Here’s a run-down of who’s been delegated to do what:

Don Paskini on the executive summary and the introductory chapter 1, which will be followed by…

David Keen on chapter 2 – ‘becoming active in your community’,

Justin from Chicken Yoghurt on chapter 3 – ‘access to information’,

Douglas Clark on chapter 4 – ‘having an influence’,

Andrew Adams on chapter 5 – ‘challenge (aka accountability)’,

Tony Kennick on chapter 6 – ‘redress’,

Unity from Ministry of Truth on chapter 7 – ‘standing for office’,

Kate Belgrave of Hang Bitch fame on chapter 8 – ‘ownership and control of local services’…

…finished off with a review of the process from the Liberal Conspiracy editors and where we go from there.

As we’re trying to run a tight ship please try to keep things to approx. 250-300 words per chapter as far as possible with summaries of the main facts, obstacles and proposals so that we can digest the details and more controversial aspects in the comments section – I’m sure there’s plenty for us to get our teeth stuck into.

For your pleasure here is Hazel Blears asking you to tell her what you think – as she asks, “have we got it right? have we hit the spot? Or is there more and different ideas yet to come?”

Here is a link to her ’7-day blog’, which you may also wish to comment on.

For further perusal here are some official resources which may help you if you want to do some extra reading.

And if that isn’t enough then pageflakes lets you know what other people are saying.

So, let’s have that conversation. Get cracking!

I could go on and on about the gossipy nature of the way her speech was reported by mainstream outlets and the outraged or satirical reaction to it, just as it would be easy to restate the esoteric theories that ‘democracy leads to tyranny’ or ‘democracy dissolves into anarchy’, but this would be to fall into the very same trap of focussing on what she said rather than on the proposed changes to government procedure which will have a real bearing on our lives. Instead I will resort to a quote from Blears’ speech: “The changing structure of the media is what drives this desire for ‘impact’ and the retreat from dispassionate reporting,” and answer that it is the ability of the people to harness the potential of new technologies that keeps democracy fresh and vibrant.

Groups blogs and forums such as LC have tended to fall into a never-neverland with an unclear and undefined role in the political process, but this is evolving as the online community matures. Yet we need to further refine our role and create a USP beyond any position on the political spectrum. With a proliferation of new outlets, it is becoming clear that we voters are getting information from each other, as much as from direct consumption of traditional media. Just as it becomes equally clear that the old-style of hunter-gatherer news collecting is less relevant to journalism than ever before. The challenge to continue to attract an audience is starting to depend as much on its relevance to readers lives as it is on the originality or personality of the writing itself – such ‘narrowcasting’ represents as much of an opportunity to forward-thinking sites, as it poses a risk to those which are happy to rest on their laurels; since the ability to lead opinion demands “someone to put it into context, give it theoretical framing and suggest ways to act on it.”

So how will we respond to this challenge here at LC if we are to take action to channel our energies in a positive way and defend our democracy from the restoration of old ‘order’?

If we return to look at the speech Blears gave to the Hansard Society and to the white paper to which she briefly referred I think we can find a good answer.

White papers lay out the proposed action of the government on a particular policy area, and are designed to stimulate discussion on the topic in the hope of encouraging constructive feedback. The ‘Communities in Control’ document specifically addresses the issue of community engagement. Yet we are missing a cog in the machinery: where is the space for a wider public to join in?

I believe LC can be a space where that happens.

On my previous thread contributors warmed to the idea of breaking down and analysing the official proposals to encourage active citizenship and volunteerism – who better to provide the benefit of our practical knowledge than us!

I hope we will now produce a series of articles to answer Blears back and prove her wrong.

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NB. The seven areas covered in the paper include becoming active in your community; access to information; having an influence; accountability; redress; standing for office; and ownership and control of local services. These are covered respectively in chapters 2-8 of the Communities in Control white paper which can be found here, though the executive summary and introductions are equally worthwhile.

