Here’s a map I’ve made of the five crossings in the London Borough of Sutton that are under review.

Download the map data as KML for Google Earth etc.

Councillor Lester Holloway is campaigning to retain the crossing at Collingwood Road / Bushey Road as has been reported in the Sutton Guardian and on his blog.

In the BBC radio car

Today, Eric Pickles and the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) released their spending data for April 2009-March 2010. (My easy-to-download zip file is here.) I was interviewed by Eddie Mair on Radio 4′s PM programme about my Armchair Auditor website and software which helps people to understand how their councils and the government spends their money. Scrub forward to 17:30 for the start of the story. Thankfully I didn’t get the Paxman vs. Howard treatment.

To his credit, Mr Pickles never misses an opportunity to assert that there is an army of armchair auditors poised to descend on government spending data, pull it apart and send it back with a smile and a thoughtfully-reduced budget. Right now the truth is that we’re probably closer to being a little platoon of armchair auditors than an army, but great things come from small beginnings. There’s no point trying to change society unless you’re an optimist.

Excepting the hardcore of open data activists, most people think that 10,000-row spreadsheets of government spending data are dull and inaccessible. They’re right, of course. But you don’t have to go very far to find someone that cares passionately about government spending — whether they think it’s too much, not enough or just in the wrong places. Give those people great tools to surf their way through the froth of data, make sense of it and get into informed conversations with their neighbours and the people spending the money and you’re creating a genuine power shift from the government to the governed. By this time next year we can know more about public spending than most people in government knew about it this time last year. That’s a big deal.

All the local councils should be publishing their spending data by January. The central government departments and quangos will be doing it too. Armchair Auditor is free software. Find a Ruby developer in your area and set it up for yourself. Hack it to meet your local needs. Join the army.

“I make no apology for being a committed Christian. However, it is categorically untrue that I believe homosexuality to be an illness and I am deeply offended that The Observer has suggested otherwise. I have spent 20 years working with disturbed people who society have turned their back on and are not often supported by state agencies; drug addicts, alcoholics, the mentally ill and the homeless that I and my charitable friends in the public sector have tried to help over the years. The idea that I am prejudiced against gay people is both false and insulting.”

I do not speak for Mrs Stroud or the Conservative Party and I have no other information on this matter than what I have posted here.

Hat tip to Cardiff Blogger (@cardiff_blogger) for posting this first.

“With Labour and Plaid out of the race locally, only John Dixon and the Lib Dems can be trusted to stand up for people in our area!”

“With Labour now a spent force both locally and nationally, I believe I am the clear alternative here to Cameron’s Conservatives.”

“Remember, with Labour and Plaid out of the race here, only the Lib Dems can keep the Tories out!”

“Don’t forget. In our area, only the Liberal Democrats can stop Cameron’s Conservatives. Labour are a spent force — they don’t even have any councillors in Cardiff North!”

“The race to be Cardiff North’s next MP is set to be a close-run contest. Local Lib Dem campaigner, John Dixon, is providing a strong challenge to the Tories.”

And to top all that we get one of the Lib Dems’ customary bar charts:

Get the message? That’s just from one leaflet.

If you didn’t know better, you might be forgiven for thinking that Cardiff North is a Tory marginal seat where the Lib Dems are the main challengers and Labour are “out of the race” with no realistic prospect of winning.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Cardiff North is a Labour marginal under serious threat from the Tories. Labour have held the seat since 1997 when they took it from the Tories. John Dixon and the Lib Dems are lying to suggest otherwise.

But don’t take my word for it. Let’s look at the facts.

We all know that the Lib Dems are very fond of bar charts. I’m keen on them too. Unlike the Lib Dems, I like ones that are drawn to scale, accurately labelled and that show data relevant to the point I’m attempting to make.

First, let’s see the most recent general election result in Cardiff North:

We can see that Labour hold Cardiff North with a majority of 1,146 votes. It would take a 1.27% swing to the Tories to unseat Labour here. This seat is very marginal based on the 2005 general election results. The Lib Dems are in a distant third place with less than half the votes of Labour. Based on these results, the other parties could quite genuinely be described as “out of the race”. Catherine Taylor-Dawson standing for the Rainbow Dream Ticket polled just a single vote in 2005. Never was a deposit lost with such panache.

