It’s an interesting twist to the question I’ve been asking, on and off, over the past few weeks: What kind of representatives do we want? So far, the options have included jurors, rogues and public paragons of virtue. But over on Spiked Online, Brendan O’Neill suggests a somewhat alarming possibility: Maybe we need people who [...]
Posts under ‘What makes a good representative?’
Clive James on liberal democracy
Here’s a really good broadcast by Clive James on how liberal democracy works the transcript is here (and, while I don’t know how long this will be available under the BBC’s ‘Listen Again’ terms of use, if you subscribe to the podcast, you should be able to get all of the series). It’s worth listening to [...]
As long as they're our scoundrels….
In recent weeks, I’ve been trying to tease out what kind of politicians that we want. So far, I’ve covered the posibility that we want them to behave in much the same way as jurors do, or that we want a paragon of virtue (in an expensive white suit). With Esther Rantzen and The Jury [...]
Whiter than white?
Do we really want politicians to be public paragons of virtue? A good deal of what I read tends to work on the assumption that we do. Take this, for example: “As technology evolves, the same public information laws create novel and in some cases previously unimaginable levels of transparency. In many cases, particularly those [...]
Policy v Character
Chris Dillow is probably the best political blogger in the UK. Here he asks whether we should judge politicians by their policies or their characters? More on this here shortly.
Live-in Councillors?
I’ve just discovered the Local Government Officer’s blog. It’s a really good blog that does (as a visitor remarks) what blogs do best – anonymous low-horizon perspective commenting from an insider. The latest post asks the question: Is it better for Councillors to live in the area that they represent? Or, more accurately, how much [...]
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 [...]
Should politicians blog?
Shorter version: If you’re a politician, it may be a good idea to get into blogging. But do it under a pen-name! It’s safer that way, and it will make you better at your job. This is an old-ish question nowadays. And as the big question around social media at the moment is ‘should everyone [...]
Systems lockdown – the resistance!
Last week, I posted here on how local councillors are actively discouraged from interacting with the public by the configuration of their office PCs. As I said at the time, this may not be the intention, but it is the outcome. Here, Steph Gray offers a tool that every councillor should run as a diagnostic.
