Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The post sets out how the gov.uk team is using as a working definition of policy "statements of the government's position, intent or action".

This includes mandatory information on the issue and actions being taken in response to it, plus optional information on the policy background, who is engaged with it, who is being affected by it, the legal framework, partner organisations and related news and publications.

It highlights just how much unpacking the simple word 'policy' seems to require.

Occasionally the government talks in a language that implies there are policies and meta-policies.

The original motivation behind the development of departmental business plans was not so much for Whitehall to achieve something itself, but for it to put in place the frameworks, systems and incentives for others to achieve it.

In which case the 'policies' may become more diffuse, being developed and implemented by a variety of local providers and getting blurred with the day-to-day decisions and delivery, operations and implementation.

Anyway, this post aims to suggest a couple of ways in which the presentation of policy information online could be used to significantly enhance political accountability, in line with my personal definition of eDemocracy.

There are two classes of information, open data and freedom of information releases, which might implicitly be covered by the phrases "statements about actions" or "related publications" but which would benefit from being explicitly mentioned given their potential importance.

They might not be relevant in every scenario, but as well as the statements and speeches about what the government says it is doing, policy pages should also include the datasets which might provide some kind of evidence about what it is actually achieving.

Given that some of the most significant policies (those in the departmental business plans at least) have targets or intended outcomes associated with them, and deadlines, it should be possible to pull out the data from the information strategies which is being used as an indicator for delivery success.

Progress on each of the business plan objectives is already being tracked in monthly updates, but more could be made of this information than is currently the case.

Some data visualisations of this information might also be a massive step forward for visibility and accountability, certainly on the headline commitments if not on every last detailed policy.

Further down the road, gov.uk could also go further on some of the other open data that's out there and relate spending figures to policies so everyone can see how much a policy costs.

Another significant step would be to publicly assign the policy to people or bodies in the departmental organograms which are available now, so it is also clear who is responsible for it.

Adding in this kind of information (gov.uk might be planning some of this already for all I know) - and making it available for re-use and publication anywhere else - could significantly transform the quality of information available to citizens about what their government is both trying to do and actually delivering.

© eDemocracyblog.com 2012. | Permalink | No comment |

Westminster Voting intention: CON 25%, LAB 50%, LDEM 6%, PC 11%, Others 9%
Assembly consituency vote: CON 20%, LAB 49%, LDEM 7%, PC 17%, Others 7%
Assembly regional vote: CON 20%, LAB 45%, LDEM 7%, PC 15%, Others 13%

...Davey became politically active as a student "discussing the minutiae of energy conservation and green economics" and conservationism is his big issue. He believes citizens should be viewed as "custodians of the environment and not just consumers".

Imagine a door-to-door salesman comes to your house one day to try and sell you a burglar alarm by telling you about the terribly high crime rate is in your area. You're not convinced, so you tell him you don't want one. A little while later that same salesman breaks into your house, nicks the TV and does a crap on the sofa.

Now replace "door-to-door salesman" with "David Cameron", "your house" with "France" and "burglar alarm" with "financial transactions tax", and you've pretty much summed up our government's attitude to attempts to rein in the forces of global finance.

This was Cameron speaking a few months ago (bolded text my emphasis):

The danger, we have always believed, is driving transactions to a jurisdiction where it wouldn't be applied. So a global tax would be a good thing, but in Britain also we have put in place stamp duty on share transactions, a bank levy.

...and this was him this week:

Boris Johnson and David Cameron today urged French bankers to quit Paris and move to London in a dramatic escalation of a row with the French president.

The Mayor joined the Prime Minister in calling for traders to escape Nicolas Sarkozy's plans for a financial tax by setting up business in the Square Mile.

Mr Johnson said: "Bienvenue à Londres. This is the global capital of finance. It's on your doorstep and if your own president does not want the jobs, the opportunities and the economic growth that you generate, we do."

So, in November you have Cameron telling us that of course a tax on bank transactions is a lovely fluffy idea, which we'd be only too happy to implement if only we could, but you see it just isn't possible because all those nasty banks would move their operations abroad if we did that, and we don't want that, do we? Then this week, he explicitly invites those very same nasty banks to move from France to the UK so they don't have to pay the transactions tax which Sarkozy is threatening to bring in.