This bar chart looks very different from the Lib Dems’ one which, using a statistical airbrushing technique that would shame Stalin, eliminates the bar for Labour entirely and fails to show the very slender gap between Labour and the Tories. How did that happen? They cherry-picked their data not just from a convenient election but displayed it in a way that’s entirely irrelevant to how voting works in the general election.

In other words, John Dixon and the Lib Dems in Cardiff North have lied with statistics.

Here’s how they did it.

Based on recent elections, all the results show that the Tories and Labour are the two most popular parties in Cardiff North. We’ve seen the 2005 general election results above. Labour won with the Tories very close behind.

In 2007 there was an election for the Welsh Assembly. Usefully, the Welsh Assembly constituencies are the same areas as the constituencies for the UK Parliament at Westminster. Here’s how that election turned out in Cardiff North:

Once again we see the Tories and Labour as the two biggest parties by far. The Tories won this seat in the Welsh Assembly with a comfortable margin over Labour. The Lib Dems were in a distant third place. Obviously, these election results don’t help the Lib Dems’ case that they, and not Labour, are the main challengers to the Tories in Cardiff North. Which, of course, is why the Lib Dems don’t mention them.

In desperation, the Lib Dems turned to the local council elections in 2008. While Cardiff Council is a different body to the Westminster Parliament, the Lib Dems have chosen to use the council election voting patterns as a guide to the relative strength of the parties in the area. You can draw your own conclusions on the extent to which this is a valid exercise.

There are eight Cardiff Council wards in the same area as the Cardiff North Westminster constituency. They are:

• Gabalfa
• Heath
• Lisvane
• Llandaff North
• Llanishen
• Portprennau/Old St. Mellons
• Rhiwbina
• Whitchurch and Tongwynlais

Let’s have another look at their bar chart:

I’m going to label this Lib Dem effort as Chart A.

Given that I’m the kind of pedantic, dull chap that prefers their bar charts drawn to scale and with a bar for every party, I’ll redraw it properly. I’ll call this Chart B:

While my Chart B is based on exactly the same data as the Lib Dems’ Chart A, drawing it properly shows something very unusual that isn’t apparent in the Lib Dems’ own chart: Labour and Plaid Cymru don’t have any councillors in Cardiff North.

We can also see more clearly that when the correct scale is applied, the Lib Dems have fewer councillors relative to the Tories than their own bar chart would suggest. The Lib Dems’ bar chart shows them as having at least half as many councillors as the Tories. In fact, the Lib Dems have five councillors and the Tories have 13. Scale matters.

It’s also notable that there are three independent councillors. Should we infer from this that independents are more popular in Cardiff North than Labour? Hardly.

Now the Lib Dems aren’t actually trying to hide the fact that Labour don’t have any councillors here. In fact, they mention that point specifically in their leaflet to bolster their case that “Labour are a spent force locally”.

But how do we explain the anomaly between Labour having no councillors in Cardiff North, yet they hold the seat at Westminster and put in a strong second place in the Welsh Assembly elections?

That’s down to the first-past-the-post system used for the council elections. In the 2008 council elections, Labour were the second biggest party in the eight “Cardiff North” wards in terms of votes but got no councillors at all. They came in second place in six of the eight wards but won none of them. In the “winner takes all” first-past-the-post system, Labour’s strong showing across all eight wards counts for nothing as it’s not sufficiently concentrated in any ward to win them councillors.

Here is Chart C, the number of votes each party got in the eight Cardiff North wards in the 2008 council elections:

And now we’re back to the familiar story of Cardiff North: The Tories and Labour are the two biggest parties with the Lib Dems a distant third.

Chart C is the bar chart that the Lib Dems should have used but that they don’t want you to see. Unlike Charts A and B, it shows the relative strength of the vote for the parties in the Cardiff North area in a recent election. And unlike the Lib Dems’ chart, it correctly reflects the fact that the council ward boundaries within the Cardiff North area mean nothing whatsoever in a Westminster election. The number of councillors the parties have locally is an entirely inaccurate reflection of local voters’ preferences across the whole area. It is utterly disproportionate representation.

