“The secret of acting is sincerity. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” George Burns Over the next few weeks, my MP (a newly-elected Tory) will go through the parliamentary lobby in support of a range of bills that he knows little about. Sure. He may have a few reflexive opinions on the [...]
Posts under ‘What makes a good representative?’
Butterfly-minded representation
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 [...]
Should local Councillors be given iPads?
It’s a good question that tells us a lot about some of the bigger issues in local government. The London Borough of Havering are doing it, and the argument for this is that it will cut printing costs. The good people at one of my favourite blogs We Love Local Government have done some sums: “…over [...]
Lists and lessons
Mark Pack has a very good post up on Lib-Dem Voice – advice for budding politicians: ‘30 things every would-be politician should do this summer‘ (he was inspired by a similar post for aspiring journalists elsewhere). Thirty is a big number – too big for me. But I’ve got a few observations that I’ve been [...]
Swedenise us!
I was very sad to hear – via Slugger – of the passing of ‘Horseman’ – one of the better (anonymous) bloggers that I have in my RSS feed. Being busy, I missed his last posting on his Ulster’s Doomed! blog – a terrifically good one at that. Writing about our image of politicians, Horseman points [...]
More on what MPs should do
There’s a good post up here on Conservative Home about what advice MPs should take seriously. I had one here a while ago about personality types – it would be good to do anything that could be done to weight these models – help the poor buggers to work out how they should be behaving [...]
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 [...]
The mental health of politicians
Should a shrink publish a report on a prospective minister’s mental state? Should they be breathalysed? Find out here! http://wp.me/pywkr-xa
Blogs, twitter and leadership
Just a quick signpost to this post on the ReadWriteWeb blog about. I think that this observation has implications for the nature of representation – and even for leadership. “Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh once wrote that Twitter made him “a better and happier person.” He asks, “What would you do differently if there were a [...]
Beta legislation: Changing the concept of ‘leadership’?da
The January 2010 issue of Wired Magazine has a bunch of policy-related proposals under the slightly familiar heading ‘Let’s Reboot Britain’. It’s always a slightly trying time, reading Wired when it strays into politics and public policy. For an example of what I’m talking about, this article (Synopsis: I know! Now somebody’s invented teh internet, [...]
