Power2010

[PanBox]

I have just come across a a campaign called Power2010 - anyone heard of it - it looks like it is trying to encourage people to get involved in the general election in a positive way - engaging with candidates to change the way our democracy and partys work. After all the guff i have been hearing form the party leaders its sounds a positive thing.
I am going to sign up I think but does anyone know anything about them?

I linked to a good Guardian article about this here, where there is also a link to power2010. It seems valuable. Is overseen by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and has lots of organisations on board. The idea is that we need to invigorate our democracy by instigating key political reforms. You can vote on the site for the rforms you would most like to see. Site is slightly slow but good and quite informative.

The Guardian article speaks of the failure of major parties to embody clearly defined, ideologically coherent sets of policies, and of the very poor quality of political debate during this election, suggesting that the key is not to choose the right party to govern, but to force candidates to commit to an overhaul of how we are governed.

Is this the one that Helena Kennedy's involved with? There are so many democratic renewal societies around at the moment - wish they'd all work together.

Actually their site is rather poor at letting you know who is backing their campaign. And even the most popular of the reforms in their popular vote are only getting around 1500-3000 votes.

So, yes, rather small and uninfluential. But what is the best option for pressing for coordinated political reform?

Have googled and it is Helena K's one. I'd follow her pretty much anywhere so this is probably as good a start as any.

Were - wish I knew.

Yes, I like Helena K a lot.

oh and power2010 seems to be supported by the successor body to Charter 88. So quite well backed it would seem.

It doesn't seem to be making much of a mark, though.

I think it is pretty interesting
Here is a post I did on it recently. The links contain quite a lot of information about how it works
www.labourlist.org/deliberative-democracy-diana-smith-power2010

If you are really interested in finding ways to engage, don't rule out your parties.

When I decided to join the Labour party a couple of years back, the first thing I wanted to do was to set up Open forums so that we could involve people who are not wanting to be in a party but do have ideas.

I did a number of these with my MP. They were good fun, and productive too. We always did full reports of the events and these got passed on to the relevant ministers, several of the ideas we put forward, including the suggestion for feed in tariffs, have now become law. - I'm not claiming the credit for that of course, but we will have contributed to the kind of "ground swell" that is always needed to make it possible to change the law.

There are also plenty of other avenues. If anyone is interested in Health and Social care, then there are bodies like "LINks" - which are intended as the way to allow people to scutinize and influence their local services.

If you are interested in climate change and the environment then Transition towns are really interesting. - and usually quite a lot of fun too.

Most people make the assumption that its hard to be heard, and hard to make anything change. Thats not the case. It just sometimes takes a little more time and a little more patience than you expect. Political parties do matter, and they all welcome young people!