In Cardiff North, all the votes for each party across the whole constituency are added together to elect the MP. It makes no difference at all what the relative strength of the parties in each ward is. But that’s what the Lib Dems chose to show, because it’s the only set of figures that supports their entirely bogus case that Labour are weaker than the Lib Dems in Cardiff North.

Out of all the data on recent elections and all the ways of presenting that data, John Dixon and the Lib Dems in Cardiff North have chosen the one anomalous case that least represents local opinion as expressed at the ballot box and best represents something entirely untrue that they want you to believe.

That’s how to lie with statistics, Liberal Democrat style.

The Lib Dems were advocating voting tactically against both Labour and the Green Party on the entirely false claim that they “couldn’t win”. As it turned out, Labour polled much higher than the Lib Dems in London and the Greens got a single MEP, albeit on a lower vote, just like the Lib Dems. For a party that supports proportional representation and campaigns strongly against what it sees as the shortcomings of first-past-the-post, this was the most unbelievable hypocrisy.

Remember these bar charts whenever you hear the Lib Dems talk about how we need a new kind of politics. Well we certainly do — and one where the voters can at least expect the parties to be truthful about straightforward things like previous election results and how the electoral system works.

• The Straight Choice where I downloaded John Dixon’s election leaflet. You can add any leaflets you receive to this website so that all parties’ claims can be better scrutinised.
• Matthew Somerville (in a personal capacity) advised on administrative areas and boundary changes
• Cardiff Council who advised on wards and from whose website I downloaded election results

If you like this kind of thing, I recommend Darrell Huff’s classic book How to Lie with Statistics and the complementary volume by Mark Monmonier, How to Lie with Maps.

The story also says that I reported the Lib Dems’ leaflets to the police as I suspected they may have broken electoral law. This is true. However, the police have recently informed me that having considered the matter and consulted the Electoral Commission they can see no offences being committed and therefore will be discontinuing their investigation.

While it seems that the Lib Dems’ leaflets are legal I maintain my original view that they are indecent, dishonest and untruthful. They may be “within the rules” but they are certainly outside anything I would recognise as honest politics. The leaflets distributed to every household in this borough by Paul Burstow and Tom Brake contain statements which are categorically untrue in the context of this election and which are likely to entirely mislead voters into switching their vote to not on the basis of being persuaded by a political argument but by a purely false tactical one.

I contacted the Lib Dems about my concerns shortly after writing my article on 15 May and the only response I have had was one from Sarah Ludford MEP (London region) saying that she finds no grounds for complaint. The Lib Dems have had ample opportunity to clarify, correct, withdraw or even substantially defend these leaflets but it would seem that they are entirely unwilling to discuss them seriously. While that is their right, the conclusion I draw from that is that the Lib Dems don’t want to defend their leaflets because they’re indefensible.

I would not like anyone to vote today thinking that there is any legal cloud over the Lib Dems in Sutton or elsewhere. But if you have formed the impression based on the Sutton Guardian story or anything I have written on this blog or elsewhere that the Lib Dems have been engaged in a deliberate attempt to steal votes from their opponents through deception I can confirm that that continues to be my honest assessment of the situation.

Today’s election for the European parliament isn’t a “close race” between the Conservatives and the Lib Dems in Sutton. There is no need to vote tactically for your second-choice party because you think that your first choice “can’t win in Sutton”. The European election system distributes seats roughly according to the percentage of votes for each party so that whether you support a major party or a minor one your vote will count towards electing a Euro MP and for many parties will have a very good chance of succeeding. If you live in Sutton, your vote will be added to all the other votes across the whole of London and used to elect 8 Euro MPs to represent the whole of London. There are no Euro MPs specifically for Sutton and the outcome of the vote in Sutton has no particular bearing on who gets elected other than in that Sutton’s votes comprise part of the London-wide total.

The most worrying aspect of this whole business was the conversation I had with a journalist who was quite adamant that “politicians lying isn’t a story”. While I question his news sense the sad fact remains that this is a common attitude among the public and leads to widespread voter apathy in which politicians’ claims are not only rightly not taken at face value but are frequently dismissed as outright lies without further consideration. The sorry conclusion of this story is that some politicians — in this case Paul Burstow, Tom Brake and other Lib Dems across the country — really will say anything to get elected, no matter how untrue it may be.

