Online Democracy

In Labour’s Democracy Review, they argue for more IT and remote access and online balloting, they say

Carers, disabled members, shift workers, women and young members have argued it is the poor, disadvantaged and already under-represented who are least likely to have the time and resources to attend meetings. These points have been made particularly at the disability events we have had.

Who the fuck do you think are least likely to have internet access?

In the HuffPo article, they argue that Momentum is an example of how digital engagement creates activity and energy. In my book, Momentum has some questions to answer about it’s on-line democracy. (It’s closed source, and its IT Security Controls are not public and its segregation of duties is not published, and probably non-existent. )

In my short essay, https://davelevy.info/e-voting/, I say,

Bruce Schneier, in a 2004 essay, posed four requirements, that voting systems be fast, accurate, scalable and anonymous. To these I add, transparency.

E-voting systems struggle to meet the Schneier’s first four criteria and yet the last is possibly the most important; critically losers must trust that the result is accurate.

I say [much] more in articles on this blog tagged e-voting.

ooOOOoo

The HuffPo article posted the full review and I have mirrored the section on Digital Democracy on this site. The report itself is pretty moderate in its ambitions, restricting itself to improving training, asking all CLPs to have a web site and making the social media officer a specific role. No harm really; although it is important to maintain the collective nature of decision making in the Party, where remote attendance and postal votes isolate and allow non Party voices i.e. the right wing press to have a larger voice than our members then this must be opposed. …

Pointlessness or catastrophe

I don’t always agree with Seb Dance MEP, but his categorisation of Brexit  as having a choice between pointlessness and catastrophe he’s bang on.


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Labour & Education

Labour Party Conference is just two months away and so I am considering what I would like to see discussed. I think it important that we workout what a National Education Service means and so I with some help from some friends have developed the following words.

Conference notes

  1. that the government continues to promote privatisation of the schools system through academies and free schools, with a culture of competition based on ever-more onerous testing and Ofsted inspections. This is bad for students, school workers and society.
  2. our manifesto pledge to “ensure that all schools are democratically accountable…”
  3. our manifesto pledge to “abandon plans to reintroduce baseline assessments and launch a commission to look into curriculum and assessment, starting by reviewing Key Stage 1 and 2 SATs”

Conference believes that “public”/private and grammar schools are also incompatible with an egalitarian and democratic education system serving the many, not the few.

We call for the next Labour government to

  1. Immediately stop all academisations and the opening of any new academies or free schools.
  2. Place all state schools & FEs into full local authority control.
  3. Abolish “public”/private schools by taking them into local authority control.
  4. Ensure all schools are comprehensive, secular community schools, open to all.
  5. Immediately abolish Ofsted, all SATs tests and league tables.
  6. Restore national pay bargaining for teachers, implement the National Education Union’s maximum class size demands, and introduce a national Workload Charter.

(196 Words) with no Trigger.

I say with no trigger because motions to Labour Party conference must refer to an event between the publication of the National Policy Forum report and the 14th September. This is referred to by me, as an event trigger.

Motions need to be under 251 words long. So if you think I’ve missed anything important add or replace some of the demands and we’ll put them together at the composite meeting. If you get this through your CLP drop a comment on this blog. …

Accountability

I am finally free to read the Candidate by Alex Nunns; the beginning of the 2nd chpter is a series of quotes about the new system of electing a leader introduced in 2014, and it is clear that the Blairite focus on Presidential systems was central to what they thought they’d done. In fact, they’re right and the Party remains unstable because the leadership is only accountable to the membership through OMOV. …

Perez: cycles, bubbles & golden ages

Carlota Perez in TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTIONS AND FINANCIAL CAPITAL: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages in a, to my mind, successful, attempt to explain Kondratiev Long Waves, creates a theory of cycles of technology and output. I find her arguments, illustrated by powerful historical example to be compelling,  I cannot understand why her theories are not more popular.

She argues that there have since the turn of the 19th Century been five technology revolutions, of motion and textiles, the original British industrial revolution, followed by railways, steel, oil & cars and latterly silicon, computers and the internet.

I came across the ideas a number of years ago and was revising an unpublished blog article which includes a piece about her book and ideas; I made the above collage and thought I’d share it now. … …

Prescience

Written 4¾ years ago; the mechanism is web site blocking …

This mechanism is also likely to become the arena of commercial competition as rich corporations, or maybe even political parties seek to damage and restrict their competitors by classifying their web sites and advertising material as somehow required to be restricted.

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Quality of Capital

I just found my copy of David Warsh’s “Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations”. I have promised myself that I would review it but on studying the dust cover, I find it says that the long term paradox of falling costs, is explained by internalising i.e. to the growth process, technological change. Such a simple insight, which from today’s view point seems so obvious. It may have impacted the capitalist economists more than the Marxians. …

Nice class of person

I have been reminded this week, of Robert Townsend’s book “Up the Organisation”; one gem goes something like this,

Don’t have reserved car parking spaces for senior managers, you should be in early enough to get the space you want and meet a nice class of person in the staff car park!

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Who got there first?

A friend has been quoting to me, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance”. It’s why I used part of the phrase in the last article, but who said it first; whom are we quoting?

This article provides a surprising answer, i.e. it’s not Thomas Jefferson and its best iteration maybe from Aldous Huxley,

“The price of liberty, and even of common humanity, is eternal vigilance.”

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