I think that a lot of election commentary is missing something important about how we vote. As some commenters here have said, in the past, ‘at elections, we order our preferences’. That makes this really interesting. Nick Clegg doesn’t seem to be strongly objected to in the way that Gordon Brown and David Cameron are. [...]
Posts from ‘April, 2010’
Covering the Local Elections on Harringay Online
This is a guest post by Hugh Flouch of Harringay Online People love living in Harringay, but there are a few quality of life issues that won’t get the attention they need unless citizens and elected representatives enter into a democratic compact to fix them. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that this [...]
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 need that you have personally. You can be almost certain [...]
Conservative local government proposals
The Tories have launched their manifesto today with a lot of the material from their 2009 Shift Control document [pdf] making the final cut. It may be worth pointing to Anthony’s detailed crit of this document (below) as a good deal of it is relevant today. Shift Delete Command backspace SysRq F12 Home PgDn Escape [...]
Democracy mirroring social media activity, party whips and ‘ishoos’
Firstly, Catherine has an interesting post up here. No conclusions yet, but definitely worth following. Secondly, Tom Watson – in one of the final votes of the last Parliamentary session – rebelled against the government for the first time in his career over the Digital Economy Bill. I’d say I’m in a minority in admiring [...]
Not in my Name! (?)
… or you get the politicians you deserve pt2. Like a million other people, I attended the London demonstration against the Iraq War in early 2003. And like a hefty minority of people there, I had a few concerns about a lot of the opposition to the war as well as about the war itself. [...]
Civil servants guidelines update
I’m a bit slow with this one, but just to close a loop that was opened a few weeks ago here, those Civil Service Social Media Guidelines are now public. Over at Puffbox, Simon seems slightly pleasantly surprised: “But whilst there’s a requirement to limit ‘civil servants’ participation in a professional capacity in social networks’, I don’t necessarily read [...]
Straight answers and the Prisoner’s Dilemma
… or ‘we get the politicians we deserve, pt1′: Via Mick, this is worth a look over at the Daily Mail for people who recycle The Independent. “Academics …. found that “not giving straight answers to questions” scored an average of 8.45 when people were asked how much of a problem it was on a scale [...]
MP personality types – have I missed any?
As a prelude to a bit of election-related fun research, I’m compiling a list of the different attributes that we expect to see combined under the bonnet of the perfect MP. Just for the avoidance of doubt, I don’t expect any candidate to fit firmly into any of these categories – I’m going to be [...]