Cameron, in short, is explicitly trying to bring about the very thing which he previously said would make a transaction tax untenable, despite ostensibly supporting such a tax in principle. Which, perhaps not surprisingly, suggests rather strongly that his original commitment to it was somewhat less than whole-hearted. Whether this also applies to Cameron and the Conservatives' attitude to other redistributive taxes is something about which I leave the reader to draw their own conclusions.

Transcript of my London #Compass 'Progressive Alliance' talk,

Jan. 10 2012

  Thanks, everyone, for coming—it's a pleasure to be here. 

So, my report on 'guardians for future generations' been creating a bit of a stir.  By the way: If you want to get the report for free it's now available, for download, from the Greenhouse website, which is easy to find.  (If you Google Green House now, we come up first rather than greenhouse adverts, so that's good...)

One of the stirs has been in the Guardian.  The comments closed last night at 325, so there's clearly a lively and interesting debate there.  So: what's it all about? 

Well, I've got a proposal to end, or at least to seek to start to end, the chronic culture of short-termism that we have in our politics, in our electoral cycles, and in our business and economics—with business cycles and quarterly reports and even more short-termist things than that.  And when one is trying to think on a timescale of hundreds of years or thousands of years or hundreds of thousands of years, for example, which is the timescale for nuclear waste, then those kind of short-term cycles don't make a lot of sense.  So what are we, collectively, going to do about it? 

Well, before I say what I am proposing to do about it, here's one more way of seeing the problem, that I think really helps: the concept of democracy is one of my starting points.  What does 'democracy' mean?  So, etymologically, democracy means 'the people rule' or 'the people govern'.  Now I'm sure all those who take themselves as any kind whatsoever of progressive would agree that at the present time it's pretty inaccurate to say -- in any very meaningful, or full, sense -- that the people govern in our society.  So: we don't even have AV, let alone PR; we're still waiting for the upper house to be democratically reformed; beyond those reforms, we need also participatory democracy, many of us would say economic democracy, and a serious re-localisation.  There are vast, vast changes in our society which are needed if there is going to be a real democracy here.  But even if all those changes occured we would still be in a society which ran the risk of being chronically short-termist.  Why?  Well, the way I like to put this is that the democratic institutions that we have at the moment, even the laws that would be brought in if we made all those kinds of democratic changes that I've mentioned that we would all, I'm sure, like to see, tend to still be focused upon the interests and wishes of present people, people who are alive today.  They are the people who vote—and whose votes alone would count even in an improved and enhanced democracy. 

But a people, I want to suggest to you, is not something that exists as a time-slice; a people is something that exists over time.  It begins in the past and goes on indefinitely far into the future.

And while people in the past are hard to harm, because they've had their time, people in the future are extremely easy to harm and indeed, in the extreme, to prevent from existing at all.  Whereas if we get things right, people in the future could have the chance to have a great existence and to go on indefinitely longer into the future having that existence.   So I want to say that we need to find a way of making democracy actually include future people.  We need to find a way of representing them in our political system. 

So, what would this mean?  Can you give future people a vote?  Well, obviously, that's not very feasible.  So we need to find some form of, if you like, proxy representation for them.  They need to have something like a proxy vote, I'm suggesting.

Well, as I said, if we don't screw up so badly that we stop them from existing altogether, over time there will be far more future people than there are present people, which would mean in a democracy that they would out-vote us every time, right? They would be the vast majority.  So, in order to express their proxy 'vote', I suggest that what we need to give them is a proxy veto.  Because: If they did vote on masse together, they would, as I say, massively out-vote us, provided we don't screw things up so badly that we stop them from having the chance of living at all...  So I want to suggest that we need proxy representatives for future people empowered in and by our political system to veto things that we might want to do but that they don't want us to do.  And the people who are going to be these proxies I'm calling Guardians for Future Generations, guardians to represent the interests of these future people to us. 

So, who should these guardians be?  How should they be selected?  Well it doesn't make any sense for us to vote for them, because they are proxies for future people—they're there to express the votes that future people would cast if they could cast those votes. 

I suggest that actually all of us and none of us are equally well positioned to be these proxy representatives for future people.  We could say, Greens are the best place to represent future people, but that would be begging the question: "I'd like you to give me and my friends the power to veto all decisions made in our political system."  Hmmm… Not very convincing… It would never ever get through: it would be perceived as a cheat—it would be perceived, correctly, as utterly undemocratic.  We need, plainly, to draw these proxy representatives from across the entire population. I suggest that the only fair, reasonable and democratic way of doing this is through the same principle that animates the jury system: which is random selection. Such that anyone and everyone has an equal chance to be one of the guardians for future people. So what I'm suggesting can be put in this way: that we need a super-jury drawn from any and all of us to represent to us the interests of future people and to represent those/them by having a proxy power that enables them to veto decisions (that would affect future people adversely) that are made in our current political system. 

