A great article by Bernard Crick in On Line Opinion (an Australian journal).

A great article by Bernard Crick in On Line Opinion (an Australian journal).

Some interesting stats here on what levels of participation/content creation different net users reach. (via Paul Evans).

Interesting blog post on the Guardian’s technology blog about how democracy can be supported online. Astonishing fact: UN resolutions can’t be searched by Google because they use session-specific URIs.

VOTE!

People have died for it.

Earlier this week I attended a Council of Europe conference on participation and electronic democracy. It was a very interesting event, attended by people from most Western European countries (no Central or Eastern Europe, although Estonia was mentioned as an example of good practice at the national level). The EU, EP and OECD were also represented, all of whom had their own worthy statement of ambitions, and occasionally promises of money.

Thoughts from the conference, in no particular order, after the jump.

Continue reading “E-democracy conference, Strasbourg”

From March. Link.

Wonkette reports a Pew Research survey on the political awareness of consumers of different sorts of media.

Chris Lightfoot, MySociety’s first developer and all-round e-polymath, has died unexpectedly. He was 29. R.I.P.

Exhibit A: the comments on an Observer article claiming that climate change exists. All in agreement with the Channel 4 lunacy about climate change being a big hoax, plus personal invective at the author and RANDOM capitalisations to SHOW that there is GREAT CONSPIRACY afoot. Thank you, representative sample.

Exhibit B: A poll on the website of the Sussex Express, whose question is “Do you think the Council tax has gone up too much?”. Amazingly 88% of people think it has.