It's time we said enough is enough.

After a decade of spin and short-term headline grabbing actions, we currently have a proposal for something of political significance - a bill on the misrepresentation of the truth.

It's being proposed as an early day motion. What's interesting for me, is who has signed up to the EDM?.

Liberal Democrats - 8 MPs

Plaid Cymru - 2 MPs

Labour - 3 MPs.

So how many Conservative MPs? None, zilch, a big fat zero. The only whiff of a Conservative opinion is given on the Ministry of Truth site, and yes it's an objection in principle to an act requiring that elected representatives don't lie.

Cameron recently spoke at the Google Zeitgeist conference and spoke of "In the post-bureaucratic era, you shouldn't just be telling government what you want. You should be choosing what you want, and acting to get what you want" - well we are trying.

He quoted Edmund Burke, so I'll use two more of his quotes to explain the problem.

First, "Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises; for never intending to go beyond promises; it costs nothing."

Cameron quotes the wisdom of the crowd, however this idea is based upon the Marquis de Condorcet's work. The crowd can be either completely right or completely wrong, and the factor controlling this is access to correct information.

Unless we have the correct information, the crowd is unlikely to make the right choices - we need the truth.

So what to do about it? Well back to Edmund: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

This is exactly what the Conservative party is doing on this matter - nothing; hollow words and no action. To think, I was even starting to consider voting for them.

If you believe in a post-bureaucratic era and the wisdom of the crowd.

If you trust the people.

If you believe in social responsibility rather than central control.

Then give us the right to be told the truth. Cameron, don't just talk but do something and lead.

By the people, for the people ...

I written several times about my disillusionment with our current political system and the lack of accountability.

Today, I listened in horror at the mocking of the electorate by Gordon Brown.

However, today, I also watched a BBC 2 program about an early day motion to introduce The Elected Representatives (Prohibition of Deception) Bill, in order to make it an offence for MPs to misrepresent the truth to the public.

Watch the video ...

.

It is already an offence for business leaders to do so to their shareholders, and many professions are covered by such legislation.

BUT NOT MPs.

This early day motion is set to be introduced on the 17th Oct 2007 by Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price.

If you, like I am, are fed up with not being able to trust what our elected representatives tell us.

If you, like I do, feel that there is lack of accountability in parliament.

If you, like I do, feel that what I'm told is not always the truth.

Then NOW is the time to take action. Ministers and the parliamentary parties are as likely to vote for this as turkeys would for Christmas.

They work for you, despite their mocking of us.

Write to your MP, ask them to support the bill, join the online petition and spread the word to everyone you know.

This is your opportunity to make a difference, and make parliament accountable to the people, to us.

Accept no half measures, no more so called self regulation and make it an offence for MPs and their employees to misrepresent the truth to us, the great British public.

If you want to do one thing right for our society, make sure it's this.

Our democracy and the very basis on which it is built depends upon such truth.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Looking at my calendar, I notice that I've got nothing to do on Tuesday night. So I thought I'd go and see a tragic comedy, Andrew Keen's talk "The Great Digital Seduction" at the RSA.

I blogged about Andrew some time ago, and since then I've decided to ignore the man whom I believe is the greatest digital hyprocrite of our time. However, seeing that he is going to the trouble of speaking, and even more that I'm going to the trouble of attending - I thought I'd say a few words.

Andrew's thesis is basically that the internet is robbing us of our culture, that art is something you pay for (making Damien Hurst surely the greatest artist of all time?) and that talking is best left to those self selected elite whilst the rest of us pig farmers should keep quiet - a sort of "Stop all that chattering! I'm talking" approach. Watch the video.

A cynic would probably describe his approach as inflammatory and pointlessly controversial designed to promote sales of his book. A real cynic would be expecting a further book about "How to make a mint out of controversy".

You can add me to the real cynic camp.

Comedic? Well, in my view it's laughable as the discussion is pointless. He is the King Canute of the Internet world asking the mass of bloggers and other producers to stop producing. I don't disagree that there is a lot of noise on the Internet, and a need for reputation-based networks to help filter this for the individual. But the choice should be with the consumer, not some censor or self-elected quango. The crowd will choose their own gatekeepers, their own filters - they are doing so already.

