Here’s Rory Sutherland on the Spectator blog: “….here lies the central challenge of the ‘Big Society’. In Britain our spectacular capacity for collective action in opposing things (Nazism, new housing, nightclubs) is matched only by our inability to harness any will or consensus when it comes to doing something new. Worse, our resistance to change [...]
Posts under ‘Locality’
Social capital and genocide
Once again, Stumbling and Mumbling relays a potentially huge insight here, as part of a wider post on how pogroms of various kinds can leave a lasting mark upon the place that they happened in: “When we compare the poorest with the richest nations, it is hard to conclude that social capital can produce less [...]
The importance of place – a personal mashup of Richard Florida and Wikinomics
I’ve just finished reading Who’s Your City by Richard Florida and, in short, it strikes me as intuitively about right. The essence of the book is that where you live is as important a choice as what your job is or who your partner is. Additionally Florida argues that the creative economy is making the [...]
Copenhagen Climate Summit widens rift between local and global approaches
I thought I’d wait until you’re all back from the Christmas break before I posted about my trip to Copenhagen and it’s various climate events. Almost everything climate-related that happened in and around Copenhagen over those two weeks offers rich pickings for reflection on the changing relationship between democracy and climate change. I work for [...]
Democratic, decentralised and difficult
I attended an interesting seminar yesterday afternoon, hosted by the 2020 Public Services Trust. The topic was the future of citizen-centred public services. The two principal speakers both brought innovative ideas and a real vision, which is more than can be said for a lot of these public policy seminars. Ben Jupp, from the Cabinet [...]
Designing your environment
Just a short observation, in the light of Matthew Taylor’s post about the RSA’s work in Chelmsford that is being launched today. “….a vision for the town centre must be based on a rich understanding of how people see and use the area and how they might be willing to change that view if the [...]
Breaking the monopoly that civil servants have in describing government
Charlie Beckett has yet another good post up – this time, over at OpenDemocracy. The point of Networked Journalism is that the citizen as an individual and as part of these organisations is now part of the production of news communications. The relationships offered by networked journalism offer the potential for increasing trust in that [...]
A resident of Camden says to a resident of Cricklewood….
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” In other news, it seems that London is in the middle of a secessionist frenzy. My friend ‘Annie Mole’ has [...]
A blog about representative democracy, social media and a conversational politics. How will peer-to-peer communications change local democracy? How is representation changing? 
