That Matthew Taylor is so, like, out of touch. Here’s what he’s got to say about ‘Britain Thinks‘:
“My slightly elitist concern that BritainThinks doesn’t encourage its participants to ask themselves whether their opinion is wanted, useful or soundly based is reinforced by the site’s slogan….
‘if you’ve got an opinion, here’s where to stick it”
Like [...]
Posts under ‘Populism’
Elitism gone mad
Are we a lynch-mob who won’t vote for a bunch of ‘hangers’?
Don Paskini has a post up here that I’d like to be able to agree with. I’m very comfortable with his logic but remain to be convinced about the details of his arguments.
He’s picking up on the popularity of banker-bashing and placing it beside the short-term popularity that politicians believe that they get by being [...]
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 an NHS [...]
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 scene.
Conservatives [...]
A few links to be going on with
Just a few interesting things I’ve seen over the past few days that impact further on this councils v local newspapers issue. The first is that – when councils decide to factor in ad-revenue into their communications budgets, it adds a significant amount of uncertainty – because ad revenue can go down as well as [...]
Campaigns
Here’s LD’s co-blogger Anthony writing (or rather, quoting) from his main blog on the growing ‘pressure group industry’:
“The flourishing of associations is the denial of mediation. Taken to its logical conclusion, the slogan of the movement is: for each individual their own association, and by that very fact, no association at all.”
It’s often easy to [...]
Reality scores from the rebound
Direct democracy experiment MyFootballClub was featured in recent online movie Us Now. You’ll remember the MyFC website took over Ebbsfleet United (the former Gravesend and Northfleet) and promised its members all the experience of running a real football club, team selections, transfer listing players, and the rest.
According to a piece on the When Saturday Comes [...]
Populism. And local newspapers.
Two very interesting posts – one via Chris Dillow, and one directly from his site. Firstly, Chris signposts this:
“….perhaps it’s “populist” to think political elites always end up in bed with economic elites, but it seems, as a matter of fact, they often do. My opinion is that a certain “populist” enthusiasm for democracy, in [...]
A blog about representative democracy, social media and a conversational politics. How will peer-to-peer communications change local democracy? How is representation changing? 