Does anyone really think that people are going to stop expressing themselves? You'd need to abolish the principles of democracy and establish a fascist state to achieve that. Ah, I note he invokes Godwin's Law in reverse and asks whether he is a Nazi. Shame on you Andrew, shame on you.

Never the less, despite his views Andrew has the right to express this - as we all do, it is the basis of a democratic system. He has the right to use the same mechanisms that we all do - which he does. Hypocritical? Well of course, he uses the same mechanisms to lambast them - blogging is wrong, stop blogging and read my blog instead ... yada yada yada.

The questions we should be asking as we move from elitist producers to a more open Stentorocracy, is how do we create relevance in all the noise? How do we push further and create that elusive Meritocracy?

Tragic? Well I'm sure he has made a handsome return on his book, when there are so many more deserving causes. Still, freedom is about people being able to express their opinions and choices even when such choices support individuals who would happily take away your freedoms.

Economies progress, new means of distribution appear and societies adapt.

"Oyez, Oyez! who are these upstarts taking away my job?" as many a Town Crier must have cried as so called journalists started to publish "news" papers. Bloody amateurs.

How many wandering minstrels lost valuable income when any Tom, Dick or Harry could buy sheet music and thump out a tune on an old piano? Bloody amateurs.

How about the Telegraph? According to the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, the first message received by a commercial telegraph line in the United States was "Why don't you write, you rascals?". Bloody amateurs.

I'm sure history is littered with those "keen" to keep it the same. However things change - businesses and society move on - no matter how many Keens you have. Yes, I'm sure that some artists will suffer from the opening up of the means of expression, they will not adapt but then I'm sure many will benefit. The crowd will be the arbiter, not Keen and his fellow "old guard". Unless, of course, the crowd choose them to be so.

One advantage of any future reputation based networks for searching information, will be the madame guilotine of the Internet. As any World of Warcraft player well knows, it is the /Ignore function.

However, in this case the /Ignore function is dangerous, as the feebleminded concepts of TINA (there is no alternative) promote a view that it is simply a choice between authority or anarchy. TINA promotes FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about the Internet. Well there is an alternative - it's called participatory democracy.

Vive la revolution - liberty, equality, fraternity - and keep on blogging.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (who shall guard the guardians?)

We shall. It's our society after all.

Something I'm watching ....

I've posted before about a future world of news where I get to decide whom I listen to. An "old guard" being replaced via the Stentorocracy with a "new guard".

There are lots of nominees for this "new guard" and they don't have to be the all encompassing monoliths of the past. An example for me is Vincent Camara and the team at intruders TV

Now I'm biased of course, Vincent recently interviewed me at open coffee (Saul Klein's event which is making waves). It was just too much fun.

However I'm also biased towards, Viddler (thanks to Colin for the mention) and Talis but the reality is they among others others are all forging new channels of news.

Surely being biased is what it is all about? I should choose whatever news sources I want, the one's I trust, I'm interested in - you can choose your own.

That's why I was really interested in bubbletop. It's worth watching the video.

Search on RSS feeds, tagging of feeds and items, recommendation to others, search over community ... ah the tools I need to search through the Stentorocracy and find what I want.

Guess who controls it? Me. Oooh, I like that. It's a start.

The other bit ... is they hint at making it an open platform ... now, that's smart

Stop all that chattering! I'm talking ...

I've read some disturbing posts over the last few weeks regarding freedom of speech, the consumer as a producer and the web 2.0 phenomenon.

I though I'd post something on these, and finally get round to replying to Jenny's questions.

==

As Yochai Benkler and Eric Von Hippel have studied the open source movement and emerged understanding of the "Wealth of Networks" and "Democratizing Innovation", am I understanding correctly lessons from your open source experience for creating sustainable networked organizations include:

• i. "you cannot efficiently plan out the process of development as it is more akin to research and therefore dynamic".
• ii. "three axis of technology, people and requirements being relatively unknown"
• iii. "try, measure and adapt"

==

My experience comes not from creating open source communities but dealing with static or dynamic processes of building. I'm not sure how applicable these are to your work on networked organisations, but let me explain these processes and how the three points you mention relate to my experience.

ii. "three axis of technology, people and requirements being relatively unknown"

The process of building a software system can loosely be described as involving people, technology and a set of requirements.

