During the next month of over-familiar political sound-bites and opinion-slinging some fresh perspectives from outside politics could be a refreshing antidote, especially if those perspectives come someone informed and politically active rather than yet another armchair critic.
This week, Biteback are publishing “ Be Your Own Politician” by Paul Twivy who started life writing comedy with the likes of Ian Hislop and Chris Tarrant, became one of the most colourful figures in British advertising, set up marketing at the BBC and ended up working with the last 3 UK Prime Ministers on their big initiatives to develop a new partnership between Citizens and Government.
He has co-founded ground-breaking social action campaigns including TimeBank, Change the World for a Fiver, The Big Lunch and Your Square Mile and spent 25 years advising Comic Relief. He also helped to lead the ill-fated but important “Big Society” initiative having also worked on some of Gordon Brown’s preceding initiatives on the “Good Society”.
Paul argues that in an age where people can interrogate most companies and products on-line as well as elsewhere, Government still remains largely remote and inscrutable. He suggests that politics needs to move beyond left and right, which for many are no longer the dividing lines, just as Green should no longer be a party but rather a universal strategy. He argues powerfully for the need to ‘re-dimensionalise’ politics and make it much more participative.
In practical terms, his ideas include a North of England and a Midlands Assembly; English-only sessions in UK Parliament, not an English Parliament; a merging of MSP’s and Scottish Members of Parliament into one body of representatives who sit in both UK and Scottish Parliament; citizens’ juries on key policy issues; involving coal-face workers in improving public services e.g. nurses, porters, cleaners and technicians in the NHS, which has seen transformative results in some American hospitals.
He also argues for frequent referenda on local issues as in the Swiss Cantons, using digital technology including voting at Bank ATMs; much further devolution of power to local government; education about the international impact of mayors on cities followed by the election of many more UK city mayors; and breaking down all tax bills to precise figures at a household level so that people know what they pay and become more engaged in the value and priority of public services.
If you want to think about a post-Election landscape of politics-not-as-usual then “Be Your Own Politician” is a provocative and ideas-packed place to start.
Buy the book from Biteback for £8.49 or from Amazon for £9.99.
