Not being a supporter of either of the coalition parties, the current range of opportunities to accuse them of betraying their manifesto commitments are very tempting. It’s hard not to relish a few years of Nick Clegg having this video replayed constantly in the light of Tuesday’s budget VAT hike. But taking the partisan hat [...]
Posts from ‘June, 2010’
Localocracy & Opinion Space
Looking at the Personal Democracy Forum session on ‘New Tools for Listening‘, there’s a presentation from Localocracy and Opinion Space along with a quick trot through Google Moderator (which has now been integrated into YouTube to help deal with their burgeoning comments issues there). It’s an interesting approach that allows people to participate in local [...]
Lists and lessons
Mark Pack has a very good post up on Lib-Dem Voice – advice for budding politicians: ‘30 things every would-be politician should do this summer‘ (he was inspired by a similar post for aspiring journalists elsewhere). Thirty is a big number – too big for me. But I’ve got a few observations that I’ve been [...]
The mother of invention?
Necessity, that is. It’s Budget Day and the cuts are in the post. My incredible predictive powers tell me that government spending may be under a bit of pressure shortly. If you’re not a regular over at William Heath’s Ideal Government blog, this post is a good introduction to his general themes. In his overview [...]
The value of a free press
Two stories – both from Roy Greenslade in recent days – that give cause to ponder the responsibility that the media bear. The first one is the old chestnut about the big lie splashed over the early pages followed by the retraction hidden under the Darts results. Given the fuss earlier this year around academics [...]
The reification of the 2010 election result
So what mandate does the new government have? K-punk (in a wider, very good post) quotes Melanie Phillips saying that “no-one voted for a hung parliament.” Before the election, there was a persistent rumbling around Gordon Brown’s legitimacy as PM (he didn’t win a general election) that seems strangely lacking around David Cameron – arguably [...]
Social capital and genocide
Once again, Stumbling and Mumbling relays a potentially huge insight here, as part of a wider post on how pogroms of various kinds can leave a lasting mark upon the place that they happened in: “When we compare the poorest with the richest nations, it is hard to conclude that social capital can produce less [...]
Swedenise us!
I was very sad to hear – via Slugger – of the passing of ‘Horseman’ – one of the better (anonymous) bloggers that I have in my RSS feed. Being busy, I missed his last posting on his Ulster’s Doomed! blog – a terrifically good one at that. Writing about our image of politicians, Horseman points [...]
Moonbattery
George Monbiot is here writing about the Tea Party movement in the US. He argues that the European left could learn a thing or two from the US right. It’s an odd article. It contains this sentence…. “They have been promoted by Fox News – owned by that champion of the underdog Rupert Murdoch – [...]
Is the milk out of the bottle?
Apologies for the very light posting here. Normal service will be resumed shortly – hopefully. In the meantime, can I direct you over to this post over at Left Foot Forward – well worth a read: “The election results show a total fragmentation of the political landscape. They produced, what we might call, a horrific [...]
