Tuesday 3 August 2010

Big Society? Do me a favour.

The Tories thought that they were being terribly clever by asking the public, and civil servants, for suggestions about government policy. Some goateed git in 'directional' spectacles introduced Cameron to the word 'crowdsourcing' and explained that it would make him look cool and open-minded.

9500 citizens were dumb enough to think that this was something more than a PR exercise and suggested things (mostly, I suspect, along the lines of 'torture anyone who looks like a paedo').

Has the Listening Government adopted any of these suggestions?
Don't be ridiculous. Tories only respect the rich and famous. Civil servants only respect each other. The rest of us don't count (and in most cases, we shouldn't, as we have neither the time, education or training to become experts -just like politicians).


The government's first attempt at crowdsourcing its coalition programme has ended without a single government department expressing a willingness to alter any policy.
Crowdsourcing involves soliciting knowledge and expertise from the public to help find solutions to problems. The coalition asked the public to respond to its programme on government websites. It received 9,500 replies online.
However, its formal responses, published on each website, shows Whitehall regarded the process largely as an endorsement of what it was already doing.
The whole thing's a shameless rip-off of Labour's patronising and pointless 'Big Conversation'. Remember that? No, me neither.

2 comments:

Sue's Blog said...

By asking the ‘public’ for their opinions the Con-Dems can then blame the ‘public’ if things go badly wrong – saying that they were just doing what people wanted.


PS have you heard from the elusive Mr Uppal yet??????

Maybe you could suggest to the ‘crowdsourcing’ thingy that MPs should reply to their constituents’ e-mails within an acceptable time-frame.

The Plashing Vole said...

Good point, and that's a good idea. I haven't heard from the Dear Leader yet. Wonder what he's up to.