The European Union’s Committee of the Regions has published a new Eurobarometer survey looking at the impact of local and regional government in the EU. The survey shows that local government is the most trusted tier of government in the EU (50% trust), with the EU itself second (47%) and national governments some way behind [...]
Posts from ‘March, 2009’
And the winners are…..
Given the recent news stories about the Home Secretary’s husband buying porn on the rates, and Tony McNulty’s complicated housing arrangements, it’s worth getting the whole debate in perspective. Firstly, Iain Dale thinks it’s about as serious as things can get from the point of view of the reputation of politics. Last year, a couple [...]
How local government and the public sector disincentivise social innovation
The reason that there is such a wide-ranging debate about what democracy is, and how it is likely to change in the coming years, is in no small part, down to the fact that technology is making new things possible. The technical infrastructure available to us is changing, and creative minds are being applied to [...]
Caroline Spelman fails a localism test
Given all the talk of localism in recent months, it is pretty disappointing to see Caroline Spelman, the Conservative shadow Local Government minister, making the following statement (via the BBC) on Council Tax rises: At a time when millions of workers are facing pay freezes or unemployment this year, it adds insult to injury to [...]
Councils v local newspapers?
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 [...]
Mixed Ink
I want to tell you about Mixed Ink – a really good concept in collaborative authoring that I encountered on my travels a few weeks ago. I was in Miami (‘ark at me!), touting a democracy project that I’ve been nurturing for years. The conference I was at was designed to showcase bright ideas in [...]
Structural changes ignored?
I missed this at the time, but here’s an example of what happens when you spend a fortune on a commission and ask them to ignore the trees while describing the wood. In Public Service magazine, Professor Michael Clarke offers an account of his work as chairman of a committee that looked at the city’s [...]
Ken – speaking his mind
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 [...]
The right climate?
Andrew Collinge has a really good post over on the LGIU blog. He’s picking up on an also-good post by Matthew Taylor of the RSA. I don’t have anything to say that engages with it directly, only to add something that I mentioned in a post a while ago over on the Liberal Conspiracy site about [...]
Are interactive media experts really improving the quality of democracy?
OK, in recent posts, I’ve moaned about the demands for political transparency that are being fuelled by new interactive media applications. Let me try and put this into some perspective: In my opening ‘defending political parties‘ post, I acknowledged that there are a few early knockout punches that could be delivered to the argument that [...]