If all three of these "axes" are well known or well defined, the process of building can be described as static. Whereas if these "axes" are not well known or defined, the process can be defined as dynamic.

Hence mass copying CD's, is a fairly static process - you know exactly what the requirements are, CD writing technology is well known etc. Conversely developing a new and novel web site can be described as a dynamic process - even the requirements are generally not well known.

iii. "try, measure and adapt"

Unfortunately in the software industry there seem to be two common re-occuring issues:

• Firstly, despite much being CODB (cost of doing business), there seems to be an over tendency to develop or customise. Fortunately with the rise of SaaS (software as a service), utility computing markets etc - some of this tendency may diminish.

• Secondly, where things were novel and new - and therefore technology, requirements and individual performance are relatively unknown, there has been an over tendency to attempt to use static planning processes. Concepts such as "software factories" and the scientific approach to management (e.g. Taylorism) have been misapplied in this context.

About a decade ago, when developers started to use more dynamic planning methods to deal with dynamic problems, there was a significant improvement in productivity for the companies they worked for. Today, techniques like SCRUM & XP (also known as agile development) are becoming widely used because they are inherently dynamic and are designed to deal with new and novel software development, unlike static planning systems.

These new methods are based upon the concept of "try, measure, adapt". In the case of test driven development, you write a test, you write some code to try and pass this test, you measure whether this worked, you adapt if it didn't and on and on.

i. "you cannot efficiently plan out the process of development as it is more akin to research and therefore dynamic".

Now "try, measure and adapt" is a valid form of control, but notice there is no specific planning step. This doesn't mean you don't have a plan, it just tends to be fairly minimal.

I'd like to make a joke that "you wouldn't try to Gantt chart a cure for cancer"; unfortunately in todays R&D environments in the UK, for some quixotic reason such static planning methods are being enforced. Lunacy ... no, just wasted energy and effort.

Novel software development is more like a game of football - you never play the same game twice. You have a common goal, an idea of how to attack the game, but fundamentally you try out something, see if it worked and adapt - during and between games.

Every football team dreams of playing a team whose players are following a rigid plan. Could you imagine Gantt charting a football game before the game? Could you imagine a team who followed such a plan? What happens if the ball isn't where you planned it to be?

This illustrates why static planning processes are good for static systems, whilst dynamic processes are good for dynamic systems.

Hence my points :-

• i. "you cannot efficiently plan out the process of development as it is more akin to research and therefore dynamic".
• ii. "three axis of technology, people and requirements being relatively unknown"
• iii. "try, measure and adapt"

Now let me try and link these ideas to the concepts of agile enterprises.

First onto Enterprise 2.0 technology and specifically wiki's. At Fotango, we adopted a wiki some four years ago as the static process around our intranet (this person writes this bit, this person approves etc) had created a information resource which was useless. So we decided to try something new. We put up a blank wiki and before long everyone was contributing something.

Unfortunately, so much information was put onto the wiki that it became overloaded with "noise". So we needed to adapt and try something else - "gardening". By "gardening" I mean a regular pruning of information within the wiki.

In some organisations "gardening" may emerge naturally, in ours it didn't. This is a critical point: you shouldn't plan out in detail the adoption of an Enterprise 2.0 technologies within an organisation because you don't know what behaviours will emerge. Instead you need to "try, measure and adapt".

Note, I say you shouldn't plan out. This doesn't mean you can't. I can always plan out exactly how a football game is going to go, who is going to be where and at what moment in time etc. I'm not going to get the best result if I do - especially if the other team don't follow my plan.

So on to my title ... stop all that chattering! I'm talking ....

Whenever I've been involved in introducing more dynamic processes, I've generally come up against a fairly resistant and incumbent "old guard" who like the "old way".

So we come on to the latest spats about amateur online journalism. The "old guard" of the news world has been very comfortable with the well defined macro level processes of them collecting information, editing and disseminating it. Sometimes, they have been caught out spinning or doctoring information - reinforcing the old adage of "don't always believe what you read in the papers".

