-
Recent Posts
- Vexatious requests guidance: weakening our power to make the state speak
- The temptation of celebrity power: the Police and Jimmy Savile
- Steve Jobs, Martin Heidegger, Apple and the new culture of technology
- What is the university in an age of social media?
- How the free press threatens the UK’s media and political establishment
Archives
Category Archives: Government
How the free press threatens the UK’s media and political establishment
As we await the Leveson report, expected later this year, the debate over press regulation has intensified. The allegations that have emerged after the Jimmy Savile investigations, Tom Watson’s question in Parliament, the resignation of the Director General of the … Continue reading
The death of Daniel Morgan and the (im)possibility of Justice
A man who really fights for justice must lead a private, not a public, life if he is to survive for even a short time.” —Socrates, in Plato’s Apology, 31d–32a Daniel Morgan died with an axe in his face. We … Continue reading
Posted in Government, local government, philosophy, public sector, statesmanship, transparency
Tagged Crown Prosecution Service, current-events, Daniel Morgan, Leveson Inquiry, Metropolitan Police, Natural justice, police investigations, Political Justice, political legitimacy, political repression, Politics, United States
18 Comments
It didn’t start with Savile: BBC’s internal crisis has been brewing for years
The headlines about the Jimmy Savile scandal have rocked the BBC to its core. They have revealed that the BBC, long considered the standard in British Broadcasting, if not the world, has a corporate cultural crisis. Some observers will believe … Continue reading
Posted in Government, public sector, transparency
Tagged BBC, George Entwistle, Jimmy Savile, leadership, Meirion Jones, Newsnight, Panorama, Savile, Violence and Abuse
Leave a comment
No time for history? Take a video tour of a County Record Office
In a previous blog, on Jimmy Savile and the Shaw report I mentioned the need to visit the County Record Office to know how our collective memory was stored. For many people, this may prove difficult because of the … Continue reading
Posted in Government, local government, localism, public sector, scholarship, transparency
Tagged County Record Office, Essex, Leicester, Leicestershire, Rutland, video, Youtube
Leave a comment
Leveson’s fatal flaw: the Queen
Looking back on the Leveson Inquiry, it is clear that the review was fatally flawed from the start. Although the terms of reference focused on the press, media relationship, the underlying issue was the way power is distributed and used … Continue reading
Posted in Government, philosophy, republicanism, statesmanship
Tagged Crown, Leveson, Leveson Inquiry, Monarch, Monarchy, News of the World, Queen, United States
1 Comment
Political discourse in the age of always on recording devices: the death of statesmanship?
When Mitt Romney’s speech with the comment about the 47% was disclosed to the media, it changed the campaign. The way the leak occurred revealed the perils of political speech in the age of always on recording devices.[1] Political discourse … Continue reading
Beyond Government Transparency 3.0: Augmented Democratic Decision Making
The following post is influenced by Dan Slee’s excellent post on Augmented Reality and the future of local government communications. The blog argues that transparency data mapped to location and context can be used for augmented decision making. What this … Continue reading
Open data creates inefficient government and why this is good
The promise that open data will improve government efficiency is misplaced. Every administration claims it will make government effective and efficient. We had Clinton’s Reinventing Government and Bush’s reforms after 11 September. Neither has delivered as it promised. In large … Continue reading
Have hypertext and hyperlink been over-hyped? The view from local government.
Since the dawn of the social media age, we have been treated to various claims that hypertext and hyperlinks will change the way we work, read, and write. There were even claims that hyperlinks will subvert hierarchies. Yet, … Continue reading
Democracy and justice in the UK are we training to ask the right questions?
To find things out, we need to ask questions. The quality of our questions will depend on what we already know. At the same time, the quality of our questions will decide the answers we get. In court, we rely … Continue reading