And that line of thinking really gives you exactly what my proposal is—I'm proposing guardians for future people, guardians for the fundamental interests -- for the basic needs -- of future generations, to be selected at random, as jurors are, to form a super-jury, which would sit above our]]> http://rupertsread.blogspot.com/2012/02/guardians-of-future-talk.html http://mole45.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/fresh-off-the-star-take-a-look-on-the-site-for-the-full-story/ Continue reading →]]> http://mole45.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/fresh-off-the-star-take-a-look-on-the-site-for-the-full-story/ http://twitter.com/GregMulholland1/statuses/165537993594109952 http://twitter.com/GregMulholland1/statuses/165537993594109952 http://twitter.com/GregMulholland1/statuses/165537371453009920 http://twitter.com/GregMulholland1/statuses/165537371453009920 http://declineofthelogos.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/the-boring-god/ http://declineofthelogos.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/the-boring-god/ http://nickperrylibdem.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/nick-petitions-to-keep-st-mary-in-the-castle-as-an-arts-centre/ http://nickperrylibdem.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/nick-petitions-to-keep-st-mary-in-the-castle-as-an-arts-centre/ http://thepotterblogger.blogspot.com/2012/02/losing-my-temper.html http://thepotterblogger.blogspot.com/2012/02/losing-my-temper.html http://nickperrylibdem.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/nick-blasts-labour-and-announces-intention-to-run-for-council/ http://nickperrylibdem.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/nick-blasts-labour-and-announces-intention-to-run-for-council/ http://pauledie.blogspot.com/2012/02/no-knives-autism-discussions-and.html http://pauledie.blogspot.com/2012/02/no-knives-autism-discussions-and.html http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2012/02/charles-dickens-mr-dick-and-mental.html http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2012/02/charles-dickens-mr-dick-and-mental.html http://www.labourmatters.com/the-labour-party/we-need-what-you-might-call-one-nation-banking/ Ed Miliband MP, Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party, said today in a speech at the Thomson Reuters Building:

This has been a turbulent week for the British banking industry.

On Sunday, Stephen Hester gave back his bonus, and on Tuesday, the forfeiture committee revoked Fred Goodwin's knighthood.

But these moments do really not change anything in themselves.

This is about more than one man, one bonus, or one knighthood.

These are symbols - and symptoms – of public discontent with a system that is not working as it should.

For our economy.

And for our society.

That is why these moments do not and should not signal the end of the debate.

Because, three years on from the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the debate is really only just beginning.

We need a banking system that serves a more responsible capitalism, working for the majority of people and enabling us to pay our way in the world.

Everyone can agree that the kind of tug-of-war we have seen in the past fortnight over bonuses is bad for the reputation of the banking sector.
Nobody in this country – neither the banks' most staunch defenders nor their most outspoken critics – believe that a public argument between executives, shareholders, politicians and the public is the best way for any sector to set pay.

London is one of the world's great financial centres and Britain's banking sector is one of our most important employers.

It is in all our interests to find a better way forward.

But if things carry on as they are, I believe the same row over pay and bonuses will erupt again.

So how do we make sure that that does not happen?

We need to learn the most important lesson of the week: we cannot have a banking sector so divorced from the rest of the economy and the rest of society.

We succeed or fail together.

It is not about the politics of envy.

It is about a culture of responsibility.

We need what you might call ‘one nation banking'.

We need banks that serve the real economy.

We need banking serving every region, every sector, every business, every family in this country.

And we need banks run in a way that people believe are consistent with their values - the values of Britain.

It is something I have been talking about for months: responsibility – from the benefits office to the boardroom.

But to understand how we get there, we must understand how we got here.

On almost any measure you choose, banking and finance is going through exceptional times.

Everywhere you look, pillars of the conventional wisdom which have stood solidly for thirty-odd years are crashing to the ground.

Until 2007, it was hard to imagine that: light touch financial regulation would be so thoroughly discredited; financial instruments designed to make each bank safer would make the banking system as a whole riskier; we would be facing interest rates lower than we have seen for decades without lending rising as a result; bank bonuses could be in the billions even as banks' share price fell; all the banks in this country would be backed by an implicit government guarantee; and two of the biggest would be largely owned by the Government.

