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 ‘Being a politician’
Centralisation: A turning point?
Choosing who to talk to
Sandwell Councillor, Bob Piper, has a good post here about his recent trip to Bruges, raising questions about graffiti. It seems there may be a case for a high level of short-term investment to make the problem go away?
“One aspect of the City that distinguished it from so many places I have visited in the [...]
Niall Connolly – democracy expert
Niall Connolly appears to regard himself as an expert on democracy.
Wonder if he’ll stand for election?
Does twitter damage the quality of parliamentary debate – or improve it?
Kerry McCarthy MP tweeted last night that she will be going in to bat for tweeting MPs on Radio 5Live later today. Her adversary on the show will be John Pugh MP – and Torcuil Crichton explains the background:
Dr John Pugh, the analogue Lib Dem MP for Southport, has a motion down condemning the [...]
The internet for councillors
Apologies for the light posting here lately – even bloggers go on holiday, y’know?
I’ve not collected my thoughts for any original posts yet, though the ‘Duty to Promote Democracy’ and the obligation to offer petitions will be on the statute book shortly providing plenty of new material in the coming weeks.
For now, Dave Briggs has [...]
The birth of cool?
Last week, the Guardian carried a feature on ‘The Coolest Mayor in America‘ – John Fetterman of Braddock, Pennsylvania.
Fetterman’s success raises a few slightly trivial aesthetic questions about what it takes to be a successful politician. It also raises bigger, more profound ones as well.
Fetterman doesn’t look like the traditional buttoned up political clone. He [...]
Never place 100% of the blame for failure upon the shoulders of someone with a veto.
Neil Williams has a good post up about the need to break some institutions into a more interactive world slowly. The Hansard Society’s Andy Williamson had a similar post up here a while ago:
Innovation fails when the people with the ideas aren’t matched by the ones with the skills and power to make those ideas [...]
Should MPs and councillors take up cases on behalf of individuals?
Chewing over Parliamentary reforms, here’s Jenni Russell from the Guardian last week:
“One experienced Commons civil servant is blisteringly critical of the way in which most MPs have accepted the culture in which they now operate. While some committees and chairs are excellent, many MPs can’t be bothered. “They’re just not interested in the core tasks [...]
A think tank of your own
Here’s Joanne Jacobs on the Australian ‘Government 2.0 Taskforce’ making a fairly universal point:
Even where a public fund is used to identify new tools, the majority of these will either slip into obscurity after launch or will be greatly applauded for a while but not widely adopted or contributed to, by the policy makers themselves, [...]
A blog about representative democracy, social media and a conversational politics. How will peer-to-peer communications change local democracy? How is representation changing? 