In the enthusiasm of the moment, some commentators (among them the BBC’s own Matt Frei) went so far as to claim his victory has overturned a political consensus held for a generation: that negative campaigning is the only way to win – the lunatic assassination plot against Obama can be cited as one extreme example of the nature of reactions that may be inadvertently encouraged by negativity, and this may in fact be the best argument against negativism.

Yet in the midst of so much euphoria created by the high turnout and real choices on offer we forget that McCain still polled more than 56m votes, many of who WERE motivated by fear and cynicism about Obama. Call it what you want, but negativity or cynicism is still a highly potent part of the political mix and will remain so even while Obama resides in the White House.

By now we are all familiar with the credit given to Obama’s campaign for linking netroots organisations together and transforming them into agents of practical activity with a ground force of volunteers who could mobilise the vote. While this victory can be seen as the culmination of a process, it also forms the foundation of a new citizen base with whom politicians can engage in a more direct manner than ever before. But Obamafans should be warned that this represents both an opportunity and a risk to his political fortune.

As bloggers become ever more influential and vocal, our slice of society can quickly turn against him, should a sense of betrayal be allowed to grow. If this happens the window of opportunity opened by his rhetoric of hope will be thoroughly smashed and we will all feel a chilling backlash.

So where could it all go wrong?

For starters Obama shot to prominence on the back of his opposition to the ‘dumb war’ perpetrated in Iraq, even while many in the Democratic party supported it. He skilfully built a base among the anti-war camp, yet he also quickly answered the accusation that he is a pacifist by shifting the focus of the ‘war on terror’ to the conflict in Afghanistan – if this is just a two-step of moving US forces from one ‘un-winnable war’ to another then he will face economic as well as moral opposition.

Additionally he cleverly positioned himself as the change candidate. He has come to embody the symbolic changes required to move on from George W. Bush’s tenure, and yet he supports Bush’s bank bail-out – if he doesn’t resign his senatorial seat before being called to vote on its enactment, he will undermine himself even before his inauguration.

In either of these cases, just as in all other possible scenarios, the primary and most immediate scrutiny will come from the blogging community of professional and citizen journalists. But it will be the over-opinionated latter group (ie us) who will serve as the litmus test of his policy direction.

So what pre-emptive counter-cynicism initiatives can be adopted?

In this country the Sustainable Communities Act 2007 was supported in Parliament by a cross-party team of MPs (lead by David Drew, Nick Hurd and Julia Goldsworthy), and regulations came into effect on 3 November 2008 requiring local authorities to formalise consultation processes with the express aim of improving civic participation and avoiding the decline into apathy and ignorance. It is the hope that greater participation and more effective communication between citizens, politicians and the civil service will lead to greater awareness of the choices involved and that this will moderate any cynicism in the public debate.

In re-announcing the government white paper Hazel Blears has been widely reported by The Telegraph and The Guardian, among others, as being critical of online culture and the way in which reactionary opinion fosters cynicism and breeds apathy. She also claims there is a class bias in blogging and told the Hansard Society yesterday that bloggers are generally written by “people with disdain for the political system and politicians” – all this from a government minister who blogs herself, and who promoted the idea of entry into a prize draw for people who can be bothered to go out and vote!

While there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that we Brits enjoy complaining, it is also true we often prefer it if we don’t actually have to get off our own behinds to do so – perhaps we really do want our democracy to be given the Simon Cowell make-over treatment!

The SCA is actually a very positive step to assist activism which is supported by a wide range of groups, such as Unlock Democracy, through the local works coalition. So perhaps before rushing to condemn Blears for a single controversial statement (taken out of context), we should take the time to listen to the proposals which are designed to assist local activism and support the practical efforts which must complement blogging, if we are able to cross the divide between ideas and action.

Surely Barack Obama would approve. And just as surely, this is an awareness raising campaign which LC should be fully supporting as we head into our second year.

