For those of us who would like local politics to be more highly valued, two slightly conflicting observations were made by prominent political bloggers last weekend.
The first was by the ever-perceptive Potlatch writing about James Purnell, and digging into the question of ‘professionalisation’ of politics:
“Purnell – like Ruth Kelly and Ed Balls – ticks both [...]
Posts under ‘Local government’
Centralisation: A turning point?
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 journalists [...]
Using a weblog crowdsource intelligence
I’ve been working with Mick Fealty over at the Northern Ireland political weblog Slugger O’Toole on a bit of an experiment. We decided to try and convene some free consultancy for all of the political parties in Northern Ireland – starting with the ruling (!) bloc, the DUP.
As with all political weblogs that host antagonistic [...]
OpenlyLocal
If you get a moment, pop over to OpenlyLocal and have a look around, will you?
It’s a very good start – showing how all of the investment in data standards is beginning to find it’s own tipping point.
It is beginning to be possible for more of us to get really useful comparative data on local [...]
What’s missing from this picture?
Via Spartakan, I’ve just seen this outline of how local debate could be / is structured. And, initially, it looks fairly complete as long is it is covering only debate, as opposed to policy-making.
I think it’s a useful diagram, and I don’t have the time to do this properly – graphic design is a non-trivial [...]
Councillors and the snow
Here’ Dan Drillsma-Milgrom of the LGC on how Councillors should respond to the heavy snow that we’re seeing in the UK at the moment:
“For those who know to look for it, Camden has an easy to use section of its website that directs residents to the nearest sand grit bins and shows the gritting routes. [...]
The Conservatives’ £million question
I’m not a natural Tory (if you’ve met me, you’ll know that I’m quite the opposite) but I can’t help but be impressed with their grasp of a few of the opportunities offered by new (potentially) democratic tools lately.
The first one is their use of Google Moderator in the Q&A that is embedded in their [...]
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 the [...]
A few words on governance
Local government governance guru Peter Keith-Lucas has
an article in this week’s Local Government Lawyer assessing the current state of governance in local councils.
It’s a good read – expert but not too technical. Keith-Lucas has plagues to put on the houses of both parties: the Labour party for watering down the proper role of scrutiny [...]
Local democracy and the strange case of speed humps and 20 mph zones
Speed humps: love ‘em or hate ‘em, here in the UK they’ve become a symbol of the traffic calming zeitgeist.
Speed humps also pose a major challenge for local democracy. That’s because local authorities are legally hampered from taking full account of the commonly held view that whilst speed reduction is good, speed humps are bad.
Here’s where [...]
A blog about representative democracy, social media and a conversational politics. How will peer-to-peer communications change local democracy? How is representation changing? 