We all know this has happened because something has gone deeply wrong.

My party has accepted responsibility, along with governments round the world, for not doing more to prevent the crisis with regulation.

We now must ask questions about the future of banking which have not been asked for a generation.

The banking sector can choose either to continue down the path which led us to big bonuses, busts, and bailouts.

Or it can take a different path.

Today, I want to talk about that different path.

Banking has to change.

Throughout most of our parents and grandparents' lives, banking was not prone to wild swings in value.

It directed lending towards businesses and entrepreneurs efficiently and soberly.

And the idea of a vote in the House of Commons to affect the pay of an individual banker would have been as outlandish as the idea of a vote to censure the pay of an individual doctor or lawyer.

Thirty years ago, the word ‘banker' was often used as a compliment to suggest solidity and reassurance.

Since then, however, the sector morphed from something our parents and grandparents would have recognized into something else, with the rise and increasing dominance of investment banks.

We can't turn back the clock.

This mustn't be about recreating a bygone era of banking.

But if the rules and norms of banking have changed before, they can change again.

And they must change.

After the crisis and the bailout, we are left in a situation which nobody would have wanted.

Where thanks to the crisis, ten per cent of this country's tax receipts fell away between 2007 and 2008 alone.

Banks have accepted they bear the burden of responsibility for helping to cause the crisis.

The consequences of their reckless irresponsibility in that era are felt every time a library closes.

Every time a school can't afford a new book.

And every time a policeman or policewoman is taken off the beat.

Those consequences are being felt by everyone in society.

The banking sector needs to understand this.

People who did not cause the financial crisis are paying the price.

And many feel that those who did cause the financial crisis are not.

When most people see their incomes stagnate, their bills go up, their public services cut, and their jobs increasingly become insecure, pay and bonuses at banks seem to carry on as if the crisis never happened.

The public services we rely on to educate our kids, look after us when we are ill, or help us afford a lawyer if we're in trouble, cannot go back to normal any time soon.

So when people see the pay of those who caused the crisis continuing to be so abnormal, they are understandably angry.

This is a call for banking to recognise that continuing on its current path will lead to further isolation from society, greater public anger, more years in which each payday is a newspaper headline.

This is a call on banking to recognise that it should take the path of change.

To recognise that it is not isolated from the economy or society.

To recognise that we succeed or fail together.

We have a proud history of banking in this country.

Banking has performed an invaluable service to the economy from Midland Bank's role restructuring the cotton industry in the 1930s, to Barclays' role in financing high tech start-ups in Cambridge in the seventies and eighties,

And since the crisis, we have seen some welcome steps.

Notably, the Independent Banking Commission's recommendations about the ring fencing of retail and investment banking.

And more recently, the way HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds, RBS and Standard Chartered have put up £2.5 billion for a business growth fund focused on British firms.

But there is still a long way to go before we achieve one nation banking.

Public discontent is, if anything, on the rise – as the long lasting impact of the crisis in living standards becomes clear.

For all the reform of the way bonuses are paid, they remain on a scale beyond the imagination of the vast majority of the population.

Although the Government has welcomed the Vickers proposals, their implementation remains a distant prospect.

And most importantly, business frustration with the banks they rely on is as high as ever.

Still, too often, they see the bank, not as a partner in a shared project, but as a problem to be overcome.

I saw this only on Monday in Scotland when a wind turbine manufacturer complained that while he had employed 20 people in his factory it could have been 30 if only he had got the loan he needed from a leading British bank.

Similar stories can be heard from thousands of other businesses around the country.

Banks must not be isolated from the rest of the economy.

Banks must lend to small businesses so we can get the growth and jobs we need for the future.

That is how Britain will compete in the world.

As things stand, that is still not happening enough.

Lending was down £10.8 billion last year.

There are two reasons why not enough capital currently reaches the small and medium sized enterprises in this country which are crying out for it.

The first is that it's always hardest to get credit when the economy is in a downturn, even though that's when small and medium-sized firms need finance the most.

And the second is that it is cheaper for banks to lend to big companies than small ones. Particularly when credit is already being rationed, lending to small firms is often deemed not worthwhile for banks.

The market on its own does not work for small businesses.

All the most successful economies around the world recognise this: from Asian capitalist states like Singapore, through active industrial states like Germany, to supposedly free market states like the USA.

