Local Democracy Notepad

It’s Friday. It’s 3.30pm. It’s time for

a nice entertaining post about the character of local government.

Oh! Here’s one – on a blog that’s generally worth keeping an eye on.

Along with the Glum Councillors tumblog, we’re seeing the culture of local government being ever-so-slightly lightened and humanised by the blogosphere.

Just a

quick one: Make sure you don’t miss Radio 4′s ‘Democracy On Trial‘ series, hosted by Michael Portillo. It’s worth catching.

That’s all. Carry on with what you were doing.

One of the best comments I’ve found under one of my blog posts a while ago (it was about whinging in comments boxes) said…

“Philosophers have sought to understand the world. The point is to complain about it.”

Here, Peter Levine has a nice post up about the ‘complaints choir‘ in Chicago.

There’s been quite enough sensible earnest commentary on how Data.gov.uk will transform policy and help us all join in describing problems.

Here’s the Daily Mash’s alternative take. (via @stevemoore4good)

Local government governance guru Peter Keith-Lucas has
an article in this week’s Local Government Lawyer assessing the current state of governance in local councils.

It’s a good read – expert but not too technical. Keith-Lucas has plagues to put on the houses of both parties: the Labour party for watering down the proper role of scrutiny in its most recent green paper, the Conservatives for setting out proposals on Standards Committee issues that (he suggests) leave the door open for greater councillor corruption. Here’s his closing paragraph (but do go and read the lot):

For healthy local government, there must be corporate governance, there must be a balance between the power of the executive and the checks and balances, in terms of council and scrutiny holding the executive to account, and an enforceable set of minimum standards of conduct. I am seriously concerned that the checks and balances which were an essential part of the 2000 Act Settlement are under attack. That promises a prosperous New Year for lawyers, but not a happy time for local government.

Councillor Stamp. Our August pin-up.

As the silly season draws to a close (it is Friday as well), those nice people over at the internet have brought the ultimate in municipal-porn-meets-pavement-politics: the Glum Councillors.

For some time, I’ve thought that the LGA could prove it’s worth to the nation by doing a Calender Girls type fundraising exercise for charity featuring photos of some of our most nationally recognised and charismatic councillors – pictured as God intended.

The one problem is this; what is ‘the classic councillor pose’? Glum Councillors may have finally answered this question for us.

If you see any more of these, the site urges you to tweet them to @glumcouncillors

(Hat tip to Ivan for this one).

One of the unexpected joys that the blogosphere has brought is is the revival of writings that were originally presented on a serialised basis.

Samuel Pepys diary, for example. ‘Geoffrey Chaucer hath a blog’ is a nice variation – a contemporary set of sentiments put to the vulgar rhythms of late-middle English.

Flann O’Brien would be a good subject for a Pepys-ish treatment. His best work was short articles in The Irish Times. And of course, Orwell, whose letters and essays are at least as important as his literary high-points such as 1984 or Animal Farm.

Here’s the latest from Orwell’s facebook profile which has regular updates featuring the great man’s wisdom:

“I always disagree, however, when people end up saying that we can only combat Communism, Fascism or what not if we develop an equal fanaticism. It appears to me that one defeats the fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself, but on the contrary by using one’s intelligence.” – George Orwell in a letter to Richard Rees (1949-03-03)

Apologies for the very light posting this week. Hopefully something approaching normal service will be resumed next week.

In the meantime, check out Matthew Taylor’s ‘Bloggers Circle‘ – if you have a site of your own, it’s well worth visiting it and joining. Here’s the drill:

• Receive an email at about lunchtime when blogposts have been submitted by members of the circle
• Once a week you can submit your best / most interesting blogpost to the circle
• If other members of the circle find your post interesting or provocative they will write about it
• In return, we ask you to write about a blog post promoted by another member of the circle twice a month
• At the end of the month, the blog post written about by the most members will receive the ‘blog of the month’ prize
• If you use Twitter, mark your post #bloggerscircle for profile on the homepage

What are you waiting for?

And if you don’t blog – really, try it. You may be pleasantly surprised….

I’ve already referred to a few of these in recent posts, but here are my ten most recently ‘shared’ Google Reader items.
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I’m always up for sharing Google Reader feeds with others.