As the MPs’ expenses scandal continues there is a great deal of talk about changing the expenses system, the voting system and other aspects of our political life. While there may be some merit to some of these ideas, political reform in this country ultimately is in the hands of you, the voter, who can simply decide not to elect theives, fiddlers, liars or other kinds of rogues.

The polls are open until 10pm today. Your vote really does count. Use it.

—

This isn’t a party political thing apart from the entirely obvious fact that I think the Lib Dems shouldn’t profit from their deceit at the ballot box in this election. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again now: If anyone has any leaflets from any other political party trying anything similar anywhere in the country please upload them to The Straight Choice and send me a link and I’ll see what I can do about publicising it if it hasn’t already gained coverage elsewhere.

Obviously no-one told the LibDems. Yesterday they launched their election campaign leaflets in London which stoop to new lows in lying to the public to trick them into voting LibDem.

Three leaflets that I’ve seen all use a similar tactic of exploiting voters’ ignorance of the European electoral system into fooling them into voting tactically as they might in a general election for the UK Parliament in Westminster.

The leaflet from Paul Burstow, LibDem MP for the south London constituency of Sutton and Cheam, is typical.

“It’s so close here” declares the headline. “Elections in Sutton and Cheam are always a close finish between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives.” To the side is a big bar chart showing the LibDems with 47%, Conservatives on 41% and Labour with just 12%. “Here in Sutton and Cheam, elections are between the LibDems and the Conservatives”, a callout box reminds us.

It doesn’t say where these figures come from or give any indication as to why they might be relevant. And the fact is, they’re not just irrelevant but totally misleading. This is the result of the last general election for Westminster where the vote was indeed a close race between the LibDems and the Tories, with Labour trailing a poor third and unlikely ever to take the seat under Westminster’s first-past-the-post electoral system.

What the leaflet doesn’t say is that the electoral system for the European Parliament is totally different and there’s no need for anyone to vote tactically no matter which party they support.

The European election on 4th June isn’t an election “in Sutton and Cheam”. The Euro vote is grouped into large regions which return several Euro MPs each and the system uses a form of proportional representation, ensuring that very few votes are “wasted” on failed candidates that don’t get elected.

Sutton and Cheam voters will have their votes pooled together with all other Londoners and used to elect eight Euro MPs. It doesn’t make the slightest difference how close the vote may be between two parties in any Westminster constituency. People will be voting for a party and not a candidate and any party that gets around 8% of the total vote across the whole of London will get at least one Euro MP.

In the last Euro election in 2004, the LibDems didn’t come first but third. The Tories and Labour both took 3 seats in London each. The LibDems, the UK Independence Party and the Greens took one Euro MP each. And the LibDems’ vote at 15% across London trailed well behind Labour on 25%. So why aren’t the LibDems showing the figures that matter from the last Euro election rather than the ones from Westminster that have no significance at all?

The leaflet from Tom Brake, LibDem MP for Carshalton and Wallington in south London, takes the same trick to even more sordid depths.

We get a misleading bar chart similar to Paul Burstow’s, showing the Westminster constituency vote from the last general election. Here, as in Sutton and Cheam, the Westminster vote is close between the LibDems and the Tories with Labour coming a very distant unelectable third.

But the language of deceit here is even stronger. “This election is going to be a tight contest and every vote will make a difference… With Labour out of the race in Sutton, more and more people are backing the Liberal Democrats to win.”

Did you see what they did there? “Labour out of the race in Sutton”? It’s not a Sutton race, it’s a London race, and in that London race Labour are still in a stronger position than the LibDems even despite the floundering government in Westminster.

And what does it mean that “people are backing the Liberal Democrats to win”? This isn’t a winner-takes-all election like we have for Westminster. All the three big parties are likely to get at least one Euro MP out of eight in London and it’s very likely that smaller parties like the Greens and UKIP won’t come away empty-handed. The real question is whether the LibDems will be able to increase their single current London Euro MP to two or whether large chunks of their vote will get skimmed off at the top by a strong Tory party and at the bottom by people voting for smaller parties like the Greens and UKIP through genuine preference or as a protest against Westminster’s dirty politics.

