Sometimes, a book review provokes a response that is worth reading even if you can’t afford the time / cash to read the book itself. Here’s an example from Charlie Becket’s verygood Polis blog reviewing ‘The Myth of Digital Democracy’ by Matthew Hindman: “…the US obsession with the political blogosphere distracted people from the much [...]
Posts under ‘Democratic renewal’
Strengthening local democracy, kinda
I’ve just read through the new Strengthening Local Democracy Green Paper, and I can’t sum it up better than Talking Heads did in their 1977 hit, Psycho Killer. Not the refrain “better run, run, run, run away”, but the verse: You start a conversation you can’t even finish. You’re talking a lot, but you’re not [...]
Twitter – love it / hate it???
Yes – I’m new here – I think Paul asked me as we have been having a falling out about Petitions over on my blog and he likes an argument. You can find out more about me there obviously but probably the most relevant fact is that I am currently researching for a PHD around [...]
To the barricades!
The #rebootbritain hashtag on Twitter went haywire on Monday as over 700 people attended the event – I spent over an hour on Tuesday night searching through it and the earliest session I could get to in that time was a 4pm one – it actually challenged #michaeljackson for prominence on Twitter’s trending indicator. Because [...]
Transparency – sticking plaster or panacea?
MySociety‘s Tom Steinberg has, for some years, been urging government to adapt some of the lessons that successful websites have learned. Here he is, writing one of the Reboot Britain essays serialised in The Independent. “….most people are …familiar with Amazon’s ability to tell you that “people who bought this also bought that”, and increasingly [...]
Schools design a new Parliament
If you’re hanging around Westminster between 7 and 17 July, pop into Westminster Hall to check out what sounds like a fun exhibition. The Royal Institution of British Architects have run a competition for schools to design a new Houses of Parliament. The nine shortlisted entries will be on display in the oldest part of [...]
Political Innovation Camp at Reboot Britain
I thought I’d offer you a bit of an outline of the PICamp (Political Innovation Camp) strands that are making up part of NESTA’s Reboot Britain event next week. You’ll see that the sessions that are planned reflect a lot of the issues that come up on this blog regularly. We’re offering these because we [...]
A few signposts off
We can learn things from the way they elect Popes – and the way they used to. Chris Dillow reprises his ‘extremist not a fanatic’ theme – that it is rational not to care too much about politics – and that politics benefits from our indifference. And finally ‘Reboot Britain’ will be worth keeping an [...]
Maybe now is the time
Here’s New Start‘s Clare Goff on the demise of the community empowerment bill (via Julian Dobson): ‘Maybe now is the time for fresh ideas to revive the collective voice and rebuild politics from the grassroots up.’ Absolutely right. Quick thoughts on the democratic turmoil, starting with three angles on those expenses: Some people (including one [...]
Reductio ad absurdum
Continuing Brendan O’Neill’s theme about the reduction of politics to the question of how efficiently politicians can tick the ‘democracy’ box, Simon Jenkins picks up on the calls for fewer MPs and councillors: “The difference is that most democracies have many tiers of representation on which voters can vent their rage. The Germans run almost [...]
A blog about representative democracy, social media and a conversational politics. How will peer-to-peer communications change local democracy? How is representation changing? 
