Concrete Achievements

Blog

  • Why does the net hate politicians?

    Matthew Taylor, former IPPR guru and Downing Street advisor, has left office with a speech criticising the media’s hostile attitude to politicians, and the rush to the extreme that can be seen from the Daily Mail to the Internet.

    Is there really such visceral, knee-jerk hatred of politicians around? Well, you could check out Guido Fawkes, whose commenters think that all politicians should be shot. Oh, and of course, a few digs at Taylor’s sex life too.

    “Behead those who claim Islam is violent”, anyone?

  • UnLtd grant

    Congratulations to Andrew Hardie of the Democratic Society, who has been given an grant by UnLtd to progress his work on a participation and engagement web application.

  • Indexed by Old Bag

    A blog with lots of great little graphs.

  • We had the Enlightenment for a reason

    A post on Fistful of Euros contains this little gem from the Vatican:

    “The Holy See has reiterated on many occasions that the right to freedom of expression … is subject to just limits, in particular when the exercise of this right would offend the religious sentiments of believers,” the Vatican said.

    If that makes you feel a little worried, you may need to reread this.

  • Time to get judgmental

    I’m working with a few others on a new non-profit to re-engage people with politics. As our first bit of work, we are trying to work up a set of axes to use in describing users’ political profiles. To create a map of opinions and axes, I’ve set up a small quiz, in the format “if someone thinks X, where would you place them on a scale Y to Z”.

    Take it here.

  • Bye Bye Rumsfeld

    Link: Good Riddance.

  • Polish archives

    Poland.pl – a government website, has an excellent collection of historical artefacts online.

  • Clear thinking on immigration

    Not Government blather, but at least political blather. A Tory hopeful’s husband has sent round a racist email joke from her email account (BBC). Her response:

    “It was forwarded on by my husband, who took it in the form that he thought it was sent and that was a light-hearted view, which, again, anybody broadly thinking would not have made anything out of it, as has been made to be at this present time.”

  • A thousand bottles of wine a day

    Did you hear the story about red wine cancelling out the effects of fatty foods? Yes? But did you hear that to get that effect you’d have to drink 750 to 1,500 bottles of wine a day? Thought not.

  • Simon Jenkins’ arse

    Philip Cowley writes an excellent rebuttal of Simon Jenkins’s ludicrous hyperbole on Parliament. Why anyone takes Jenkins seriously, I cannot imagine. One of the quintessential sounds of the English morning is a distant Jenkins, barking up the wrong tree.