The Royal Society (founded 1660, ‘the oldest learned society still in existence’) have just launched a blog. Maybe this could give some impetus to our newer institutions such as local authorities. It also made me think about what other science blogs are out there. Now there are plenty of ‘fun Read more
One of the nice things about travelling by train is the opportunity to meet new people. Last year I ended up sitting next to an old house mate from 10 years previously who now has a couple of pubs in Bath. Last week I sat down opposite a fellow called Read more
According to the Guardian at Davos: Gordon Brown said today that the days of the "smoke-filled room" were over and that politicians had to involve the public in decision-making in order to win the arguments for free trade, globalisation and the fight against terrorism. I think some of the lower Read more
The UK and Ireland e-Democracy exchange mailing list has recently reached a membership milestone of 100 members. The group consists of many if not most of the more vocal members of the e-Democracy community in these parts. It was originally set-up by Steven Clift and is currently hosted by Tom Read more
David Miliband tells in his blog how India: "now plans devolution beyond the 29 states to local government, where he explained that some 3 million people are elected councillors, over one million of them women (more elected women than the rest of the world put together)" Fabulous statistics. I wonder Read more
Richard Pope has released a Beta version of a site I’ve wanted to produce for a while. www.planningalerts.com uses planning application data published by local councils to alert people to planning application within a specified radius of their home (or other postcode they specify). The radius can be checked on Read more
mySociety, famed for eDemocracy sites such as Pledgebank and theyworkforyou.com, have developed an open source online petition service for the 10 Downing Street site (http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/). It will be interesting to see how well it gets used. It’s been launched as a Beta site so should change over the coming weeks Read more
Students in Coleraine were first to hear about progress in the NI Devolution talks today. During a Live Chat session Cllr John Dallat who was attending the talks in St.Andrews broke into the conversation to say: Cllr John Dallat: Peter – Good News Peter as we speak a settlement has Read more
"Once elected, the job of an MP is to represent the people of his or her constituency (constituents) in Parliament, whether or not they voted for him or her."Factsheet M1 Members Series Revised October 2005 "My job as an Labour MP is to support the Labour Government and work for Read more
Lovely idea of placing polling booths in pubs. As Tom Watson points out they’ve been pretty much the same in the House of Commons for a while so why not.