The theme continues with more lies elsewhere on the leaflet. In a section attacking Labour we’re told that “Labour cannot win in Sutton… voting Labour will only help the Conservatives win”.

Excuse me? This is a proportional representation election. Voting Labour won’t help the Conservatives. It’ll help Labour. And once again the entirely misleading idea of whether anyone might “win in Sutton” totally obscures the relevant matter of London-wide voting.

The Greens get the same treatment. “The Greens have no chance of winning in Sutton”, the leaflet says. Well, in the last Euro election in 2004 the Greens picked up 8% of the London vote, giving them a single Euro MP just like the LibDems. Things will be a little harder for the Greens this time in London as there will now be only eight London Euro MPs compared with the previous nine, but the Greens are still in with a fighting chance. The LibDems’ leaflet is a shamefaced attempt to con Green voters into considering a “tactical” vote for another party even though they have no need to do so. In the Euro election, every vote really does count. Need I say again that it matters not one bit who might “win in Sutton” in this London-wide vote?

The LibDems’ lying leaflets aren’t just a south London phenomenon. Up in Camden, LibDem leaflets in the Holborn and St Pancras constituency use the familiar Westminster general election bar chart to show just how “close” things are between the LibDems and Labour there. In this case it does at least say that these are “general election” results but the complete irrelevance of them is not made clear. In fact, the Tories’ bar is marked with a big box that says, “Can’t win here” — once again trying to trick people into making a choice between the LibDems and Labour and giving up a potential Tory vote as futile. This is bait and switch. It’s no different to a financial adviser showing a client a set of performance figures for one investment while actually selling them another. The text continues the same theme: “Elections here in Holborn and St Pancras are always a close finish between your LibDem team and Gordon Brown’s Labour Party.” This is an outright lie: In the 2004 Euro election the LibDems in “Holborn and St Pancras” (really, the London region) came a distant third to the Tories and Labour.

I’ve been studying and following politics for 25 years and I’m well aware that election leaflets aren’t written under a solemn oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Depending on your affection for the party concerned, election handouts are either good public relations or evil propaganda, designed to put themselves in the best possible light and their opponents in the worst. A party or candidate’s own successes will be amplified and their shortcomings quietly sidestepped. Opponents will be lambasted for the slightest misjudgements and their genuine triumphs ignored. That’s how it goes and it’s hard to imagine that in a vigorous, healthy and above all a free democracy it could ever be much else.

But these LibDem leaflets go way beyond legitimate criticism of their opponents and into tricking the voters to abandon an opposing vote by giving the wholly false impression that there’s a need to vote tactically in the Euro election. That it’s the LibDems doing this — a party that campaigns hard to introduce proportional representation for the Westminster parliament as a supposedly “fairer” system — makes it all the more appalling. PR would give the LibDems a big boost at Westminster, but in an election where PR is already in place and doesn’t appear to work to their advantage in some areas the LibDems try to con the public into understanding less about how their vote works than if they hadn’t read the leaflet at all.

So I’m calling them on it. This isn’t politics but a subtle and insidious form of electoral fraud. These leaflets are deliberately designed to deceive, making statements that the LibDems know will be misinterpreted by almost everyone. The LibDems have been relatively unscathed by the Westminster expenses scandal. If nothing else they have far fewer MPs there to be making claims. But frankly I’d much rather a few LibDems had been caught feathering their own nests than deliberately trying to subvert democracy as they’re doing here. Sarah Ludford MEP, Paul Burstow MP, Tom Brake MP and the LibDems in Holborn and St Pancras have shown themselves completely unable to tell the truth where it counts and therefore unfit to hold public office — and I’ll say exactly the same thing for any party that tries to exploit and increase voters’ ignorance of the electoral system for their own advantage in this way.

There’s no need to vote tactically in the Euro elections on 4th June. Just vote for the party you prefer and there’s every chance you’ll help to elect at least one Euro MP for them. Don’t let the LibDems or anyone else fool you into thinking otherwise.

—

With thanks to all the people that have uploaded their election leaflets to The Straight Choice and to the Straight Choice team for making the whole thing possible.

