Do-wire points out the new Active Citizenship Centre – a nascent research organisation into civic renewal and participation.
Blog
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Cybersalon e-democracy event
There’s e-democracy conference, wiki, etc. at Cybersalon, with the main event taking place next Tuesday evening in London.
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Battle is joined in Blair’s war on conservatism
Today the House of Commons votes on the banning of hunting with hounds – the fox hunting ban. The arguments on both sides have been rehearsed ad nauseam over the last few years, and the pro-hunting Countryside Alliance are currently (early evening) winding up a large rally in front of Parliament, protesting at the ban.
The Government have said that if the House of Lords reject the ban – as seems likely, given their previous record on this issue – that they will force through the ban by means of the Parliament Act.
Fox-hunting (and farming and countryside issues more generally) have been taken up strongly by the Tory press, notably the Daily Mail and the Telegraph. The irresponsible end of that spectrum, the Mail and the Express, have used this issue as another example of the perfidy of Labour’s crypto-communist campaign against all that is good and holy about British society. The leftish press, particularly the Guardian, have presented it as the last hurrah of the landed Establishment.
The class colouring of the debate is misleading, however. For the people who are going to vote on it this evening, it seems mostly to be a matter of animal welfare versus the right of people to carry on doing what they have always done. For all the rhetoric of the Mail, that something has always been done is no reason why it shouldn’t be stopped.
We shall see what happens when the ban comes into force, which may be several years away. The Countryside Alliance promises widespread civil unrest, and (echoing the Sinn Fein of old) insist that anything bad that happens will be the Government’s responsibility. Noteworthy was one small incident from the paranoid fringes: the leg of an electricity pylon in Cumbria was sawn through by a group calling itself the Real Countryside Alliance – a name echoing the Real IRA, and hence facile and offensive at the same time.
Are we going to see a rebellion of the Establishment? If so, when is the Prime Minister going to declare victory over the scattered forces of conservatism?
Update: It’s already begun!
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Science fiction authors imagine the future
Bruce Sterling, Norman Spinrad, Cory Doctorow, Ken Wharton, John Shirley, Pay Murphy and Kim Stanley Robinson discuss the future of society.
And Slashdot follows up.
(Thanks to Thomas Armagost for the link).
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Minnesota E-democracy user survey
Steven Clift’s Minnesota e-democracy project, one of the earliest e-democracy efforts on the web, and still one of the most effective, has published a fascinating analysis of the profile and opinion of its users.
Unsurprisingly, the majority of users are politically interested and better-educated than average. More interesting are the positive effects both for themselves and for the political process that the forum participants identify.
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Underground typefaces
The Czech magazine Typo (articles in English and Czech) has produced a special issue on underground fonts in France, the UK and the Czech Republic. The issue (PDF download) contains several fascinating articles on the development of the London Undeground map and font, and of the Metron font designed in the early 70s for the Prague metro.
The Prague Underground font is available for purchase from Storm, the Johnston (London Underground) font from P22.
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Anarcho-syndicalism: sexier than you might think
An ironic death for an earnest socialist website.
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British Library put Folios online
The British Library have scanned and put on line their collection of Shakespeare folios.
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Government evil and stupid – Media
I’ve just finished reading John Lloyd’s new book, What the Media are Doing to Our Politics. Although I agree with Lloyd’s general thesis – that the media, particularly in the UK, have too much unchecked power – the book itself is not altogether a satisfying read. It makes a convincing case that parts of the media are behaving irresponsibly, but doesn’t really offer much of a plan for change.
One of Lloyd’s main worries is that the media, particularly the press, are now taking an automatically hostile line against politics and politicians, and that they are setting themselves up as arbiters of truth and public opinion, making themselves out as superior to mere elected politicians or scientific experts.
As if to confirm this, tonight’s Newsnight began with Kirsty Wark standing in front of her desk and excoriating the Government. This quote is not exact, but is a fair approximation of what she said.
The Government has not banned smoking in public places, or forced the food industry to reduce the amount of fat and food in the food it sells. Are they really concerned about accusations of the nanny state? Or are they more worried about the interests of big business?
No-one who heard the introduction would think that the Government could possibly have a good reason for not cracking down on salt and smoking – is that really the way to introduce a news (rather than a comment) programme?
The message here is “everyone but us is stupid and evil”. The unintentional message is “and we are insufferably smug and self-righteous”.
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Morals and politics
Jon Lebkowsky rightly points out the moral element of democratic reformation in this post.
Morality is a tricky topic – perhaps more so in agnostic Europe than in the US, where religious morality is still politically important. Democracy is not a religion, requiring moral orthodoxy from its adherents, but if a more participatory democracy is going to be possible, it needs an agreement between its participants on standards of honesty and debate, as well as shared values of equality, openness and personal liberty.