Don’t confuse “the economy” with “the interests of those who hold economic power”

I’ve written before that I’m not a huge fan of direct democracy, not in the sense of doing away with MPs and replacing them with referenda. Fatally, demand-revealing governance hands more power to the rich, then compounds the error by legitimizing it. This is unacceptable.

I prefer a proportional representation system like open-list PR or a preference voting system like STV. However, as suggested by theorists of deliberative democracy, we do need more (and different) voter engagement. Read More

Jack Off – never mind the White Stripes, Coke really isn’t it.

BBC “must improve Mid-East view” – one to keep the Biased BBC crowd happy

The Top 50 (or so) Labour Sleaze Scandals
Iain Dale is compiling a book of the cream of New Labour scandals. Bob Piper is not happy.

Qwghlm – Why compulsory voting is a terrible idea

Guardian Technology blog: The guestbook spammer loses one payment stream

“Real Madrid can eff all, you arse-face arsing arse-heads”

I’m not trying to raise the Sharpener’s rude word count, nor shock you with poor grammar. I’m simply quoting the finest panel of Medium Large‘s recent Brit Week. (That’s just the latest cartoon: there are usually weekly archives, and the last one should be here, but it isn’t, yet.) Francesco Marciuliano understands British slang; not all his characters do. Read More

The danger in writing a relaunch post like this is that it will slip into pretentiousness – and in places it almost certainly does. This place is, after all, simply a blog like any other, so its significance is limited, and any claims to high ambitions and ideals are, ultimately, only so much wishful thinking. Yet with input from both its team of contributors (now around 30 strong) and its readers through the comments sections, the hope is that The Sharpener can achieve something of real value.

This blog was born, after several weeks of behind the scenes discussions and planning, on the day the Labour party won their third consecutive term in office under Tony Blair. The near inevitable onset of Labour’s Historic Third Term™ was obviously not the reason for setting up The Sharpener, but was nonetheless a subtly significant indicator that some of the problems that we wanted to address were very much real. Read More

Polly Toynbee: Labour MPs at last seem to be ready to ditch Tony Blair
It’s nosepegs ahoy once more, says Polly.