The "old guard" also selected who had a voice, it decided upon the criteria of expertise, it chose.

Unfortunately for them the ball has moved, and now we are in a world where anyone can collect, edit and disseminate information.

This "new world" does create a lot more noise. It provides powerful new mechanisms for anyone to be heard. Much of what is behind the attack on "net neutrality" in the US, the involvement of more traditional news organisation into the internet space and the recent spate of articles about the need for curators or editors for the internet appears to be about re-establishing that neat, old view of the world.

What is needed however, are new forms of control that are more adaptable to the reality we find ourselves in. I do want to know what is happening in the world. I do want to trust the source and sometimes I do want to have my say.

However, in this "new world", I get to decide whom I listen to. The only issue is who do I choose?

Unfortunately whilst the mechanisms of dissemination exist, the mechanisms of choice or trust don't. What is needed are reputation-based social networks. A method for searching for information from people that I, my friends, or the general public, trusts.

It may emerge that we choose to trust the same "old guard" as before. If not they'll just have to adapt and try something new. It may emerge that a "new guard" is created through the Stentorocracy as I called it.

You cannot understand everything on the Internet, you cannot make perfect sense of all the noise. In much the same way in economics you cannot make perfect decisions, or be that " rational man" or reach your "pareto-optimality". There is always too much information.

Something needs to separate the noise from that which is useful. Hence a new system, reputation-based social network, is needed to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Of course, there will always be winners and losers. There will be the included and the excluded. Maybe we'll all end up listening to some random 15 yr old blogger because he made some good points.

Maybe not.

However, I don't think an approach of "Stop all that chattering! I'm talking ..." is going to get the "old guard" very far. Especially if they use the same techniques, such as blogs, which they complain about. Hence I'm far from convinced by Andrew Keen

Still he has a voice, he has a right to be heard. But then so does that 15 yr old blogger.

You see, in my simple world it's the idea that's important, not the source.

Politcs, what Politics?

I was fortunate to met up with Rob McKinnon at FOSDEM who has just recently taken on a new role at O'Reilly (they employ very smart people - but then what else do you expect. Also check out their European blog).

We got talking about politics in the UK and the rise of user petitions and open political content (They Work For You). It was a timely discussion as the Independent had recently published an article about this.

The problem I have, as stated before, is that whilst such open discussion and the involvement of the public in such petitions is good, it is not politics in the wider sense but instead single issue focus.

The problem for me, is that our political system seems to lack any grand visions of the future and has instead fallen back to a state of TINA (there is no alternative) on the grounds that global economic environment dictates this. I just don't buy it.

Whilst I'm all in favour of everyone having a voice, there is a real problem with mob rule on every issue(the crowd is not always wise - see the Marquis De Condorcet). With a lack of direction and the probability that the crowds voice can all to easily be ignored, we could end up reinforcing the culture of powerlessness (vulnerability) and prolong the illusion that one person can't make a difference.

This doesn't mean we shouldn't vote on such polls, or raise our concerns or question our MPs - we should. This doesn't mean that the emergent behaviour from such polls won't be positive - it may well be. However, we should be debating what vision of society we want, how we want it to run and making it happen ... that's politics.

Nice party... who are you?

Well, my hat's off to Fast Forward for an outstanding conference. I don't know anything about Fast itself but then enterprise search isn't my cup of tea. I have however met some very interesting people and discovered new ideas on web 2.0 / enterprise 2.0 concepts.

One of the big topics today was about disruptive impacts. I immediately got into an argument with Tom Foremski who writes the site Silicon Valley Watcher just to prove how disruptive I can be. Tom is a really fascinating guy, a professional journalist who has set himself up as an independent. He is one of those sources of information which the democracy of the web may choose to trust and allow to become the canonical news source in his area. It's a bold thing to do - I salute him.

I also met Steve Whittaker, who is a visiting scientist at MIT. According to Steve the fragmentation of producers (i.e. as consumers become producers rather than just consumers) creates an uncertain future. Maybe the vested interests hold out, maybe the system collapses under the noise and only maybe do P2P reputation and curators resolve the problem. He also points to Lessig's argument that such systems need a balance between law, the market, social norms and architecture and hence the uncontrolled fragmentation of the media market may impact social norms.