We are particularly hoping to attract interest from Sutton’s minority groups to help improve the political representation of the borough’s minority ethnic communities.

There seem to be two assumptions in this statement. The first is that there aren’t enough ethnic minority councillors (hereafter “ME”) and the second that the ethnic composition of the council actually matters.

So, is Sutton Council too white, and if so, what would be an acceptable number of ME councillors? I don’t think it’s my job to allocate specific councillors into ethnic categories but I expect that the council does this, whether by self-reporting or otherwise. Nonetheless, you can take a look at the current list of 54 councillors and judge for yourself. They do look predominantly white to me.

At what point does this predominantly white council become too white? If the question is meaningful at all it must be possible to quantify the matter. The usual approach to “under-representation” is to consider the chosen ones in the context of the pool from which they are chosen. Sutton had just over 10% ME residents in the 2001 census and it’s estimated that there are now around 13% ME people living in the borough. Should we assume that it is unacceptable for there to be fewer than 13% ME councillors, as seems to be the case at present? If so, what if there were more than 13% ME councillors? Would we then have a problem of white people being under-represented? Could we expect to see council-funded projects “particularly hoping to attract interest from Sutton’s white community”?

Why stop with treating all ME people as a homogeneous group? We might be able to approximately hit just the “right” amount of ME councillors but then find that people from Chinese backgrounds are hogging seats that really should go to Black Africans. Is this all about skin colour or should White Irish and White Other Europeans get a look-in too? What’s their representation like?

And of course, why stop with ethnicity? Plenty of other social groups could make a claim for better representation on the council. There appear to be 17 women on the council or around 31%, far below the number of women in the population which is just over 50%. Women appear to be at least as far behind as MEs in representation — why isn’t a women’s group running this project expressing “particular hope” in getting more women on board? How would we go about getting just the right number of councillors from all these groups (some of which overlap) simultaneously?

If you’ve already switched off by now, you’ll probably have this down as yet another exercise in lambasting “political correctness” through the exploration of a supposed white (male) victimology. So I should be very clear about this: Discrimination is real, it is bad and it should be tackled effectively. But the root of discrimination is the false perception of significant difference and that’s very much what it looks like is happening with projects like this in a place like Sutton. Situations elsewhere may be different, of course.

Why should anyone care about the ethnic origin of their councillor or indeed, the council as a whole, in a place like Sutton in 2009? Is it right to assume that a white councillor here cannot represent a black resident? Is it right to assume that a black councillor here cannot represent a white resident? Should we assume that just because a body of councillors doesn’t appear to be representative of the population in terms of ethnicity, that the population is in fact not represented by them adequately? This isn’t 1930s Alabama or contemporary Barnsley or Barking. Do our 31 LibDems, 21 Tories and two independents harbour a significant number of closet racists?

If this is an issue in practice then I’ll be the first to want to do something about it. Local councillors serve a dual role. In no particular order, they represent their parties on the council and work to advance their parties’ political programmes. They also represent the constituents of their wards and often act in a non-partisan way to ensure that their constituents’ voices are heard and their personal issues with the council are settled. In my experience, local councillors generally do a good job.

To seek to increase the number of ME councillors is really implying one of two things, neither of which are very complimentary. Either the white councillors really aren’t representing their ME constituents adequately. I suspect and I hope this isn’t true. Alternatively, perhaps it’s the case that ME residents feel that they don’t want to be represented by white councillors, no matter how good a job they may try to do. I suspect and hope that this, too, isn’t true. But if there is racism among Sutton’s councillors or in the wider community, why don’t we deal with it rather than assuming that the problem lies with the ethnic composition of the council?

It’s great that Sutton Council is giving local people a chance to find out more about becoming a councillor. I’d be happy to see anyone from any background stand as a candidate for the party of their choice, or as an independent. But the single biggest impediment to large numbers of people getting elected as councillors is not supporting either the Conservative or Liberal Democrat parties, being the only parties which managed to get councillors elected at the last full council election. If you want to pretty much guarantee failure at the ballot box and exclusion from elected office in Sutton, stand for Labour, the Greens, UKIP, the BNP or yourself. It won’t be your ethnic background that sees you left out in the cold but your politics. That’s where a real and significant lack of diversity on the council is clearly evident.