And they make sure that the state helps finance to reach the small and medium sized enterprises which need it.

This isn't about picking winners.

It is about the state getting the market moving, like our most successful competitors have been doing since the fifties.

It's no coincidence that in Britain we haven't done as much to develop a Mittelstand like Germany.

Or fast-growing young companies like Apple and Intel – both of which got growth funding from the US government's Small Business Investmen]]> http://www.labourmatters.com/the-labour-party/we-need-what-you-might-call-one-nation-banking/ http://devizesmeltingpot.blogspot.com/2012/02/friday-opera-blogging.html http://devizesmeltingpot.blogspot.com/2012/02/friday-opera-blogging.html http://devizesmeltingpot.blogspot.com/2012/02/friday-cat-blogging-heidi-george.html http://devizesmeltingpot.blogspot.com/2012/02/friday-cat-blogging-heidi-george.html http://kirkunity.blogspot.com/2012/02/young-wired-and-angry-revised-portrait.html

What makes the network even more valuable for Jobbik is the fact thatits users are not people who are poor and socially frowned upon. Many politicalscientists initially viewed Jobbik as]]> http://kirkunity.blogspot.com/2012/02/young-wired-and-angry-revised-portrait.html http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2012/02/on_vigilante_mo.html http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2012/02/on_vigilante_mo.html http://twitter.com/julianhuppert/statuses/165511490428866560 http://twitter.com/julianhuppert/statuses/165511490428866560 http://twitter.com/adriansandersmp/statuses/165509697099661313 http://twitter.com/adriansandersmp/statuses/165509697099661313 http://twitter.com/julianhuppert/statuses/165509055782203394 http://twitter.com/julianhuppert/statuses/165509055782203394 http://twitter.com/GregMulholland1/statuses/165506648801165312 http://twitter.com/GregMulholland1/statuses/165506648801165312 http://twitter.com/GregMulholland1/statuses/165506315010048000 http://twitter.com/GregMulholland1/statuses/165506315010048000 http://lesbonner.mycouncillor.org.uk/2012/02/03/ed-davey-appointed-secretary-of-state-for-energy-and-climate-change/ Edward Davey MP has today been appointed Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.
Arriving at DECC's headquarters in London, Mr Davey said:

"This is a sad day because Chris Huhne has had a real vision for a green economy and he's done fabulous work as Secretary of State.

"I've now got to take up the challenges – the challenge of climate change, the challenge of energy security.

"And I'm particularly conscious of the impact on households across the country of high energy bills.

"I'm determined to work to follow on Chris's priorities, the Coalition's priorities and to make them my priorities.

"I want us to have a green economy, with the green jobs and investment we need to help grow our economy."

]]> http://lesbonner.mycouncillor.org.uk/2012/02/03/ed-davey-appointed-secretary-of-state-for-energy-and-climate-change/ http://lesbonner.mycouncillor.org.uk/2012/02/03/labour-has-been-deceiving-the-voters-of-north-east-lincolnshire/ I was appalled to hear that Labour have been lying to us about what they would do to tackle the economic mess the Coalition Government inherited from Blair and Brown.

The almost comic duo of Ed Miliband and Ed Balls have let the mask slip and made clear that they have no Plan B on the economy.

For the last year and a half, local Labour activists have been pushing leaflets through your letterboxes which have now been exposed as lies. They have made clear they are not going to reverse any of the cuts the Coalition Government has been forced to make to restore economic stability.

This is the worst kind of politics: creating confusion by campaigning against policies which they have no intention of doing anything about in Government. They have gone from being in the wrong place, to all over the place.

It is time the local Labour party came clean themselves, apologise for the economic mess they left behind by letting the banks run wild and losing control of the nation's finances. They need to explain what they would do in Government."

Liberal Democrat Party President, Tim Farron said:

"This admission by the Eds leaves the Liberal Democrats as the only political party with the backbone to tackle the country's problems, but with the heart to do everything to ensure that fairness, compassion and justice are written through everything we do.

"In the Coalition Government, Liberal Democrats are the party delivering tax cuts for working people, we are the party investing in the poorest school pupils, we are the party delivering the largest ever state pension rise and most importantly, we are the party prepared to take the tough decisions needed to get this country back on track.

"Don't hold your breath waiting for an apology from Labour - but rest assured Liberal Democrats will continue to do the right thing on your behalf."

