john ndege

david cameron stole my policy idea

it looks like david cameron has “stolen” my democratisation/localisation policy idea. now unfortunately i don’t have the time to fastidiously examine the 32 page policy doc (including references). however, i have taken a quick flick through and see some promise - despite some eye brow raising omissions…

one thing i like - a series of referenda to establish city mayors in 12 of the UK’s largest cities. to quote the doc an elected mayor “can provide the city with strong leadership. Individual leadership of these councils can benefit local citizens by improving the clarity of municipal decision-making and enhancing the prestige of their city.” (my own bolding).  though, lets hope these mayors get decent powers.

one thing i dislike - this is more an omission - there is no commitment to pay local councillors a decent salary. if i remember correctly the average age of a councillor is in the 60s. few people can afford the time to do the job because it takes 1 full day a week plus evenings (on 5k a year). what full time working person can really afford to do that? the only councillors i’ve met or heard of are those who are retired, university students or working part time. It would be good if councillors were paid something around 15,000 for 3 days work a week. Then they could work elsewhere part time if they wished. The current system excludes countless people from taking the job as a serious primary earner and its hurting our democracy.

* brownie points for the policy doc - it had a decent amount of data backing up its assertions.

why can't politics be more like technology?

successful technology firms are built on data. analysing customer habits, tracking user engagement and making informed decisions based on a-political results. it’s almost a given now amongst web startups (at least) that success is the result of your product - and how do you know do you know where to shift that product? simple - you listen to your users. that feedback may be whispered in the numbers of your analytics page or capitalized and exclamated in an angry email: this is the precious “data” of which i speak.

and yet i rarely see public policy mirroring real data - and if it does claim to be grounded in “research” the fingerprints of manipulation and statistical manufacturing are all over the evidence. A simple example is crime in Newark, New Jersey - USA. Most of the city’s dreadful street murders took place at night and yet the proportion of police officers on night duty was abysmally low. when the new mayor was elected he put more policemen on night duty. surprise surprise - the murder rate fell substantially. it is simple “common sense” approaches like these which rely on data which can greatly improve the lives of everyone on this planet. naturally the police officers forced to do night duty were not too happy - but was this not a fair price to pay for public safety and peace of mind? I think so.

all of this is not to say that politics could ever be a game of mathematical calculation, numbers and spreadsheets. everything in society, yes everything is political. “Man is by nature a political animal” - Aristotle. However, there are spheres of overwhelming consensus, methodological norms and general feelings of fairness that can bring us to a-political-ish data from which we can begin our charge of reform.

you may fear that i am supporting some sort of technocracy. a crazy idea where civil servants beaver about hatching crcakpot formulaes to fix potholes in gateshead. hardly. 

i simply think that though politics must start with values - it should be driven by realities. it should be driven by data.

hazel blears - epic fail

it started with this - then this - then that. TKO