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A paean to petitioning…..

I took part in an Petitions round table last week run run by the consultation institute. The round table format means you really get chance to talk through specific points and the group was all very fired up about what the new Local Democracy Bill will mean – and specifically what it will mean for

iphones – gadget lust or actually useful?

Research proposal submitted!!! I’m enjoying a weekend of leisure having sent the final draft off last week – just have to wait for the research committee meeting next monoth now. Leisure is perhaps stretching the definition slightly as a lot of it has been spent cleaning and sorting in preparation for going off to the


Europetitions and other new things

I have just spent a couple of days in London for the launch of our new EU funded project:   Europetition which has been designed to do two things: To build up clusers of local petitioning organisations – usually Local Authorities – in our 5 pilot regions so that they can share best practice, protocol and


Pilot questionnaire?????

I have decided to get on and set-up my pilot questionnaire in order to establish a benchmark of behaviour from the pilot sites so that I can then see whether or not the work at the sites is having any effect.  I plan to administer the same questionnaire to all stakeholder groups as I think

The PLU problem online – a short thought

Looking at the world with a social captial filter on we need to remember the three types of social captial – Bonding, Bridging and Linking (Putman).  One of the notable features about most online communities is their homogeneity – ie their bonding capital.  Given the need for formal democracy to be inclusive I need ways

What was the question anyway?

Still at it with the actual research question so am trying to come at it from a different angle.  This post is as I was at the dentist earlier in the week and trying to explain what I was doing to Charlie (the dentist) as an avoidance technique – which is of course foolish as