ENDS

Notes to Readers:

1. On BBC Radio 4's The World at One, Ed Balls said: "As shadow chancellor, I can say to you unequivocally we can make no commitment to reverse any of the Government's tax rises or spending cuts."

2. In an interview with the Guardian on 13 January, Ed Balls said: "My starting point is, I am afraid, we are going to have keep all these cuts. There is a big squeeze happening on budgets across the piece. (...) We are going to have to start from that being the baseline. At this stage, we can make no commitments to reverse any of that, on spending or on tax. So I am being absolutely clear about that."

Ed Balls continued: "It is now inevitable that public sector pay restraint will have to continue through this parliament. Labour cannot duck that reality and won't. There is no way we should be arguing for higher pay when the choice is between higher pay and bringing unemployment down."

3. Interviewed on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show Ed Miliband supported Ed Balls: "If I were to come on your programme and say well take the cuts, some of the cuts that are being made, I can promise you now that I would restore them, you'd say, 'Well where's the money going to come from? You don't know the circumstances you're going to inherit.' Ed was making an important point."

He went on to say that "This is responsible, this is absolutely responsible opposition."

]]> http://lesbonner.mycouncillor.org.uk/2012/02/03/labour-has-been-deceiving-the-voters-of-north-east-lincolnshire/ http://www.libdemvoice.org/chris-white-write-the-next-local-elections-after-may-this-year-will-be-in-november-26948.html It is likely that a number of our cities will, by Government diktat, be holding referendums in May as to whether to move to a mayoral system. Some of these will give the go-ahead and Liverpool is anyway likely to jump straight to a mayoral system by use of a council resolution. The mayoral contests will be on the same day as those for Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs).

There are still some who, in relation to PCCs, are fondly imagining that Liberal Democrat candidates won't be needed. This is despite the fact that it abundantly clear that the Conservative and Labour parties will be contesting these elections and despite the go ahead from the Federal Executive, overturning the English Party's efforts to prohibit Lib Dem candidates.

The announcement of key mayoral contests makes abstentionism even more bizarre, but no doubt there will be some jungle fighters out there still in denial about whether a political party should contest political elections.

By Christmas massive budgets for policing and city services will, like it or not, be in the hands of single individuals, only loosely scrutinised by councillors. There is a danger that the Party may have made itself irrelevant not only failing to field candidates in some parts of the country but by having policies which are now dangerously out of date.

We know that we are opposed to elected mayors and PCCs. We should perhaps remain so. But we need to ask ourselves why we are opposed and what this means for the growing numbers of directly elected politicians.

Key questions now need to be asked:

• how do we ensure that power is not concentrated to such a degree that corruption becomes possible?
• how do we have democratically justifiable mechanisms for removing powers from those who misuse it or just fail?
• how do we make sure that minority parties get a reasonable voice?
• In what ways should we press for the strengthening of the astonishingly limited powers of Policing Panels to challenge the decisions of a PCC?
• Should we insist that a Mayor's Cabinet should be cross-party?

Meanwhile, what about the shires? The Government has done good work in preparing the devolution of important powers to cities and city regions.

But why should a county council, which might have a population of well over a million, not have similar powers? If that is the case is not time that we pressed for the first county mayors (or should we call them 'sheriffs?').

And in two tier areas how are district councils going to fit in? Do we still believe unitary authorities are preferable to the two-tier system when the most recent creations have seemed huge and remote? Does the city region model offer an alternative?

This may not seem to come up much on the doorstep. But it is a live agenda on which we need to provide new thinking.

* Chris White is Liberal Democrat Group leader at Hertfordshire County Council and Deputy Leader (Policy) of the Liberal Democrat Group at the Local Government Association

]]> http://www.libdemvoice.org/chris-white-write-the-next-local-elections-after-may-this-year-will-be-in-november-26948.html http://www.libdemvoice.org/nick-clegg-on-being-nick-clegg-in-the-house-magazine-26937.html Deputy Prime Minister gave a wide-ranging interview to The House magazine, in which he discusses how it's right for the two coalition parties to differentiate themselves once a stable government was formed:

In the run-up to the general election, you may remember, the tabloids were screaming, saying that if there was a hung Parliament locusts would descend from the sky and the sun would be blotted out, you know... so we needed for those first few months to show the most important thing of all, which is this is a government that works, and actually works rather well.

Of course, after that phase you then get [that] we're different parties, we do have different instincts, we do have different values. I just think we are quite relaxed in government that we have our differences - sometimes they are played out in private, sometimes they are played out in public.