An example which comes to mind is Second Life and the copybot incident. Here the community adopted rules to impose certain social norms of behaviours to prevent mass copying.

I was fortunate to also meet and debate with Susan Feldman of the IDC who gives some real insights into the entire search market and the digital economy, and Jenny Ambrozek who has been developing online virtual communities.

Finally I have to mention Greg Dearing who is not only one bright guy but also works on providing the Fast Foward blog.

Overall, this has been a great conference. However, I still feel like the guy who has come along to the party and then asks the host "who are you?"

Hope ++

In our history we have had many protests (from Wat Tyler to the Jarrow marchers to the Chartists). Few have succeeded, most have failed - all have struggled for their cause.

However, other than the anti-war march, I can't think of any examples of two million people turning up in London to protest and then going home after nothing happens.

Had Wat Tyler led a march of two million peasants, do you think things would have turned out as they did?

Why do we accept this?

How many people do you need on a march before you are listened to? 10 million? 20 million?

Why do we allow ourselves to be ignored?

Is it that we have too much to lose? So to demonstrate is ok and if we are all ignored well c'est la vie; there is always the election!

The problem with waiting for the election is the declining turnout and that both parties are identical. I've even heard talk of boycotting the next election in order to make some sort of statement - I presume that statement is "please ignore us".

So what is behind this political emasculation of the populace?

I have an idea.

I've noticed a growing culture not just of fear but of vulnerability and powerlessness.

So, have you heard any of these:-

• one person can't make a difference
• what's the point in voting
• they don't listen anyway
• I'm worried about .... job, home, debt, children ...
• we're under the threat of terrorist attack
• the environment is collapsing

I'm hearing a surprising number of statements about human frailty recently and everyone seems to be a potential victim. (Where did that term come from anyway?)

In a spirit of inquiry, and to shed some light on the current zeitgeist, I've been running my mood map on Zimki which tracks photos and blogs tagged with certain emotional words. It's a simple demo app which took about an hour+ to write (this is for someone who didn't know JavaScript or HTML)

The result (obviously impacted by seasonal variation):-

Well since Nov '06,

Sadness has increased over Happiness (+2%)

But

Hope has increased over Fear (+7%)

So we're more miserable, but at least we're hopeful.

Of course this is all anecdotal, but the worrying thing is that we may be hoping for someone else to create a better future because we feel powerless to do so ourselves.

Vote now to evict ...

Ostracism was practised in the the ancient Greek Athenian democracy. The idea is fairly simple, the public can choose if it wishes to expel an individual from its society for a period of ten years.

Once a year, the public would decide if it wished to hold an ostracism. If the public decided it did, then after a period of time the vote would occur.

Members of the public would put forward a name for ostracism. If the most voted for name exceeded a set number of votes (i.e a significant percentage of the actual population) then that person would be commanded to leave the city for 10 years (exile).

There would be no loss of property, no loss of title or status.

There was no defense against this.

Was it used? Occasionally

Why was it used? Mainly to remove confrontations, removing an individual seen to be a threat such as a potential tyrant etc.

It's a check and balance measure.

Obviously in its literal form it would be useless in a modern society e.g. voting on bits of pot, use of a roped arena, majority of 6,000, use of the death penalty, relevant only to a city etc.

This would all need to be upgraded to a more modern and liberal version. However such a version of this may have some merit.

When I first raised this idea, the first comments were that we would have a reality TV style voting frenzy and let's get rid of Paul Daniels (a TV celebrity in the UK).

However, that shows a remarkable lack of faith in the electorate to take such issues seriously. I don't subscribe to that point of view.

We live in a society which seems to quite easily remove our civil liberties. It's worth reading Henry Porter in the Guardian, which I've summarised below. I recommend you read his articles though.

• The right to be tried by a jury:Abolished in cases of serious and complex fraud in 2003.
• The right to protest:Since 2005, demonstrations outside the House of Commons must be pre-notified to, and approved by, police.
• The right not to be convicted on hearsay evidence:Hearsay evidence can be submitted to get an anti-social behaviour order (Asbo).
• The right to trial:Under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 the Home Secretary can undertake control orders restricting the liberty of individuals suspected of terrorist involvement - without trial.
• The right to privacy:DNA samples taken from anyone arrested but acquitted or not prosecuted are now retained on a national database.

and on, and on and on.

