The other day, I posted on how the ‘level playing field’ demanded (partly) by marketeers was a significant contributor to the centralising tendencies of the previous half-century. As a short follow-up, Seth Godin picks up on the widespread and increasing distrust in big marketing. I don’t know if you would reach the same conclusion that [...]
Posts under ‘Centralisation’
Causes of centralisation (continued): The decline of the perogative of professionals
Following on from the moan about the ‘level playing field’, here’s the next in the ’causes of centralisation’ theme: The minor crisis in the legitimacy of professionals. Crudely speaking, where civil servants, teachers, police, and judges used to be expect their judgements to be respected, and used to exercise more perogative powers than they do [...]
Political parties and decentralisation
So much is changing so quickly. Newspapers and broadcasters are changing. Governments now communicate using radically different means to the ones that were practiced a decade ago. Here’s Exhibit A. We now have free interactive tools that enable us to hold huge multilateral conversations based upon collaborative filtering and reputation management. We can find useful [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Counterproductive demands for transparency?
About a year ago, I heard snippets of a radio programme that really stuck with me. I didn’t make a note of the name of the programme at the time (I was driving), and it has taken me best part of the last year plugging away at the few contacts I have in the BEEB’s [...]
Reputation management for councils – eBay style
It looks like a bit of a headline grabber, but the proposal to allow users to provide instant feedback on public services may enable government to break out of the cycle in which one bad news story about a council on an (unreliable!) national news medium can trump all of one’s experience of local services. [...]
Signposts off
Do keep an eye on the Google Reader page that I’ve set up – I’m trying to track as much of the blogosphere’s comment on local democracy as I can – particularly where there is anything that touches on interactivity. If you have your own shared items, please send me an e-mail from the gmail [...]
Command Backspace
Part two of a series of articles on the Conservative green paper on local government, which are also appearing on the Democratic Society blog. Section one of the green paper discusses local housing and economic growth. The Conservatives’ proposals are: enable local authorities to benefit financially when they deliver the housing that local people need; [...]
Conservative 'localism' approach announced
It is very hard to take the UK Conservative Party’s claim to be a localist party seriously today. Many of these steps will seriously weaken the powers and status of local elected representatives without providing any empowerment of ordinary citizens by way of compensation. All of the following issues are features can be portrayed as [...]
