Creating Community Conversations - Gallomanor

Democratic Renewal Council - where are the people?

Gordon Brown has announced a National Democratic Renewal Council.  According to this Guardian report it seemingly consists of a sub-committee of the cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister that will invite expert witnesses from outside.

Others have said that Westminster cannot change itself.  I blogged about Etienne Chouard, a French activist who helped bring about the French "Non" against the European Constitution in 2005. His fifth rule of writing a constitution is:

A Constitution is not something granted by those in power, it is drawn up by the People itself, precisely to protect itself from the arbitrary use of power, through a Constituent Assembly, independent, elected for that purpose only and afterwards revoked.

If we are going to have a serious attempt at rebuilding trust in the democratic process in the UK, Westminster needs to realise that it is not going to come from within, least of all within a very select elite of ministers within Government.

A true National Democratic Renewal Council (and I vote for a different name) needs to come from the people.  Citizen Jury, Citizen Summit, Independent Inquiry, perhaps.  Anything but an internal government body.

Election poster

The European Parliament have released a set of posters to encourage us to vote in the European elections on June 2nd.  I liked this one.  Made me think about what my choice would be.

One slight gripe.  The posters have been uploaded to Flickr with all rights reserved.  This means I shouldn't be using it here, but I'm guessing they really do want people to be talking about it.

Senior Civil Servant Hospitality Exposé

The Cabinet Office today published the list of hospitality accepted by Departmental Board Directors.  It is dull, dull, dull.  Just like it should be.  I expect the same soporific effect when MPs finally publish their expenses in full.

How NOT to email your MP

Nick Palmer MP wrote last week to his mailing list:

"Just a quick note to say that the email addresses of MPs who Greenepace think might sympathise with them over Heathrow are being swamped with thousands of identical emails that they've asked supporters to send. The effect of this is unfortunately that we're unable to receive email from our own constituents on Heathrow or anything else, as our mailboxes fill up faster than we can clear them."

Clearly Greenpeace chose not to read the simple guidelines published by WriteToThem.com about form letters and only writing to your own MP.  It's a really poor performance by Greenpeace who should be absolute masters at this type of campaign.

A good day for Parliament

A week ago I joined a couple of Facebook groups and invited all my UK friends to join me.  I used www.writetothem.com to send a email to my MP and I blogged about it here.  8,000 people have since joined the main group and yesterday the plans to change the law were shelved.  I was part of a fantastic campaign that played a part in stopping MPs changing the law to conceal the details of their expenses.

It is a pivotal moment in eDemocracy terms. The campaign could not have been organised so quickly without the tools provided by Facebook, TheyWorkforYou.com, Twitter and blogs.  Two years ago with only a week's notice there would not have been time to make MPs aware of the strength of feeling about the issue.

Not everyone is happy.  Some feel that it is an example of MPs being bullied into a decision by unaccountable pressure groups.  That view is not helped by MySociety slightly triumphalistic "Blimey. It looks like the Internets won" blog post.

I think Parliament won. By shelving the changes to the law Parliament has avoided eroding the public trust in it and in MPs as a group.  Yesterday was a good day for Parliament.  It prevented today from being a very bad day indeed.

MPs seek to exempt their expenses from FoI Act

When the Govt announced the third runway at Heathrow last week Justin Kerr-Stevens suggested that they had something to hide.  I doubt the announcement was made as a diversion, but someone decided that it was a good time to announce that Harriet Harman as Leader of the House (under lobbying from the Conservative's 1992 Committee and the Parliamentary Labour Party) has decided to exempt MPs expenses from the Freedom of Information Act.

I've used www.writetothem.com to write this letter to my MP.

FOR THE ATTENTION OF:

Andrew Murrison MP
Westbury

Saturday 17 January 2009

Shane McCracken

Dear Andrew,

I noticed in the paper on Friday that the Government announced that MPs expenses were to be mostly exempt from the Freedom of Information Act - http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jan/16/mps-expenses-exemption on the grounds that the book-keeping is too onerous. I am appalled by the move which seeks to create one law for MPs (and Peers) and a different for me as a citizen. I fully agree with this letter written to the Times - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article5532685.ece.

I also find the timing of this parliamentary order particularly cynical coming, as it did, on the same day as the announcement of the third runway at Heathrow.

