Tuning into the Personal Democracy Forum 2010 event in Washington, Scott Heiferman of Meetup.com offered a nice quote from Alexis De Tocqueville: “In democratic countries, knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge” It’s certainly true that state-sponsored organisations have even less of a monopoly over the ability to [...]
Posts under ‘Direct democracy’
Conservative local government proposals
The Tories have launched their manifesto today with a lot of the material from their 2009 Shift Control document [pdf] making the final cut. It may be worth pointing to Anthony’s detailed crit of this document (below) as a good deal of it is relevant today. Shift Delete Command backspace SysRq F12 Home PgDn Escape [...]
I can haz a vote on everyfink?
I’m surprised that it’s taken so long, but someone has finally launched a web-based candidacy for the election. In this case, the deal is that – if he wins, he will put every issue to the vote on his website and vote accordingly. There are some issues where he outlines exceptions to this rule, and [...]
Three signposts off
I’ve started drafting three articles in the last 24 hours for this blog only to find a better one on the same subject written by someone else. Firstly, it’s a regular theme here that data visualisations are a huge opportunity for us all because they allow us to break the monopoly that civil servants, sloppy [...]
A way of involving the ‘hard-to-reach’ groups and the expense of the ‘hard-to-avoids’
Via Mick Phythian, I’ve just seen this (shorter version: people don’t use interactive services because it undervalues their time, ‘valuing it at zero’- face-to-face is a more reliable ideal, and the utility calculation has to be positive before people will take online options. If buying something online saves you £20 then you may take the [...]
Two applications worth looking at
Two things. This is ‘why pie charts stink’ – a nice programme for visualising data: Dashboard 1 Powered by Tableau Secondly, further to Andrew’s Poblish posts, I’ve just revisited Debatepedia. I met one of the Debatepedia team last year at the WeMedia conference and I had to say at the time that it didn’t seem [...]
Climate change and the lobbyists
I meant to pick this up a few days ago – I’ve been too busy to blog as diligently as I’d like to. In the Times, Greenpeace’s Joss Garman says: “Imagine if, instead of 60 years ago, the Labour Party was trying to create a National Health Service today. The right-wing campaign to scupper the formation of [...]
Minarets, trade offs and direct democracy
The recent outcome of a Swiss referendum in which a majority have voted in favour of a minaret ban has helped to highlight a few important issue around the question of direct democracy. Dan Hannan says that – while direct democracy is a great idea, this particular result is regrettable. Make of that what you [...]
The myth of easy engagement: Evans’ Law?
Just a quick response to Tim Davies’ verygood post about ‘The Myth of Easy Engagement’. There is one argument that supports his general position that, I think, he misses. I’m sure that sooner or later, some will come up with a frivolous law (like ‘Godwin’s Law‘ or ‘Muphry’s Law‘) but if they don’t, let me [...]
Town Hall Meetings
A sketch of anti-healthcare reform protests in the US – from Rolling Stone magazine: “The threat of violence was thinly veiled: One agitator held aloft a tombstone with the name Doggett. Screaming, “Just say no!” the mob chased Doggett through the parking lot to an aide’s car — roaring with approval as he fled the [...]
A blog about representative democracy, social media and a conversational politics. How will peer-to-peer communications change local democracy? How is representation changing? 
