Make democracy work for every citizen

A REALLY constructive online event on the subject of Citizen Democracy has left me feeling both inspired and daunted by the scale of the task.
Organised by our local LibDems (I am not a member), it consisted of a talk by the very impressive Dr Ian Kearns, co-author of Citizens’ Britain, followed by a question-and-answer session.
Basically it was about how to transfer as much power as possible from elected elites to communities.
It involved educating people about how councils and the machinery of government work, and how they can participate and make their voices heard.
We live in a state that doesn’t know what to do with people when they want to be more than just ‘subjects’ or ‘consumers’, he said.  We’re not set up to cope with hundreds of thousands of people wanting to get involved.
Perhaps we need a Citizens’ Assembly, like the one that finally managed to achieve abortion law reform in Ireland.
Or something along the lines of Taiwan, which recruited computer hackers to help spread information about where people could get Covid masks, by creating a ‘mask map’, and enlisted ordinary people to help challenge misinformation about the pandemic online.
Or Better Reykjavik, an open online forum used by the Icelandic capital’s authorities to discuss ideas about projects and policy.
We SOS admins have been saying among ourselves that maybe what an independent non party political city council could become, or could set up as an extra, is a kind of citizens’ assembly, where everybody’s voice could be heard.
It’s happening elsewhere in the county. Check out Open Westbury’s website. We are not alone in feeling disenchanted. We need to reconfigure local government so that it represents us all, and not just one majority party.

Where the People Friendly money went

TRAFFIC schemes may stop and start but the consultancy gravy train rolls on.
An investigation by Auto Express has found that £412,000 of our money was invested (or wasted, depending on your point of view) in closing the city centre to through traffic.
Of that, £250,622 – yes, a quarter of a million of our hard-earned pounds – went on ‘consultancy and monitoring’ fees. When anyone living or working in Salisbury could have told them for free that the project was poorly designed and ill-timed.
We’re following a predictable and costly outsourcing pattern in public spending here.
Unitary councils such as Wiltshire are put in charge of huge, diverse areas but are kept on such a tight rein that they can’t handle big projects in-house, and have to hand over Boris’s handouts to private companies to help them sort things out.
The results, as we see from our recent experience, can be less than impressive. 

I gather that the Swindon & Wiltshire Local Enterprise Partnership are covering the council's losses. But it's still public money wafting around.
Now I come to think of it, doesn’t that just about sum up the handling of the coronavirus pandemic? 
A massive redistribution of public money, yours and mine, to private sector cronies of the current administration. Look how successful that’s been!
And apart from that 60-odd per cent, what happened to the rest of the LTZ money? 
According to Auto Express, £64,800 was spent on construction (must have been those barriers), £4,328 on road signs (presumably including the ones that told potential visitors to stay on the A36 and head straight on past Salisbury) and £92,250 on enforcement cameras which will at least come in handy when the scheme – hopefully in a much more people-friendly form – is inevitably resurrected.
Because there’s nothing wrong with trying to make Salisbury greener and more people-friendly. You just have to ask local people what that might mean, before you fritter away their taxes.

Oh, and by the way, suspending the project cost another £10-15,000.

Salisbury needs an independent democratic voice

WE seem to be inundated with “public consultations” all of a sudden.
You name it, Wiltshire Council is asking what we think about it.
Whether it’s sites for new housing development (a foregone conclusion), cycle lanes (a load of old bollards), or a River Park which will reduce the city’s future flood risk while handily creating a much more attractive waterfront to tempt developers, this is the moment to speak your mind.
So much is going on that I hope the members of our recently-formed Facebook group, SOS – Save Our Salisbury, don't feel they're suffering from information overload!
I'm really pleased that so many people have seized the opportunity to air their views on our page.

And in helping to force the withdrawal of the unpopular Low Traffic Zone, for the time being at least, they’ve already chalked up one success.
At a time when everyone's forced to spend so much time indoors, what we've created is a widely accessible channel of communication with a remotely-based local authority that now has to conduct all its business online. 

Somewhere for people to say proactively what they really think, rather than simply ticking boxes in questionnaires designed to produce one particular answer. And we can make sure they aren't ignored.
It's not perfect, of course, and it never will be while some people don’t have the tech to take part, but it's easier for people to see what's going on than back in the day when everything important was discussed and rubber-stamped miles away at Trowbridge in front of the proverbial one man and a dog.
It is, of course, election year, and there’s nothing like the possibility of being booted out of office to concentrate the minds of councillors on keeping in touch with their voters.
But how much does it achieve to consult people once the options have already been pared down to one?
I’m not saying don’t do it, but just don’t pretend that by doing it, you’ve covered all the bases. This is one reason why there’s such a disconnect between politics and the general population.
As life gets more and more complicated, we need to evolve ways of ensuring that the Average Joe (or Joanne) doesn’t feel left out, or left behind. Communities have got to be involved with developments before plans are worked up and before so much has been invested that there's no turning back.
And this is why I’m so proud of what SOS is already achieving. A revival of local grassroots democracy is our aim. It’s a big ask, but an awful lot of people are responding very positively.

Lesson of the Laverstock monolith

IT was only an obelisk on the Laverstock downs. 

Just like dozens that have suddenly appeared the world over.

I’d hazard a guess that its creators were simply copying the original that created such a stir when it was  discovered in the Utah desert. Maybe a better way of expressing that thought is that they were inspired by it, and thought it would give us all a bit of fun.

And in these depressing times it did just that, creating a little buzz of excitement, something to marvel at, something to get out in the fresh air to visit and yes, to touch it, to take in a little piece of its magic, because we love to think that there is something out there that we don’t instantly understand. 

Much the same phenomenon was at work with corn circles. Although people have shown time and again how it can be done, there are still some people who refuse to believe that they are created by humans. And there’s still a part of many more of us, that wishes these astounding works of art were  truly otherworldly.

Because once we’ve analysed and dissected everything in that horrible way that humans have, in our insatiable quest for knowledge, there’s something in our psyche that still yearns for the unknown, the unknowable.

Especially when what we do learn is so grim at the moment.

So to the miserable toad or toads who uprooted the monolith, dragged it downhill, and took with it a small joy for so many people, I hope you have a bloody rotten 2021.

To the runners who tried so gallantly to rescue it, thank you, and well done. You’re on the side of the angels.

Please, whatever happens this year, grab small moments of happiness like this wherever you find them. Be hopeful, and feel sorry for those who don’t know what it means.