Since I looked at the calculations from We Love Local Government on Councillors’ iPads the other day, I’ve had a few conversations with people working in democratic services at various local authorities. It seems that the big worry is less that Councillor’s iPads will cost/save money or have any productivity/accountability gains, than that Councillors will [...]
Posts under ‘Jurors as representatives’
Council meetings – blogging and web-casting
The news that a blogger who filmed a meeting of a local council in Carmarthenshire was arrested for “breaching the peace” raises an interesting question that could have a slightly unfashionable answer. My friend, David Allen Green, writing in the New Statesman has a supplied a detailed trawl of the legal evidence along with some [...]
MP personality types – have I missed any?
As a prelude to a bit of election-related fun research, I’m compiling a list of the different attributes that we expect to see combined under the bonnet of the perfect MP. Just for the avoidance of doubt, I don’t expect any candidate to fit firmly into any of these categories – I’m going to be [...]
Transparency for lobbyists
Like a minority of people who have watched what will surely be 2009′s official leitmotif – the demand for full disclosure from MPs – play out, I’ve wondered when similar demands will be applied to those who rival MPs for power. This phrase of Larry Elliot’s – explaining the roots of the current economic crisis [...]
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 [...]
Open minds – the councillor-curator?
Kevin Harris has forwarded this article about the role that councillors are obliged to adopt in relation to planning. Nothing in it will come as a surprise to anyone familliar with the role of a modern councillor, but it’s a nice round up of an issue that will continue to perplex anyone with an interest [...]
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 [...]
Politicians as jurors?
The BBC website has a nice post up about how the question of politicians being ‘in touch’ isn’t a straightforward one. It sort-of reprises a few points that I made in this post here a while ago – that no-body really agrees with anyone else about very much, and that – under such circumstances, politicians [...]