Please can you answer me some questions:

1. Do you support this parliamentary order? If so why? If not what do you plan to do to oppose it?

2. If the law is changed to exclude MP expenses, will you nevertheless publish your expenses in full? If not why not? If so then I will be very willing to help you do so at no cost.

Although I believe the issue of your expenses to be of minor importance I very strongly believe that Parliament MUST abide by the same laws as the rest of country and set an example to Government that public expenditure should be accountable and transparent.

If you want to show your support you might like to join this Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/inbox/?ref=mb#/group.php?gid=50061011231

I look forward to your reply,

Kind regards,

Shane

I really hope he does the right thing and opposes this order but seeing as his record on Freedom of Information is consistently "absent" I am expecting to be disappointed.

"This is your victory"

"Above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to.  It belongs to you. It belongs to you."

Barack Obama acknowledges why he won the election.  He gave his campaign to his supporters and they gave him his victory.

Atheist Bus Campaign

Chloe joined us last year to be our admin support for I'm a Councillor.  At the end of the contract she left us to work for The Bible Society.  One day, as happens occasionally, the conversation in the office turned to religion and atheism.  Chloe remarked that she never met a atheist.  There was a bit of silence, and then one by one people in the office stated their position on the matter and Chloe was surprised to find that she'd been working with three for the previous couple of months.

I guess most atheists aren't too dogmatic about it and don't shout about it too much.  For most it is a bit hypocritical.  That's why the Atheist Bus Campaign is all the more astonishing for it's success.

In just over a week over 7,500 people have donated a total of over £112,000 against a target of £5,500 to run bus ads in London.  It's an incredible response and from a professional point of view it is worth looking at the reasons why.

1. Simple proposition. Donate money for an ad.  It didn't try to crowdsource the copy for the ad; it didn't try to get ideas for where the ad should be placed.  It just asked for money.  Interestingly a Pledgebank pledge gathered 877 signatories - well short of the 4680 required.  Is it because a pledge is that much more complex than a donation?  "I'll say I'll donate if enough other people also say they'll donate.  I hope they do as they say."

2. Simple process.  Click on link, decide how much, follow clear instructions.  More complex than signing a pledge but because the concept is simple the instructions and process make sense.

3. Fun. The advert is funny. The campaign feels rebellious. People were trying to outdo each other in the comedy stakes by leaving witty comments on the donation page.

4. Press Coverage. These factors made the campaign an unbelievable success.  They helped it to gather lots of lots of press coverage, which snowballed into more donations and more press coverage.

The person behind who started the campaign is Ariane Sherine.  Unsurprisingly she's a TV comedy writer and journalist.  She teamed up with a website designer called Jon Worth and the rest is history.

BuildingDemocracy - Innovations Fund

The Ministry of Justice* Innovations Fund (that brought you CivicSurf or Cllr 2.0 as it was) is back.  It's bigger than ever with £150,000 to be spent developing new ideas.  Go to www.buidlingdemocracy.co.uk for the details.

There is a difference this year.  Instead of only being able to submit applications directly to the selection panel you can "Float your Idea" first on the website and get advice and improvements from other visitors to the site.  It works in the same way as the Power of Information taskforce's ShowUsABetterWay project.

Although the site does "strongly recommend" floating ideas rather than submitting them straightaway, Jessica Ellis who is managing the project was clear that the selection process would not discriminate against those who go straight to the less public application submitting stage.  So if you want to submit an idea without telling the world and your competitors about it, you can.

Without wanting to be down on the project I would like to point out that Tom Watson's tweet is slightly inaccurate.  You don't win £15k.  Quite the opposite.  We received £15k. last year from the fund but with Norfolk County Council have invested at least half that again as our contributions to the CivicSurf project.

*The eagle-eyed reader will also notice that DIUS (Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills) are involved.

New Consultation Guidelines

A while back I posted about a Consultation Consultation.  BERR yesterday published their new guidelines for Central Government consultations to come into force in November 2008.

The new Code of Practice on Consultation can be downloaded from the BERR site.

"This Code is based on the results of a review of Government consultations in 2007 involving many people who regularly respond to Government consultations. Many thanks to those of you who participated in this review.

The new Code will apply from November 2008 to all central Government departments' formal, written consultation exercises. Other public sector organisations are invited to sign up to the Code. A list of organisations adopting the Code will be published in November. Where the new Code refers the reader to supporting guidance, this will become available by November."

I've not read it yet - too busy - but it does have a very pretty front cover.