(I wrote this post on the train this morning but didn’t get a decent wifi connection until I arrived at my hotel.)
The digiCC workshop roadshow is on the road again! Today I’m travelling to Elgin so I can co-host tomorrow’s workshop for CC and Registered Tenant Organisations members from Moray and nearby LAs. I’m very grateful to co-hosts Tracey Rae and Alison McLaughlin of Moray Council for all they and their colleagues have done to make this event work.
My better half pointed out recently that I described the Scottish Government as the top/first level, and Community Councils as the bottom/third level. This is interesting for two reasons:
I’m very much looking forward to tomorrow’s event, in County Buildings in Ayr. We have designed this event, and similar events in Moray, Angus and Scottish Borders, to explore two main questions
Partly so I can get it clear in my own head, here are the themes I’m currently working on, and the other work I’d also like to do if I ever get the chance!
Elsewhere I’ve stated that some CC websites are ‘abominations’. While this is true, I’m embarrassed to say that none of the CC websites I run are perfect.
I used a questionnaire on the Communities, Parishes and Local Councils website to check them. Allowing for 20 of the 95 questions being irrelevant to CCs, because parish councils can do lots more than CCs, the scores are not what I want. CC names are disguised to avoid embarrassing them.
| CC website | score | % |
| XXXX | 59 | 61% |
| YYYYY | 49 | 52% |
| ZZZZZ | 52 | 55% |
I’m sure we all want to live in a fairer society. But who says what this is, and how can we get there? It’s clear that a government can’t just impose a fairer society – there’d be a massive dichotomy between the imposers and the imposees, even if other parts worked. I’m pretty sure that imposees would reject the whole thing anyway, just because it was imposed, even if everything else about it was great.
Fortunately, the Scottish Government isn’t going down that road. As the Scottish Community Alliance puts it, Continue reading
Following on from the workshop we ran in January at Napier (blog post, outcomes report), I’m running four more this autumn.
All community councillors are welcome – the events are free and your ideas and experience are are the magic ingredients that will make the events work! For example, you might know how to gather great a Facebook audience, or have crowd-sourced opinions on planning matters. Others will love to hear how it’s done!
The events are free to attend, and lunch will be provided, but we can’t reimburse travel expenses. Continue reading
On Wednesday I gave a presentation which was coherent and informative, and yet made up partly while I was listening to someone else’s but mostly in response to questions from the audience as I was speaking. Whenever I’ve given presentations before, I’ve mumbled incoherently as I drowned in my own nervousness. So throwing me in the deep end is perhaps the way to get good presentations out of me. (Peter, don’t you dare!) Continue reading
Wise words from Angus Hardie of the Scottish Community Alliance:
I see community empowerment and ‘local’ democracy as two sides of the same coin with something akin to our system of community councils (albeit properly resourced, probably restructured and with effective national representation) as the bridge between the two. So while some might take issue on the detail, if the purpose of empowering communities is not about working towards genuine local democracy, could someone let me know what it is?
(emphasis added)
Here’s the full article, including a message from Marco Biagi MSP and pieces on ‘Caltongate’, the Big Lunch, community growing, euro-funding, Iceland’s financial crisis, COP21 and Comrie Development Trust
It should be obvious that I’m in favour of IT being used to improve democracy. So clusterfraks like this annoy are doubly annoying: the small part is that IT is getting a bad name, but the large part, even allowing for The Register‘s journalising licence, is that many eligible people may not be able to vote. Bah!
(post-title shamelessly stolen from The Register)
Bruce's IT-ish world 