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Brighton, Hove and First Past the Post
We were following the elections in our home city of Brighton over on our new Twitter account @DemsocBTN, which we’ll be using for our local activities alongside the main @Demsoc feed. As you might have read in the papers, the … Continue reading
Posted in News
Tagged Brighton, Brighton & Hove, council, devolution, Green, Green Party of England and Wales, Hove, hyperlocal, Local Government, localgov, minorities, neighbourhoods, United Kingdom Alternative Vote referendum 2011
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The Busy Enough Already Society
Mutuals? Nein Danke. Image via Wikipedia A little example of the reaction to Big Society mutualisation proposals (at least when they come from public service agencies), from my local paper The Argus. It concerns a local nursery for the kids … Continue reading
Posted in News
Tagged Big Society, Brighton, brightstart, campaign, mutualisation, mutuals, nursery, Uncategorized
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Localism Q&A
As a final reminder, those who want to know what I think about the Localism Bill (other than it’s a badly-drafted mess, see last night’s post) can take part in an online Q&A at the Guardian’s website between noon and … Continue reading
We’ll be back shortly
We’ve had a database problem and are having to restore our site from various backups. We should be back later on today, with at least partial content, and then restoring the rest over the next few days. Sorry for any … Continue reading
Local government politics: it's a small world, after all
Turns out the Conservative local government heartland is not Surrey or Buckinghamshire but …
… Bradford, rather surprisingly.
This may be completely old news to everyone, but while I knew that Eric Pickles (Conservative Local Government Secretary) used to be leader of Bradford council in the 80s, I hadn’t realised that Baroness (Margaret) Eaton, the Conservative chair of the Local Government Association, was and is a Bradford councillor and was an associate of Mr Pickles during his time on the council. Continue reading
Future Democracy '10: The countdown begins
I hope to welcome many readers of this blog and supporters of the Democratic Society to Future Democracy ’10, the return of the UK’s leading annual event on the use of the Internet and other new technologies to boost the workings of our democracy.
Hosted by Headstar, and supported by organisations including the RSA, the Hansard Society and mySociety, it is set to take place on 2 December at the Grand Connaught Rooms, near Holborn in central London. Continue reading
How comments should change
You should definitely read this great analysis of comments systems by Kevin Anderson. Extract:
I often wonder if we need to go back to first principles with comments. Why are we doing them? I’m serious. We need to ask ourselves what we’re trying to achieve with comments. In some ways, I often feel as if comments are just vox pops, or man on the street at an industrial scale. Are user comments just another way to canvas public opinion? Mostly, comments are seen as a way to increase user time on site.
Is eDemocracy just for the Usual Suspects?
I’m leading a workshop about eDemocacy on Thursday at the first Brighton & Hove Democracy Day. I’m interested in drawing out both good and bad perceptions of the role of the web in engaging with a different mix of people. Do you think that the internet can help draw people from outside the ‘usual suspects’ into debate? Or is it just a loud-hailer for the opinionated loudmouths who already dominate the off-line decision-making processes? Continue reading
Introductions again
It was gratifying to see our introductory presentation getting some love on Twitter yesterday, thanks to Su Butcher for starting the ball rolling, and to others for their kind comments.
It’s reminded me to post the link to the presentation again, not only because some people might not have seen it, but also because I’m involved in a couple of events this week where I’m going to be talking to people who don’t know us. The first is a Big Society get-together in London, where civil society types are meeting some of the people working in Government on Big Society issues. The second is a meeting of the Employers’ Forum on Disability on Wednesday, where the theme is “accessible technology”.
Here is the presentation, and I’ll post a write-up of the Big Society event when I get the chance
Democratic Society Introduction
View more presentations from The Democratic Society.
