Comments on: Will Victor be the eventual victor?

By: Community sites and active citizenship – a #LocalGovCamp roundup | Local Democracy

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 08:17:35 +0000

[...] one that is the unqualified public good that Will’s site is. It’s much more in the Victor [...]

By: alex

alex — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:58:39 +0000

Could one local authority dare to do the following

i) take a tiny little bit of a service, or a stand alone one
ii) convene a number of service users
iii) let them describe how good / bad the service is as users, and offer their suggestions how to improve it

iv) rules – no council officials are allowed to say No ; quote European procurement law ; ultra vires or any other ” let’s not do it ” words
no consultants or large IT companies are allowed to play the game

v) the service users are allowed to choose how the service is delivered e.g. on paper ; e-mail ; text ; internet

vi) the whole lot thrash it out and the council Members see if citizens can design better services or not

If it works, the citizens get another go.

I would love to be able to do this to Tesco too. Why do I go in, fill my trolley, empty it again, pay, fill it again, empty it again into a car or the fridge.

Both the council and Tesco are quasi-monopolies ? Is this a reason for the service quality being good or bad ?

By: Political parties & active citizens – Local Democracy

Political parties & active citizens – Local Democracy — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:24:55 +0000

[...] I outlined the Victor Meldrew problem here a while ago, but a shorter, simplified and provocative version of it is this: Active citizens are time-rich nosey busybodies and do-gooders that promote their own self-interest at the expense of the people that don’t have the time, energy or obsessiveness to engage in public affairs. At least if we force these people to channel their energies through political parties, they will have to spend most of their time competing for the once-every-few-years votes from the rest of us – those of us who don’t have the time, energy, inclination or fanaticism to go to consultations, circulate petitions or run campaigns. [...]

By: No longer a pipe dream « Local Democracy

No longer a pipe dream « Local Democracy — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 08:45:58 +0000

[...] that it will make the school any better managed. It may make it worse. It may reward the time-rich Victors. The teachers may feel battered by this experience and think twice before making potentially [...]

By: Reselect Democracy » Blog Archive » The ‘job-for-lifers’

Reselect Democracy » Blog Archive » The ‘job-for-lifers’ — Sat, 30 May 2009 14:01:16 +0000

[...] I’ve outlined this argument elsewhere here. I’d argue that our most pressing task is to reinvigorate the rottenest most inactive political parties. I suspect that there are a number of MPs or Parliamentary Candidates that have been…. [...]

By: Challenges and strategies for collaboration and engagement | Memeserver

Challenges and strategies for collaboration and engagement | Memeserver — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 09:20:59 +0000

[...] This brings us to the problem of ‘the usual suspects’ [...]

By: Demonstrations and democracy: Six gambits « Local Democracy

Demonstrations and democracy: Six gambits « Local Democracy — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 12:54:26 +0000

[...] crudely, I think that good governance depends on the ability to manage and marginalise ‘active citizens’ (unless they get elected!). So the problem is affluent citizens (time-rich) but not really [...]

By: Are interactive media experts really improving the quality of democracy? « Local Democracy

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 10:17:37 +0000

[...] Will Victor be the eventual victor? [...]

By: Paul Evans

Paul Evans — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 23:15:57 +0000

Ade,

The presence of political parties and their continued existance provides a defence against this – a defence of sorts.

The current Conservative proposals (covered heavily on this blog by Anthony – with a bit more balance than I could muster) were designed with the ‘Victors’ in mind, I’m sad to say.

By: Ade

Ade — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:31:10 +0000

Hi Paul,
Very thoughtful and thought-provoking post. It brought to mind a recent article which argued that the shift to electronic media was actually negatively impacting involvement in the political process by people from lower income groups (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/03/survey-democracy-20-not-quite-the-upgrade-we-first-thought.ars).

To be honest I think the people from lower income brackets have always been negatively impacted in the early stages of any significant paradigm shift and the use of web 2.0 in political involvement is simply the latest. What is different now is that the sheer pace of these changes makes it harder for these groups to play catch-up.

However, it raises an important question about how to better facilitate wider participation across socio-economic groups- especially in a time when the ideological differences between the mainstream parties seems to be narrowing and courting of the “middle” seems to carry the day. I believe the impact of these factors will be that the Victors of our society will gain in their ability to impact the political process while people like Mrs M will be increasingly marginalised.