It has got to the extent that friends of mine now leave this country to find home elsewhere because of such concerns.

You also have to ask yourself the question :-

"if parliament is there to prevent tyranny - what happens when parliament are the tyrants?"

With the current government desire to increase controls on the population (ID cards, NIR database) and the removal of liberties, we should start to ask ourselves what checks are in place? What happens if someone gets carried away with it all?

Could Ostracism be a useful mechanism?

There is much talk today of a culture of fear and the reasons for the changes to our liberty, well I'm reminded of the Thomas Jefferson quote

"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."

Maybe we should have a chat with our political servants about this and possibly update our version of democracy with a few extra tools, so we all know where we stand on this matter. Maybe not.

You decide.

Shout, shout ... let it all out.

Wandering as I was through the local sprawl of shops, I chanced upon a small book "What is your dangerous idea". It piqued my interest, so I bought it. The book is a collection of ideas about the future, it's cute, speculative and generally interesting. As with all good books, it led me on a journey.

The journey in this case, was because of its claim to provide "today's leading thinkers on the unthinkable". How do you define "today's leading thinkers?" One of the lessons that Cambridge taught me was that true genius is very scarce. I was there, and I'm a fully paid up member of the dazzlingly daft society. Along with 90% of the population, I believe I'm above average intelligence which either means I can't count or I'm deluded - I prefer to think I'm deluded. The one thing this does tell me is that I'm not one of the great thinkers, but fortunately I've got a lot of people to keep me company.

The truly great thinkers are often hidden away in the most obscure places and in my experience they never think of themselves in such terms. Now if you are a truly exceptional individual, let's say in the top 0.01%, then in the world today there are over half a million people just as bright as you; enough to make a small city. No matter how smart you think you or your clique are, there is a city of smarter people out there. Now this is the rub - the city couldn't exist anyway. The problem is that unless you exist in a true meritocracy most of these brilliant people are unlikely to be discovered. I believe I've met many outstandingly intelligent and thoughtful people who, because of the cards that life has dealt them, have never come close to realising their potential. A true meritocracy needs to hunt out these individuals.

So what do we live in; isn't the internet a true meritocracy? Well, it seems closer to a "shoutocracy" or, not to mix languages, a Stentorocracy (from the greek hero with the big lungs) than to a true meritocracy. There are those who argue the "wisdom of the crowd" creates a meritocracy. However the crowd is equally wise as daft (see Marquis de Condorcet for a more formal examination of this). You also still have to shout at the crowd and then you have the problem of memes.

So anyway back to the book. It led me to a group called the Edge. It's an interesting mix of self-selecting cultural imperialism, combined with some ardent beliefs and pleasurable intellectual discourse. Now there is nothing wrong with this - it's a talking shop - but the claims it makes are somewhat disturbing. It's not so much the edge, as sailing close or over it.

• "The third culture consists of those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are."

All hail to the priesthood. Hmmm, Hume would be turning in his grave - where has the humility gone?

• "America now is the intellectual seedbed for Europe and Asia."
• "The emergence of the third culture introduces new modes of intellectual discourse and reaffirms the preeminence of America in the realm of important ideas"

All hail to the imperium! I think 6 billion people might disagree with this. This doesn't mean the ideas or people aren't interesting, the claims are just a tad strong though.

• "Who are the 'digerati' and why are they 'the cyber elite'? They are the doers, thinkers, and writers who have tremendous influence on the emerging communication revolution. They are not on the frontier, they are the frontier."

All hail to the Kings and Queens. They may well be self-anointed, but let the meme spread long enough and soon the crowd in its wisdom will be chanting. Still, it could be worse :-

King Arthur: I am your king.

Serf: Well I didn't vote for you.

King Arthur: You don't vote for kings.

Serf: Well how'd you become king then?

King Arthur: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. THAT is why I am your king.

Serf: Listen, strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

Serf: You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you.

