Posted on 29 February 08, 4:30 pm by ourkingdom
Katrina Forrester (London, Plane Stupid): On Wednesday five climate activists from the direct action group Plane Stupid took democracy to the rooftops of Parliament. The banners they erected highlighted the collusion between the British Airport Authority (BAA) and the Department for Transport. The 27th February marked the end of the public [...]
Filed under: Climate Change, Democracy | 9 Comments »
Posted on 29 February 08, 3:27 pm by ourkingdom
Anthony Barnett (London, OK): I am in an openDemocracy, Polis, MacArthur seminar on credibility and the news. It’s terrifically interesting with a great mix of people from the US and Russia especially and we are just listening to Flemming Rose of Jyllands-Posten who published the famous cartoons of Mohammad in Denmark. Earlier we heard Steve [...]
Filed under: Internet and democracy | No Comments »
Posted on 29 February 08, 2:23 pm by ourkingdom
This is a response to Alexandra Runswick’s post below about the Ministry of Justice committee meeting on the English question.
Michael Knowles (Cheshire, Campaign for an English Parliament): I certainly found the Unlock Democracy account of the Justice committee proceedings very helpful in various ways. Many elements in it are very [...]
Filed under: England, English Parliament | 12 Comments »
Posted on 29 February 08, 9:37 am by ourkingdom
Jon Bright (London, OK): Nick Robinson reports here on the government’s new scheme to allow “bids” for an unemployment market of up to £1bn from multi-national companies - who will offer their services in helping the unemployed back to work. He comments, astutely, that this tells you a lot about how different things look in [...]
Filed under: Benefits | 1 Comment »
Posted on 28 February 08, 3:44 pm by ourkingdom
Sunder Katwala (London, Fabian Society): What on earth is Trevor Phillips up to? Britain’s most prominent black public figure has launched an attack on Barack Obama in this month’s Prospect, reported prominently in The Independent today, accusing the leading Democrat of ‘cynicism’ which will hold back black Americans and hold back the politics of race.
Trevor [...]
Filed under: Barack Obama, USA | 8 Comments »
Posted on 28 February 08, 1:37 pm by ourkingdom
Jon Bright (London, OK): The conservative party has launched a new campaign today - “You can get it if you really want.” The similarities to the Obama campaign are almost overwhelming - the non-specific but positive slogan, the slick editing and upbeat tunes, the constant references to change. Because political parties in the UK are [...]
Filed under: Barack Obama, Conservative Party, Technology and Democracy | 2 Comments »
Posted on 28 February 08, 10:48 am by ourkingdom
Stuart Weir & Andrew Blick (Cambridge & London, Democratic Audit): It is remarkable that empirical study of power in the UK remains almost uncharted territory. Yet for democrats political and economic power in the United Kingdom and world outside is vital - it shapes and limits the depth and quality of our democracy [...]
Filed under: Democracy, Participation | 1 Comment »
Posted on 28 February 08, 8:22 am by ourkingdom
Alexandra Runswick (London, Unlock Democracy): Last week the Justice Committee took evidence on the English Questions as part of their inquiry Devolution 10 years on (watch the video here - available for 28 days only!). What was interesting about this particular evidence session was the way it was neatly divided into establishment figures and pressure [...]
Filed under: Devolution, England, English Parliament, The Union | 17 Comments »
Posted on 27 February 08, 5:49 pm by ourkingdom
Anthony Barnett (London, OK): The journalist Claud Cockburn was, among other things, famous for having won a competition when he worked as a sub on the Times in the early 1930s for the most uninteresting headline. It was “Small earthquake in Chile, not many hurt”. I quote from memory. I always had a sneaking feeling [...]
Filed under: Britishness | 12 Comments »
Posted on 27 February 08, 4:41 pm by ourkingdom
Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Had a coffee with Martin Bright this morning. He is very angry with me for signing the Compass letter in support of Livingstone and made his feelings known in his blog. Meanwhile Sunder Katwala who heads up the Fabians has written his, longer version, of why I signed, like me [...]
Filed under: Ken Livingstone, Local democracy | 2 Comments »
Posted on 27 February 08, 3:45 pm by ourkingdom
Matt Wardman (Leiester, The Wardman Wire): Here we go again. We have a government demanding that we let the power exist to lock people up for 42 days, and making “it won’t happen very often” an excuse, and we have a police force demanding that the crimes that have been solved because of 5 million [...]
Filed under: Civil Liberties, Crime, Database State | 3 Comments »
Posted on 27 February 08, 2:44 pm by ourkingdom
Stuart Weir reviews You’ve been Quango’d! Mapping power across the regions by Chris Leslie and Owen Dallison, NLGN.
A new NLGN report calls for quangos to be more representative.
Inequalities come in all shapes and sizes. The New Local Government Network has just undertaken a survey of 1,000 board members on quangos with “UK [...]
Filed under: Local democracy, Reviews | 5 Comments »
Posted on 27 February 08, 12:37 pm by ourkingdom
Jon Bright (London, OK): I remember, back in 2003, when the Labour government took the decision to downgrade cannabis to a Class C drug - meaning that casual users would receive a slap on the wrist at worst. It seemed to me a brave move in the face of a media that is pretty hostile [...]
Filed under: Civil Liberties, Parliament, Rule of law | 4 Comments »
Posted on 27 February 08, 10:42 am by ourkingdom
This is a further report from the Popular Participation in Constitutional Reform (PPCR) ‘webinar’, which openDemocracy participated in, along with Lexis Nexis, Mischon de Reya and Unlock Democracy. You can watch the webinar in full here.
Alexandra Runswick (London, Unlock Democracy): On Friday Jon Bright and Anthony Barnett asked: how hard a task is the Citizens’ [...]
Filed under: British Statement of Values | 6 Comments »
Posted on 26 February 08, 10:02 pm by ourkingdom
Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Last weekend I wrote that I was snowed in in Athens and in case you didn’t believe me, here I am standing on the rocky platform of the Pnyx from where, I’m told, Demosthenes addressed his fellow (free & male) Athenians in the cockpit of democracy.
There is a sweeping, spectacular [...]
Filed under: Athens | No Comments »
