I’ve wondered online before about the potential for politics, on online facilities like Second Life. I’ve now found, through the website of German Green MP Anna Lührmann what seems to be an official space for German politics on Second Life - very like a virtual version of the public noticeboard stands that are a feature of elections in some continental European countries, though not here in the UK.
I’m quite a novice myself in using Second Life, but if anyone knows anything similar for UK politics on SL, then I’d be very interested to know about it.
It has been wisely said that actually learning how to use SL is one of the main obstacles to its expansion, and my computer also seems to struggle somewhat to keep up - I think I read somewhere that the average SL avatar (character) uses the same amount of electricity a year as a Mexican citizen…
I’ve been meaning to post something for a couple of weeks about how pleased I was to discover that London is hosting an ‘India Now’ festival this summer.
Starting with the somewhat bizarre spectacle of a replica of the Taj Mahal floating up the Thames to be photographed next to various famous London landmarks, it is now incorporating all sorts of activities including for example a three-week festival in Trafalgar Square, and a mela in Ealing, as well as lots of other things.
I think it’s great and definitely plan to go to some of their events, probably the big Trafalgar Square extravaganza.
India means a lot of different things to different Londoners. For a very sizeable number, it is where either they or their parents or grandparents come from.
For many others, India means call centres, which they speak to probably more often they would like. For others, it is somewhere they have been on holiday.
For me, it is the country I was born in, and somewhere I enjoyed travelling through again a few years ago - so I naturally feel some affinity for.
Read the rest of this entry »
As regular readers of this blog know, I am passionately committed, almost to the point of obsession, about accountability and democracy, for example in local health services.
So why do I find myself opposed to a referendum on the European Reform Treaty? It seems rather a counter-intuitive, anti-democratic and an unpopular view to take so I think it needs a bit of explanation.
Referendums are clearly initially very appealing. It seems quite simple: if you believe in democracy, then you should be prepared to ask the public anything and everything, and get them to make the decision.
This seems fine until we look at the actual experience of what actually happens when you do put something to a referendum. And the general (if not universal) experience is that when voters go to the polls, they don’t actually vote about the question on the ballot paper - but instead treat it as a poll on how they think the government of the day is doing generally.
Referendums
The European issue itself provides some good examples of this. Read the rest of this entry »
I see Mr Brown has given a memo from Philip Gould to the Mirror, and told them it could mean an autumn election (BBC article)
Do we think this is consistent with:
(a) Mr Brown actually planning to hold an election this autumn,
or
(b) Mr Brown wanting to everyone thinking that he’s planning an autumn election, to create confusion and general havoc in other parties’ election planning, and further damage Cameron while he’s vulnerable?
The answer seems pretty clear to me.
I must say I have always been pretty sceptical about the idea. This was confirmed last night when someone told me that he had it (only second or possibly third hand) from someone who was there, that last week’s ‘political’ cabinet meeting at Chequers was entirely focussed on an autumn general election.
In my experience when you think you’ve found out something that you’re not meant to, then generally you were meant to.
(By the way it’s been a long time since I read the Mirror and the stuff they write really is drivel, even apart from fact that their precious memo doesn’t even really say what they claim it does.)