Today it was announced that Riverbend, the author of Baghdad Burning, has been longlisted for a £30,000 Literary Award. This follows on from the critical acclaim for the somewhat less worthy Belle de Jour. Congratulations to the anonymous bloggers. The other high profile arrival in the blogging world is very Read more…
I’m not normally the biggest fan of Youth Councils as they seem to be a way of replicating the mistakes of "adult councils", but they do have their place. Equally, though, I don’t believe any council should set up a Youth Council and think that the job of youth engagement Read more…
Viewing the visitor logs for your blog can make strange reading sometimes. Three weeks ago I wrote a post about a project called BlogCode. BlogCode was intended to help visitors to a blog find other similar blogs that they might enjoy. One of the unintended consequences of BlogCode is that Read more…
Tomorrow, Friday 10th March see the launch of a project that we initiated 15 months ago by inviting Bristol City Council to jointly pitch for funding from the ODPM e-Innovations fund. CampaignCreator was conceived as a way of levelling the playing field of community voices. Many grassroot campaigning groups were Read more…
Cllr Bob Piper, the author of one of the more entertaining councillor blogs, wrote a very interesting post about loyalty to the "party" a couple of days ago. I think it must be weighing on his mind because today he follows up with another post on the relevance of political Read more…
Last summer a very creative and clever lady called Fran Farrar from Norfolk Children’s Services mentioned an idea about getting vulnerable young people and Councillors to use cameras to share their life experiences over the period of a day. Working with Fran we took the idea one stage further and Read more…
Want to find blogs similar to the one you’re reading? Want to attract readers to a new blog? BlogCode is a nifty endeavour by Tim Ireland and the makers of StoryCode (to find similar books) that allows you to code a blog using 27 variables. Using a database of hundreds Read more…
The Local Democracy Campaign kicks is being officially launched on Monday 27th February in the Terrace Pavilion at the House of Commons. We’ll have the pleasure of hearing three MP: Ed Miliband, Charles Hendry and Sarah Teather and hopefully the Solent People’s Theatre singing one of their ditties from "Who Read more…
We’ve been involved in Local Democracy Week for five years now. In the first year one council asked us to come up with something with a fortnight’s notice. That was tough. Last year Coventry City Council started their work in January and had a very successful event in October. This Read more…
Nick Robinson, the BBC’s Political Editor, has published the script of an excellent lecture he gave recently on the troubled relationship between politics and the media. He outlines 5 stages in order to repair the marriage. It is well worth reading. He quotes Nick Clarke who once said to Alistair Read more…