Further to this (very good) post by ‘Living with rats‘ (name explained here) “Never trust public servants, the community leader said. ‘They always dump you. They never keep their promises. They’ll always let you down.” …. here’s rent-a-rant Charlie Brooker on good form: But if the media’s rotten and the government’s rotten and the police [...]
Posts under ‘Community’
Conversational democracy and neighbourhood online networks
Kevin Harris has blogged about his planned contribution to the Reboot Britain ‘PICamp’ session – over here. Here’s a flavour: To my mind, it doesn’t work to suppose that people can be prodded and coerced into civic or political participatory roles when their experience of social participation is impoverished. So it would help if we [...]
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 [...]
Steady state on citizenship stats
The England Citizenship Survey for April – December 2008 was published the other day by CLG (pdf, Excel data). Overall, despite the onset of the financial crisis, attitudes to and participation in politics don’t seem to have changed much. A few headlines: Only one fifth of people (22%) feel that they can influence decisions taken [...]
Trust, marketing and centralisation
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 [...]
Digital engagement, transparency and power
Kevin Harris has a long but worth-reading post over on the New Start magazine’s blog.
"It's only the older people who think of communities now"
There’s a really good, detailed bit of reporting here from Friday’s Guardian about the near-collapse of local newspapers in some areas. The starting point that Stephen Moss chose was my old local paper when I was young – The Long Eaton Advertiser. This bit stood out for me: “For the older generation, these things matter. “They [...]
A blog about representative democracy, social media and a conversational politics. How will peer-to-peer communications change local democracy? How is representation changing? 
