I’m currently convening a number of sessions at a Nesta conference on the 6th July called ‘Reboot Britain’, running a strand called ‘PICamp’ – Political Innovation Camp. I’m looking for local government communications staff that have had any experience or thoughts about the changing relationships with the local media – and particularly issues around the [...]
Posts under ‘Conversational localities’
No longer a pipe dream
Here’s Will Davies on how what used to pass for blue skies thinking is now just down and dirty: “When David Cameron declared the need for a new constitutional settlement recently, quite a bit of this was based on the capabilities of new technologies such as youtube and text messaging. Leaving aside the overall quality [...]
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 [...]
"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 [...]
Participatory budgeting – radio programme
Here’s a radio programme about participatory budgeting in the UK. I’m not sure where it went out first (Tiago Peixoto pointed me towards it via Facebook). It’s quite short and worth listening to just for the note of joy in a council officer’s voice when she says that people were asking for council tax increases [...]
Will Victor be the eventual victor?
This blog is here to explore the concept of a more inclusive means of forming policy at a local level. So let me offer you two examples of the kind of people that we need to include in such processes. Our first case in point – let’s call her Mrs Meldrew (though it’s not really [...]
SysRq F12
Part three of a series of articles looking at the Conservative local government green paper, Shift Control. This time, chapter two. This chapter is about localism, and promises that a Conservative Government would: give local residents the power to determine the balance between the level of council tax and the level of services delivered; drastically [...]
Opinion v Knowledge
One of my favourite political bloggers, Shuggy, has a short post up here about opinion and it’s validity (or lack of). My own favourite variation on this is the view that ‘opinions are like a*seholes – everyone has one, but no-one really wants to hear them.’ (an aphorism that I can’t recall the source of [...]
