From 'swivel-eyed loons' to lesbian queens': what fresh hell for the Tories? | Hadley Freeman

http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/21/swivel-eyed-loons-lesbian-queens


Marco's iPhone

To encourage creativity, Mr Gove, you must first understand what it is

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/17/to-encourage-creativity-mr-gove-understand

Democracy 2.0: is it possible to improve "democracy"?

The conservative party is pushing forward the hypothesis of a referendum on EU in 2017, and it is very easy to follow the reactions and gauge some of the feelings from different sides of the country. Many articles and blogs, with thousands of comment are open to scrutiny and they all lead to a question: does any vote really count the same? 

I do wonder, for example, what type of matter could be a subject for a popular referendum and what not. What are topics deemed too "complicated" to be decided by "direct" democracy and which other are indeed destined to be indirectly managed by elected politicians? It is surely not an easy matter to elaborate on such a distinction, however there might be a fairer way to extend the mandate to the people, taking away much of the burden from our troubled politicians of any orientation. It would be indeed plausible, to involve the people in referendum-like events, in which every voter is called to have its say on multiple matters, but ONLY after showing a minimum amount of competence on any of those matter. For example, a voter called to decide for the UK to stay or leave the EU, there should be few questions before the vote (yes, even multiple choice ones), in order to validate its vote. No knowledge = no meaningful vote. 

Using such an approach, everyone even vaguely interested in politics would automatically be engaged in learning more, debating and eventually reaching a more educated position on any matter. The system would basically purge the voting system from the "noise" coming from deeply mislead and often substantially unfounded ideas, rooting in tabloid-culture and pub-talking, which do actually poison the system, generating a useless and dangerous background noise. 

Many politicians should also take the test and much probably some of them would fail it. Populism and demagogy are not indeed instruments of democracy: particularly in a world becoming more and more complicated, networked and informed. Let's get a new way to be democratic.