Serf: If I went 'round sayin' I was Emperor, just because some moistened bint lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away.

(Monty Python, Holy Grail ... if you haven't seen this, you should)

and finally ...

• "The role of the intellectual includes communicating. Intellectuals are not just people who know things but people who shape the thoughts of their generation. An intellectual is a synthesizer, a publicist, a communicator."

Ah, the Stentorocracy in action, the pantomisation of science (oh no it isn't, oh yes it is - I can't hear you!) - this is as dangerous a meme or idea as any in the book. Still, it's an interesting book - worth reading and it won't make you go blind.

Don't trust them, trust us ... we're the news.

Or at least they were.

Apparently according Tom Glocer's Blog post, blogging is changing the media landscape by creating a two way pipe of communication. [on a personal note, a one way pipe isn't communication but dictation].

Benefits include such things as more accountability (or at least getting caught out seems to be more likely as per the Hajj photo example), no-one has a choke hold on information flow (i.e consumers get to chose) and immediacy (everyone is a potential producer!)

The downside? How can you trust the internet and amateurs (hmmm, wasn't there something about accountability in the benefit list?).

The argument goes that professionals bring something extremely important to a story, a professional code, standards and a brand. What is needed is that news providers become the trusted source in this plural media universe!

Hang on, I thought news providers were once the trusted source? Is this a case that now a different source is available (i.e. the internet) the news providers have lost the trust of the public. Now the news providers want us to go back to trusting them?

Horse, Door, Stable, Bolted ....

There would seem to be an obvious need for canonical sources of information and reputation based curators - who those curators are, well the public will decide. That's democracy for you.

Does this mean the crowd will make a wise choice? Well, they'll either make an almost perfectly right or wrong one (Marquis de Condorcet, 1745-1794) depending upon whether they have enough information and the accuracy of the information.

So I suppose the real question is whether the news providers will spend enough marketing dollars to get themselves elected?

I'm guessing they will.

ID cards and state funding of parties

Two petitions which I believe are worth signing

Against ID Cards which is a concept that is an affront to civil liberties.

Against State Funding of Political Parties which is a concept that is a affront to the ideals of democracy.

Politics? Hmmm, make mine a cup of coffee.

Today the UK government announced plans to hire "super nannies" (child psychologists) to help deal with the growing issues around troublesome youth by looking at providing parenting training in troubled areas.

The BBC stated that a Mori poll for the Home Office showed that 85% of respondents blamed poor parenting on problems with youths. It was presented to imply that both items were linked - I hope not.

Parenting may or may not be the cause of the problem, but is general opinion that relevant? I'd prefer drug trials over a Mori poll asking "Do you think this new drug is safe?"

In much the same way we should be first studying the cause - parenting, breakdown in community, rise of the illusion of individualism, advertising pressure, disengagement with society, exposure to violence or fear or no change at all just a greater awareness - rather than acting on popular opinion.

This work may have been done, but no mention is given - just merely lots of polls.

But then this leads onto another problem at the moment. The growing illusion of political activism. In the UK, for the last two decades political activism has been in severe decline - to the point that electoral turn-out makes record lows a norm.

There has been active disengagement of the population from politics, from the anti-politic trend being fashionable to the "one person can't make a difference" myths - which singlehandedly ignores most of our history.

In some circles it is argued that political activism has in fact grown but in other non-traditional forms i.e. involvement in environmental groups, local planning campaigns (NIMBYs), signing petitions, attending a march, not buying certain products etc.

Yes, you've guessed it - when I'm buying my fair-trade coffee I'm making a political statement!

The widening of what is political activism, combined with polls etc - creates an illusion of a politically active culture despite the fact that little political debate (as opposed to personality debate) exists within government, there is lack of any clear distinction between the parties and no big ideologies or visions of the future (the joke of course is the big idea behind labour's third way is not having a big idea).

In such an environment with a decline in voter turnout and party membership - you have political exhaustion not activism. With no vision of the future you have efficient tinkering rather than effective action.

But what can politics do today? Governments are subservient to the global economy and globalisation! Of course they are not in reality, they instead choose to be - we're a 60 million person country with its own legal and social structure - market economics is merely a tool not an overpowering force.

