socialgandhi

As Northern Ireland braces itself for another OrangeFest (and that’s not just because Holland are in the World Cup Final on Sunday!), it looks like proposals for new legislation to deal with contentious parades are in chaos after the Orange Order rejected them earlier this week.

Thirty-seven members of the Grand Lodge voted against the draft laws, saying they could not accept them ‘in their present form’, which apparently has made the DUP which negotiated the proposals in the wake of the Hillsborough Deal, ‘unhappy’…and their Sinn Fein partners in the six-strong group to work on the matter exasperatedly calling for the Grand Lodge to ‘wake up’!

A ‘senior political source’ told the BBC that if the proposals were withdrawn, the Order would effectively be stuck with the Parades Commission, a body it refuses to recognise.

Upholding the fundamental right to freedom of public assembly

In a statement released yesterday afternoon, the DUP members of the Parades Working Group, Jeffrey Donaldson, Nelson McCausland and Stephen Moutray said the party was committed to advancing the rights of the loyal orders.

‘We are the only party to have put proposals on the table to deal with issues surrounding parading and protests, based upon upholding the fundamental right to freedom of public assembly’.

The parties’ brief was to propose a new and improved framework to rule on controversial marches, including a focus on local solutions, mediation and adjudication and on dialogue and a code of conduct for both residents and marchers.

But according to Sinn Fein MLA John O’Dowd, the Grand Lodge’s vote showed the Orange Order needed to ‘wake up’.

‘The days of the Orange Order dictating policy are over. The days of the Orange State have gone.’

Hopefully all this won’t put a dampner on the upcoming celebrations of culture right across the province at various ‘Tourism Flagship’ events. Apparently there may be bonfires and barbecues the night before the Twelfth and there may also be fireworks in some places!

Still, always time to get a bit of retail therapy in while it’s quiet!

Just need to avoid the hoards of tourists and out of towners flocking to Belfast to do a bit of ‘Processions Shopping’.

OrangeFest? Processions Shopping? Tourism Flagships’ Whatever next… 

The Deputy PM today invited us all to take a trip with him in the heady worlds of e-democracy and political crowdsourcing with the launch of the Your Freedom website.  Not only can we now tell Nick about what unnecessary laws we want to see repealed, he also promises, nay guarantees “that every comment, suggestion and rating will be read.” Good luck!

Your Freedom offers three broad categories restoring civil liberties, repealing unnecessary laws and cutting business and third sector regulations. Where you see a button that reads “Submit an idea”, you can click it, write your suggestion (after registering) and then wait for others to rate or comment on it.

In Clegg’s introductory video he says: “For too long new laws have taken away your freedom, interfered in everyday life and made it difficult for businesses to get on.” 

As the Guardian’s Simon Jeffery blogged today “Whenever anything like this launches it is easy to mock or be the first to dismissively declare it has backfired (which may not happen till later). Whether it does or not depends on if the exercise continues and how – or if – the government chooses to act on the suggestions. Clegg claims in the video above that it “is a totally new way of making policy”?

“The tricky thing with online consultation is the listening – not just whether you do, but who you are listening to. In a different context, Charlie Beckett, director of the Polis centre at the LSE, some months ago said about political crowdsourcing and e-democracy:

“I’m a big e-democracy person, I’d argue for it all round but you have to be careful about what are the algorithms of democracy. How do you weight people? Who is more important? 20,000 metrosexuals who rush onto Twitter to complain about something? How do you weight what they said against people who aren’t so technologically literate. How do you give them an equal voice? When you have a ballot box you have all got the same vote, but when you have e-democracy the articulate become even more empowered”.

 The coalition’s online exercises – this, and the one asking public sector workers where the cuts should come – are both constructed along similar principles: give us ideas, we might use them. One on the Clegg site asking why passports can’t be sent by Royal Mail special delivery looks to be very sensible. Can the same really be really said for stopping education for the poor?

Any thoughts, on the site or the suggestions, are welcome below.

