate change and the lobbyists
Click for picture credit
I meant to pick this up a few days ago – I’ve been too busy to blog as diligently as I’d like to.
In the Times, Greenpeace’s Joss Garman says:
“Imagine if, instead of 60 years ago, the Labour Party was trying to create a National Health Service today. The right-wing campaign to scupper the formation of an NHS would be run against the backdrop of UK media coverage of America’s simultaneous healthcare debate. Every “death panel” and “compulsory abortion” myth concocted on K Street would soon be digested by British correspondents in Washington before being tailored for a UK audience as an insight into the fallout from the introduction of “socialised medicine”.
Town Hall Meetings
A sketch of anti-healthcare reform protests in the US – from Rolling Stone magazine:
“The threat of violence was thinly veiled: One agitator held aloft a tombstone with the name Doggett. Screaming, “Just say no!” the mob chased Doggett through the parking lot to an aide’s car — roaring with approval as he fled the scene.
Conservatives were quick to insist that the near-riot — the first of many town-hall mobs that would dominate the headlines in August — was completely spontaneous. The protesters didn’t show up “because of some organized group,” Rick Scott, the head of Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, told reporters…..
In fact, Scott’s own group had played an integral role in mobilizing the protesters. According to internal documents obtained by Rolling Stone, Conservatives for Patients’ Rights had been working closely for weeks as a “coalition partner” with three other right-wing groups in a plot to unleash irate mobs at town-hall meetings just like Doggett’s. Far from representing a spontaneous upwelling of populist rage, the protests were tightly orchestrated from the top down by corporate-funded front groups as well as top lobbyists for the health care industry.”
Here’s the question that’s being asked over at the Personal Democracy Forum:
Let’s see what answers we get here.
A few links to be going on with
Just a few interesting things I’ve seen over the past few days that impact further on this councils v local newspapers issue. The first is that – when councils decide to factor in ad-revenue into their communications budgets, it adds a significant amount of uncertainty – because ad revenue can go down as well as up.
Not only are councils seen to be competing with local newspapers by launching their own, they are giving free ads to local businesses.
Here’s Paul Canning on how councils are likely to start learning from commercial websites about how usability and site-optimisation can increase the effectiveness of their websites. I mention this because it impacts on that question of how council can promote democracy online.
And Paul is really busy with his blog at the moment – here he is on the ‘tea party’ movement in the US.
Then there’s the Local Government Knowledge Hub.
Campaigns
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?
Reality scores from the rebound
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.
Populism. And local newspapers.
Two very interesting posts – one via Chris Dillow, and one directly from his site. Firstly, Chris signposts this:
“….perhaps it’s “populist” to think political elites always end up in bed with economic elites, but it seems, as a matter of fact, they often do. My opinion is that a certain “populist” enthusiasm for democracy, in the absence of strong legal and cultural constraints on government action, almost inevitably delivers a great deal of regulatory capture–that is, tucks political elites snugly in bed with corporate elites. Isn’t that a cynical vision? Moreover, when the incentives of insufficiently-limited democracies lead to this kind of result, supra-national technocratic institutions can in fact act as a salutary check on governments precisely because they are undemocratic.”
There we have it again: “…insufficiently-limited democracies.” What does this mean? Does it mean the populist mode of democracy as opposed to the model with strong political parties, shortish manifestos and un-mandated politicians? Surely the latter option is really the unlimited democracy?
Secondly, Chris has some evidence – nothing conclusive mind….
Reprising the question of a bail-out for journalism, here’s Martin Bright’s original New Deal of the Mind article from the New Statesman – it’s an idea that seems to be going places.