I am not advocating reckless change, but with a vision for the future of our society then we should not be fearful of necessary change or feel limited or controlled by that which society could change if it had the will to do so.

But that's the crux of the matter, the will doesn't exist and nor does the vision and so we seem to choose not to change but to instead run a steady ship with no idea of where we are going. We have surrended our grand social experiment called democracy and allowed our fear of change to paralyse us so that these days the great debates are whether detention should be 28 days or 90 days or whether we provide educational vouchers or not?

The time is right for a vision for the future, bold and brave politicians not afraid of change and a re-evaluation of our assumptions of the limits to our political and social systems.

In the meantime I'm going to buy some coffee.

Notch another one up for political activism.

It's old news, but I thought I would mention it again

This is the old story ....

"The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill marks a crucial step toward a Britain free from unnecessary red tape." - yep, such as parliamentary scrutiny.

It is part of the "Government's radical new agenda for regulatory reform"- this seems to mean removing parliamentary control of legislation and putting in the hands of ministers.

"The new Bill aims to make it simpler and faster for us to cut the burden of regulation" - hmmm, I thought the burden was a result of how much new legislation has been created. Maybe they mean is makes it faster to create new legislation and cuts all those bothersome type things like parliamentary process and voting.

"The Bill is essential to deliver our wider radical regulatory reform programme ... ambitious plans to simplify or reduce unnecessary bureaucracy across Government" - hmmmm, is parliament seen as unecessary bureaucracy? If you have one person making all the decisions, it's more efficient than a committee - though probably less effective for a democracy.

"enabling regulatory reform to be delivered swiftly and efficiently" - Hold on, I like my law making processes to be slow and thoughtful.

"This power to reform the law by order is intended to be used to implement" - Wait a minute - what do you mean intended? How about will only ever, ever be used in these specific cases, full stop. Intended implies it can grow.

Now more upto date ...

Well it has been watered down by the House of Lords and through committee, and it is supposed to have its report stage to the House of Lords tomorrow.

It's not over though, nor will this be the last time.

In world of warcraft language

The horde has 1800 points and is close to victory.
[Skeletor]: well done guys, gj
[Deathmask]: let's camp their GY
[Monsterbash]: yeah
[Doomslayer]: yeah
The alliance has captured the farm
The alliance has captured the mine
The alliance has captured the stable
The alliance has captured the blacksmith
[Skeletor]: What? Hey defend you guys
[Doomslayer]: Why don't you defend!
The alliance has captured the lumber mill
The alliance has 1800 points and is close to victory
The alliance wins
[Deathmask]: pawned, you @£!%%

Liberty, what liberty?

Emperor Joseph II of the Holy Roman Empire once said: "Everything for the people, nothing by the people."

His regime can best be described as enlightened absolutism, where the ruler is the "highest servant of the state" and exercises absolute power so as to provide for the general welfare of the population.

Enlightened absolutism is a nice example of dictatorship, an authoritarian state.

Fortunately, in England between 1642 and 1689, through a number of civil wars and revolutions our ancestors finally abolished monarchical absolutism and produced the bill of rights. There were of course a number of previous historical precedents fought for and made e.g. Magna Carta.

Since that time a slow path to an ever more democratic society has existed, with legislation enacted through the lower and upper houses. The ability of one person, to independently introduce legislation with no review or control has been curtailed and parliamentary democracy is part of our culture and heritage.

Step in the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill under which

(1) A Minister of the Crown may by order make provision for either or both of the following purposes—

(a) reforming legislation;
(b) implementing recommendations of any one or more of the United Kingdom Law Commissions, with or without changes.

In my view a nice way of saying "a minster may change the law"

The mechanism of control and review, is that

he considers that the conditions in subsection (2), where relevant, are satisfied in relation to that provision.
An order under section 1 may make such consequential, supplementary, incidental or transitional provision (including provision amending, repealing or replacing any legislation or other provision) as the Minister making it considers appropriate.

In my view a nice way of saying "if he feels the need to"

Adding the two gives "a minister may change the law if he feels the need to".

Monarchs don't hold the market on absolutism, just an historical precedent for it. This bill is a a big step in the wrong direction.