democracy

David Cameron’s trip to Washington reminded me of something @thejimsmith on Twitter said. Cameron, he said, reminded him of a dog that doesn’t realise you know he’s trying to steal food. Anyone who’s ever had a dog will recognise this. Ours wasn’t allowed to beg at the dinner table, and he would sit and wait…

Read More the prime minister considered as a golden labrador

I recently sent off another report through FixMyStreet, pointing at the horrible state of the roads round here. (I am more than a little disappointed with the Android client app, by the way.) Within a week, some of the worse potholes had been tar’n’gravelled. Meanwhile, even more seem to have appeared or worsened. What it…

Read More ticket punching

This is depressing; they couldn’t find enough volunteers to count the votes in the Norwich North by-election on the night. What’s especially worrying is that it’s one of those assumptions that you never think about – a sort of minimum of commitment to the special importance of voting. And it’s being eroded, just as the…

Read More democracy

So what do we need to know about a parliamentary bill? First of all, as soon as a piece of legislation is published, it has certain meta-data. Date originated; originating department; originating MP; originating house; type – primary legislation, order in council, statutory instrument; current status (pre-legislative/Green/White Paper, first reading, committee, report, second, third, Royal…

Read More free our bills: hardcore wonk/geek out

Brilliant post from Dan Lockton on the design problems of making smart meters usable and useful. In a sense, it relates to this post at the RSA’s Social Brain about “the dark side of “nudge””; of course, the downside of all these neat ideas about adjusting people’s decision processes into ones that are more rational,…

Read More tatty

Resistance – The Essence of the Islamist Revolution is Alistair Crooke’s survey of modern Islamist thought. It would be clearer to say it is a couple of books occupying the same space; one would be a history of Islamist thought since the origins of the Iranian Revolution, with a polemic for greater understanding of such…

Read More Review: Alistair Crooke, “Resistance: the essence of the Islamist revolution”