In the meantime, enjoy the video and visit the site www.yourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk

For the next 2 weeks MCE Public Relation’s Chris Johnston will be blogging on his experiences at the TN2020 conference in Chicago. The theme of the conference is the use of social media/technology to effect change in society, so hopefully Chris will give us all some real insights from around the world on how technology can be used to deliver real power to the people. 

You can read Chris’s blog at www.cafeharvard.wordpress.com or follow him on Twitter @ChrisJMCE 

Check out a great new website that aims to help create real relationships between young people and the decision makers who influence their lives. The www.wimps.org.uk site aims to be ‘informative, inspiring, un-biased and accessible to everyone; creating, sustaining and multiplying educated and empowered young people as a significant force for good in Northern Ireland’ (by the way WIMPS stands for ‘Where Is My Public Servant?’!). The WIMPS website and project is run by and for young people and is about getting you people’s ideas out there, and in particular to help them to influence decision makers in government and other places.

The site has a database of all public representatives in Northern Ireland from local Council to European Parliament level, searchable by postcode. You can then write a message, and click on a button to send emails to these representatives about the issues they are interested in.

WIMPS staff, volunteers and site users update the site on a daily basis with articles and information about a range of issues of interest for young people, and reports on projects and issues that groups of young people are working on. Young people all over Northern Ireland can also contact the site to receive direction and advice in how to take action on community issues that affect them and that they feel strongly about.

The new site also has an ability to create and use multi-media to get the message out. Video ‘hotseats’ are interviews conducted by young people with leading political figures. These interviews are designed to get politicians views on issues important to young people, but also to find out more about the politician as a person.

Also check out the ‘Your Project’ section where young people can talk about a project they are working on, what problems they’ve encountered, advice for other groups, and a facility to upload resources for others to look at.

WANT TO BE A WIMP?

WIMPS is about young people being heard and taking action, that means that ANY young person who wants to be taken seriously can join us in the work we are trying to do. So if you want to get involved in any way at all, surf the WIMPS site, see what you think and then contact them and join the team!

“We have a once in a lifetime chance to put sectarianism behind us. The promise of peace is to change the conversation about the future. But there is a real risk that we are dangerously complacent about division.  We risk allowing sectarianism to define life here for the next generation and beyond”.

This warning last week from Dr Duncan Morrow, Chief Executive of the Community Relations Council (CRC) at the launch of Community Relations Week comes at a time when cuts are being made by the Department of Education to spending on community relations youth work. The challenge for us all is that young people who weren’t even born when the Troubles finished will repeat sectarian attitudes and behaviour”.

On May 6, we have to choose whether Northern Ireland continues to be defined by historical divisions rather than by the opportunities of the future.

Dr Morrow said, “Frankly, as a society, we are too complacent about segregation. There are as many peace lines as there were before the Good Friday Agreement. Communities are crying out for support in breaking the cycle of sectarianism and violence among young people.  Yet at the very moment when we need to be normalising a culture of interaction and equality we are savagely reducing all public support for schools and youth work in this area. This is vitally important work which is intended to build the capacity of young people to create a shared future.  Young people want a new conversation, not to be forced back into the same lines as the past. Tackling sectarianism, racism and segregation in our society has to be a priority in building a better, shared future to which the Executive parties committed in the programme for government; young people in particular are our investment in shaping this future.

Congratulations to everyone who was involved in, or supported more than 150 events across Northern Ireland, organised by community and voluntary organisations, local councils and public bodies.

If any of our politicians call at your door over the next few days, as no doubt they will, ask them about how they are going to make sure that secterianism isn’t the choice of a new generation. And let us know what they say.

According to this morning’s News Letter, lobbying company Stratagem’s Election Prediction competition which challenges us to predict the winner for each of NI’s 18 constituencies to win an exclusive Ian Knox cartoon has a closing date of April 20 2010 @ 4pm?

Check www.stratagem-ni.com/election for details. But don’t panic…closing date is 6 May 2010 at 10pm.

Heads should roll!

Here’s what you could have won:

Oh God, they’ve got us at it now.

STOP!