Of all the differences that one could discern between people, ethnic origin in a place like Sutton is one of the least significant. Most ME people here have either been born in Britain (often to parents that were themselves born here) or have lived here so long that their cultural frame of reference is as much British as mine. The council should act against discrimination where it finds it but should also be absolutely scrupulous about not making even the very subtle implied insinuations of discrimination or unfair treatment where none appear to exist. There is enough real misery in society without having to contrive more — and allocate public money to its supposed amelioration.

We should work towards having a community not where the composition of the council is “sufficiently diverse” (whatever that might mean in practice) but where people of all backgrounds (and not just all ethnic backgrounds) feel well represented by their councillors, whoever they may be. It matters what councillors do, not who they are. If the Shadow Councillor Scheme runs again next year, let’s have it organised by a neutral group rather than a sectional interest one and make it clear that absolutely everyone is not just welcome, but equally welcome.

I welcome your own perspectives and experiences in the comments below.

Unnamed: The protester who died. Photo: public domain via Guardian

Photo by Alex Watts.

I’m shocked and saddened that a man died during the G20 protests in London yesterday.

Every death potentially related to police activity is automatically investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. But while their inquiry is in progress, the truth about this incident needs to surface, and soon.

Mainstream media reporting has spun this story away from its most obvious potential substance — policing tactics — to the alleged behaviour of the protesters themselves who the police say attacked police medics trying to give assistance to the dying (or perhaps, dead) man.

The Telegraph dutifully repeats the police allegations as fact without troubling themselves with any corroboration:

[A]s officers went to the man’s aid, they were pelted with bottles and other missiles, forcing them to retreat.

The Times at least paraphrases its source:

The Met said that as the officers tried to revive the man they came under attack from protesters who threw bottles at them

The Guardian is also happy to repeat the story without corroboration:

A man died last night during the G20 protests in central London as a day that began peacefully ended with police saying bottles were thrown at police medics trying to help him.

Meanwhile over on Twitter, @jdodds writes:

Talking to eye witnesses from yesterday.protester who died had symtoms related to a head wound.was seen to be hit by truncheon

If true, this puts a wholly different light on events. There isn’t any dispute that the man died within the police cordon near the junction of Birchin Lane and Cornhill between 7 and 8pm yesterday. Did he die from natural causes? Were these aggravated by effectively being detained on the street, possibly without food or drink? Did he suffer a head wound and was it caused by the police? Did the cordon itself prevent him receiving timely treatment? How did the other protesters react? Violently? Helpfully?

We don’t know, but given that the police have been very quick to tell the tale about the “attack” on them by protesters but were wholly unable to give any indication as to why the man may have died, it’s about time we found out.

As I write there is a protest against the man’s death taking place near the Bank of England, where tributes have been left.

R.I.P.

Gordon Brown has ordered an inquiry into the whole system. While this may produce useful reforms, former Commons Clerk Sir Roger Sands fears the inquiry itself is vulnerable to political meddling and sabotage. Given the sovereignty of Parliament, this is inevitable.

Parliament is structurally proof against any kind of effective regulation. The final veto on an MP’s behaviour lies with citizens’ votes in the ballot box. But how can citizens be sufficiently well informed to be able to make good choices?

I propose an open database of MPs’ expenses operating in near-real time. The government seem to be very keen on databases for the rest of us so I’m sure they will be keen to commit resources to making this happen.

Every line item from every receipt submitted for reimbursement is keyed into the system. We will be able to see exactly what has been claimed and which claims are pending, approved and rejected.

Every line item is tagged. This will enable people to see not just the claims submitted by specific MPs but to easily make comparisons across the group. Want to see all MPs’ claims for their televisions? It should be as easy as a visit to http://expenses.parliament.uk/tags/tvs

Given that websites shouldn’t discriminate against machines, every piece of data in the system will be available through convenient feed formats like RSS and an open API, allowing programmers to build useful mashups and visualisations of the data.

If the only way to stop cabinet ministers on £135,000 a year claiming 88p for bathplugs in their family homes is to put every such claim online within a week, let us make it so. Given that the historical data is supposedly on sale for £300,000, can we find 300,000 people with a pound each to get it?