With the increasing likelihood that Barack Obama will win the US Predisential election on November 4th, there is a clear level of expectation that the problems of the world can be fixed – but will they? And if so how? Can we really expect the ground-swell of newly motivated citizen activists to translate into a more inclusive style of politics and better policies, or is this the start of a longer-term shift in the balance of power in which something more fundamental is happening?

The old dictum which states that ‘whoever get the most votes in an election the civil service always wins’ will remain true even if Obama recieves an overwhelming endorsement from the voting public, just as it was true when Blair, Brown and New Labour swept away the Conservatives in 1997. The initial enthusiasm which carried over from the hundred days of immediate reforms after May 1997 melted away as a gradual reassertion of the power of Whitehall began once the newly assembled bureaucrats, technocrats and placemen had got their feet under the table – they hit the ground running, but eventually they ran into a brick wall of their own making.

Gore Vidal addressed this question when he memorably argued “there is only one political party in the U.S., and that is the property party, which essentially is corporate America”. Indeed, we may well ask if it is ever possible that the poor and disenfranchised will be able to make their voice heard when the vast body of the population cannot speak coherently with one voice. Yet is this more down to the structure of political debate than the personalities involved. While many of us look outside ourselves for guidance and leadership to solve our problems, it remains unrealistic to wait for a messiah to drop down from his or her cloud to bail us out. We were able to observe the flaws in such a belief when the stock markets across the world continued to behave erratically, even after George W. Bush took the unusual step of appearing simultaneously on multiple networks to address the nation over concerns about the financial intervention.

Uniquely the US Presidency is the single office which inspires devotion across national boundaries as the most capable saviour to our torments. With Obama as the new incumbent he too will recieve unquestioning adulation from many quarters amounting to an almost religious fervour. He too will be stepping into the job at the centre of the storm. He too will come to be the embodiment of all our renewed hopes.

The US President is still the most powerful person on the planet, but the US Presidency enslaves us with the bombastic rhetoric that its holder is the leader of the free world. The US Presidency is the problem.

Over here on the other side of the Atlantic there is another presidential election going on. You may not have heard about it because it being held by those pesky LibDems. It is a different style of presidential election because it is for a different style of presidency.

What is interesting about their election is that they have thrown up three different candidates with three contrasting platforms. Much of the debate seems to be centring on their desire to get noticed and how to go about doing so, but while you may recognise Mr Cheeky Girl, it is almost certain you won’t know about the Baroness or the recent Conservative defector.

So what is the stir all about? After all they already have a leader. Exactly so, but the platform of the unknown newcomer Chandila Fernando is based on influencing the political direction of the party, while Lembit Opik wants to publically represent their aims and aspirations, and Ros Scott strives to facilitate better communication between the different constituent parts of the organisation.

For an outsider like myself the debate surrounding this minor internal election encapsulates and illustrates the problem Obama (assuming he is victorious) will face after inauguration. He will face an immediate choice between balancing all these competing desires or choosing one at the expense of the others. Because the US Presidency combines the role of Head of State with Head of Government, the incumbent is expected to preside and lead simultaneously. This is a clearly incompatible requirement which is written in to the structure of the US constitution and rigidly confines any ability of the President to manoeuver away from the demands of property holders Gore Vidal ascribes as the corrupting influence on US politics.

So perhaps our own third party actually shows a way forward for the next US President which doesn’t involve the greater concentration of capital, greater centralisation of power and greater subservience to vested interests which have conspired against the will of the people to avoid unnecessary and undesirable foreign entanglements.

While it is doubtful that any serious candidate would campaign for reform of the structural problems of the Presidency for fear of seeming unpatriotic, it is exceedingly unlikely that any successful candidate would be able to reform the institution without carrying an overwhelming mandate for change. So winning isn’t enough for Obama to effect a substantial separation of powers, he must wipe the floor with McCain in order to draw calls to restrain his ability to exert power.