Nick goes on to discuss what he sees as significant achievements for the party in government, and, in a telling line, describes the difficulty Lib Dem peers face in supporting legislation they wouldn't under different circumstances:

Let's be blunt: I am asking, day in, day out, Liberal Democrat peers to vote on things that they wouldn't do in a month of Sundays if it was a Liberal Democrat government.

The interview covers such ground as reform of the upper house, Nick's stance on the Middle East and changes to the tax system.

You can read the whole interview here.

]]> http://www.libdemvoice.org/nick-clegg-on-being-nick-clegg-in-the-house-magazine-26937.html http://disgruntledradical.blogspot.com/2012/02/john-stuart-mill-proved-right-but-not.html http://disgruntledradical.blogspot.com/2012/02/john-stuart-mill-proved-right-but-not.html http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1889004.html http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1889004.html http://miss-s-b.dreamwidth.org/1204935.html http://miss-s-b.dreamwidth.org/1204935.html http://localfocusnews.blogspot.com/2012/02/fog-bell-marshside-road.html http://localfocusnews.blogspot.com/2012/02/fog-bell-marshside-road.html http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1888707.html http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1888707.html http://gibbs-barton.blogspot.com/2012/02/blyth-town-council-meetings-for-week.html http://gibbs-barton.blogspot.com/2012/02/blyth-town-council-meetings-for-week.html http://lansonboy.blogspot.com/2012/02/uncollected-rubbish.html http://lansonboy.blogspot.com/2012/02/uncollected-rubbish.html http://brontides.com/2012/02/parliamentary-tactics-for-fun-and-profit/ http://brontides.com/2012/02/parliamentary-tactics-for-fun-and-profit/ http://scottish-liberal.blogspot.com/2012/02/chris-huhne-resigns.html http://scottish-liberal.blogspot.com/2012/02/chris-huhne-resigns.html http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2012/02/charles-dickens-mr-dick-and-mental.html This Week. Alastair Campbell was impressive, but I am not sure that Ruby Wax's insistence that poor mental health means that there is something wrong with your brain and you need drugs reflects the most enlightened view.

Because other ways of understanding mental illness are possible, and I have come across a particularly interesting one in my day job.

The clinical psychologist Caroline Cuppitt writes about Charles Dickens' view of the topic and the character of Mr Dick in David Copperfield in particular:

There is no suggestion that Mr Dick should be cured of his unusual ideas; indeed, they are never directly challenged by anyone. At first the young David finds them hard to accept, but as Mr Dick proves his worth and, most importantly, finds his place within his community, they become increasingly irrelevant. 

Indeed, it is even suggested that he is able to bring about a reconciliation between Dr and Mrs Strong that someone with a more conventional mind would find impossible. As Mr Dick puts it himself: "a poor simple fellow with a craze, sir … may do what wonderful people may not do." 

By the end of the novel Mr Dick has recovered, not in the sense that his 'symptoms' have changed, but that they no longer define him. Miss Trotwood tells David that by using the strategy of copying documents Mr Dick can keep King Charles at a respectful distance and live his life free and happy. He is one of the novel's heroes and an exemplar of recovery for the modern age.

The bicentenary of Dickens' birth falls on Tuesday 7 February. He was a remarkable man.

]]> http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2012/02/charles-dickens-mr-dick-and-mental.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheDevilsKitchen/~3/AWJp9ezlKiU/three-strikes.html JuliaM but, since she appears to be the unofficial record-keeper of the underclass, it is sometimes rather depressing. One of the most irritating things is the number of people who come before the court who have tens and tens of convictions for burglary, violence, etc.

Your humble Devil is now of the opinion that we should adopt something similar to the USA's "three strikes" rule. It would go a little like this:

1. Three convictions for any unexpended crime automatically means prison.


2. Three custodial convictions--suspended or otherwise--means life imprisonment. By which I mean that you will be eligible for parole after 25 years, but released on licence for the rest of your life: another conviction puts you straight back in the cells.

Any objections?

]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheDevilsKitchen/~3/AWJp9ezlKiU/three-strikes.html http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/010217.html http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/010217.html http://pauledie.blogspot.com/2012/02/no-knives-autism-discussions-and.html It has been another pretty intense week. My posting has not been as frequent as I would have liked. Sometimes it is difficult to decide what to post about out of so many issues going on at once.