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Just over a month ago, I helped out at a people’s assembly in Brixton, a neighbourhood of the inner south London at the end of an Underground line, to act as the facilitator of a group discussion. I have been late posting on this, as this post stalled as I struggled to figure out several…
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Frome, a mid-sized town in the English county of Somerset A few of us have predicted that radical assembly-based parties could be The Next Big Thing in politics. But how would one actually work? Assemblies What do we mean by assembly-based? This would partly mean that the party would use the incredible potential of randomly-selected…
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Why am I so prone to bending covers? As the former CEO of Oxfam, the venerable charity for global poverty relief, Danny Sriskandarajah has met with many well-known figures. Among them was Prince Philip: As I began to reply that I had been drawn to an association built on shared values like democracy, Prince Philip…
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I’ve taken a break from this blog for a few weeks, so this post has come later than it should. I was lucky to get invited to the national gathering of the Humanity Project, a meeting of dozens of assembly organisers at a conference centre in Staffordshire. Though they have done meet-ups before, I got…
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(A view of Penzance. No sign of any pirates.) I’ve discussed in an earlier post about the problem that citizens’ assemblies cost so much money to run, and possible solutions. This is why I was intrigued to find articles about a citizens’ assembly in the southwestern corner of England. It was run for only £1,500.…
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And now for something a little different, a bit of satire that builds on a point I made in an earlier post. Anne, the new treasurer, is presenting her first budget to the club board. “…For too long, Sandford Tennis Club has been let down by a leaky roof. During their long rule, the Tennis…
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In an earlier post, I reviewed a book about Independents for Frome (IfF), who in 2011 took control of the Somerset town’s parish council and showed that a lot more can be done at this often neglected level of government. I’ve rather liked the story, because it challenges people’s assumptions about how politics should work.…
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If future governments fail in the way that recent ones have, we will hit a point where the public’s patience snaps altogether and they try more radical alternatives on offer from extremists and charlatans. […] And when it does, politicians will find themselves asking: why didn’t we do things differently when we had the chance?…
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For the past eight years, “Google Murray Bookchin!” has been a slow-burning internet meme. When you google Murray Bookchin, you come across one of the most underrated philosophers of the 20th century, an eco-minded anarchist who eventually drifted onto his own path. But if you want a more detailed introduction to Bookchin, his ideas and…
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This is a quick post to point out something interesting I’ve found. I’ve been in touch with a few organisations that are working to advance assembly democracy — decision-making through assemblies of ordinary people, whether randomly selected or not. There have been a few of these springing up in the UK, from Newcastle to Norwich…
Assembly Project 