May I just say that my first question to Hazel would be why is the thing £33 to order and 1.8MB for download?

Does that mean the community members she has in mind are only those with a spare £33 and/or those with broadband?

I’d better calm down. I haven’t even opened the thing yet and already I’ve had it with friggn Hazel and her consultative fantasies.

Grrrr.

Possibly, that was a negative way to kick things off.

It just does my head in a bit when the first thing I see on a document about consultation and community engagement is a price tag.

But never mind.

Starting again, wearing a smile.

Thanks to Thomas for pointing me to this – I’ll be very interested to see what people come up with.

There are two points I’d like to make, both about what the report doesn’t appear to say rather than what it does. I’ve written in more detail on my blog, so I’ll keep it brief here.

First, the paper explicitely says (Exec summary point 2):

“We want to shift power, influence and responsibility away from existing centres of power into the hands of communities and individual citizens.”

But there’s pretty much nothing in there about shifting power away from central government – by far the most powerful part of the state. Instead the report takes already-weak local authorities, which have very limited powers to raise their own money and set their own priorities, and shuffles their powers around a bit.

Secondly, the paper claims to want to use all available means to encourage people to get involved in local democracy, but completely ignores a big reason why people don’t bother to vote: that they know their vote won’t change the result because they live in a seat that’s safe for the incumbent. The corollary of that is, of course, that politicians in safe seats have much less incentive to work hard and genuinely engage with their residents.

A critical element of democracy is the ability to kick elected politicians out. We need to find some way (and it might be some form of proportional representation, or something else entirely) to minimise the number of politicians in cast-iron safe seats.