It’s Friday. It’s 3.30pm. It’s time for a nice entertaining post about the character of local government. Oh! Here’s one – on a blog that’s generally worth keeping an eye on. Along with the Glum Councillors tumblog, we’re seeing the culture of local government being ever-so-slightly lightened and humanised by the blogosphere.
Posts from ‘May, 2011’
On democracy, environment and the Red Tape Challenge
April 7th 2011 was a dark day both for the Coalition government’s commitment to be the ‘greenest government ever’, and for democracy in the UK. That was the day that the government launched its Red Tape Challenge. The idea of cutting red tape has a long and undistinguished history in the UK; undistinguished in that it [...]
Mulling over a ‘right to manage’
Wonderful pop-up social enterprise thinktank Popse (possibly the first pop-up thinktank ever, but certainly not the last) popped up in London’s Exmouth Market from 9-13 May. Among other hot topics was a proposal from the Waterways Project that a community ‘right to manage’ (or a ‘presumption in favour of community management’) should join the existing proposals in the [...]
House of Lords Reform, Long-termism and Future Generations
The House of Lords Reform Draft Bill and accompanying White Paper were presented to Parliament by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg on Tuesday 17 May. The documents set out long-awaited options for a reformed House of Lords. The Bill is grounded in a smaller, 80%-elected House, retaining (controversially) the Bishops. The White Paper indicates that a 100% elected [...]
Why ‘Microparticipation’ is so important
My friend Mick Phythian picked up a very useful motto/warning for anyone promoting e-government projects a while ago. To government, your time is worth £Zero – and this is why e-government fails. This explains why a very sharp idea that Dave Briggs has been working on recently – promoting the notion of ‘Microparticipation’ with a [...]
