Demos Greenhouse

Podcast: Social Change and Contemporary Art

samuel[dot]jones@demos[dot]co[dot]uk ( Samuel Jones ) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 10:41:50 -0100

In the work we're doing with Camberwell College of Art, we're looking at a series of collaborative programmes between artists and the public. You can read more about the Peckham Space project here.

In June, I spoke at an event launching one of these programmes. We've put together a podcase of the event, including excerpts of what I and the participating artists, The People Speak and Harold Offeh said. The podcast also includes some of the discussion with members of the audience.

There are five ways to get hold of the Demos podcasts...

1. Via iTunes
2. By subscribing via feedburner
3. Listening via the Internet Archive
4. Downloading the mp3 file (16MB, mp3)
5. Listening below on the embedded player (you need quicktime)

McCain to Obama - 'a job well done'

charlie[dot]edwards@demos[dot]co[dot]uk ( Charlie Edwards ) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 09:13:51 -0100

McCain's team finally seem to have understood that constant negative campaigning can end up harming their own nominee. While McCain famously declared that Mitt Romney's loss [in the Iowa caucuses] was due to his negative campaigning his own team were busy shafting everyone else - Romney included. But in a change of tact, McCain has released the following video (watch it after the jump), congratulating Obama on his nomination on such an historic day (try not to be too cynical) and on a job well done.

Things can only get better. That, or the world collapses

jack.stilgoe@demos.co.uk ( Jack Stilgoe ) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 17:43:38 -0100

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN has been switched on. And we're apparently still here. Over at the Sci Foo camp, I bumped into Brian Cox, Physicist and former keyboard player for D:Ream. He works at CERN and told me about a science NGO I hadn't come across before. "Sane Science" are one of the organisations who have been, Cassandra-like, ringing alarm bells about the LHC. They point us back to the beard-stroking whimsy of the few scientists who once said that there just might be a teensy possibility that the world might get swallowed up from the inside through the creation of a mini black hole. This is fun:

Anyroad, we seem to be fine. Given that the LHC is designed specifically to explore the boundaries of our uncertainty, though, I can't help but sympathise with some of the NGO's arguments. We are in a world of incalculable uncertainty, where a whole bunch of claims and possibilities are up for grabs.

When we were doing the Nanodialogues project, one of our participants took a strong precautionary stance towards new technologies. We were talking about previous experiments like this:

"They didn’t know for sure that it wouldn’t rip the whole planet apart. They didn’t know. They were taking an atom apart, taking the energy, that thing that holds everything together, that force that holds all of this together. But to rip that open the first time, they didn’t actually know that it just wouldn’t chain react forever and tear the whole fucking place to pieces. They didn’t ask us about it, did they? They didn’t go, “Well, what do you all think about this?” They just went all ahead and did it."

There's a lot to be said for going ahead and doing it. But we still don't really have any modes of governance - beyond crossing our fingers - for some of these more exciting areas of science.

Perspective

charlie[dot]edwards@demos[dot]co[dot]uk ( Charlie Edwards ) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:07:11 -0100

Short video. Makes you think.

Overcoming Cultural Inertia

samuel[dot]jones@demos[dot]co[dot]uk ( Samuel Jones ) — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:43:53 -0100

Last week, I spoke at the Edinburgh International of Politics at an event which asked '"What Does the New Europe Mean For Artists and Cultural Policy Makers?".

The debate focused on the relationship between cultural practice and engagement and identity in an interconnected world.

I've copied the text of my speech below:

What does New Europe mean for Artists and Cultural Policy Makers?
Artists, Arts Policy and Intercultural Dialogue

Overcoming Cultural Inertia

Check against delivery

Cultural policy and culture in general are always difficult things to talk about.

For starters, it’s not always clear what we mean by ‘culture’: it can mean anything from the habits, norms and behaviour of a given group, through to creative and artistic production or the more commercially-based definition of the kind of cultural engagements and products that people consume.

In addition, culture is also a very contentious area of policy: it’s closely associated with the individual and the personal, and often suffers from being instrumentalised in policy-making.

So, rather than trying to give definite answers, what I thought I’d do today is to introduce some ideas that will be useful in thinking about cultural policy and what it’s for, and challenge some of the assumptions and norms associated with it.

In doing so, I’m going to speak of culture very widely because by doing that, we can open new ways in which policy-makers can think of artists and other creative practitioners in relation to changes in the wider world.

***

At the moment, intercultural dialogue is a hot topic.

It’s the EU’s year of intercultural dialogue but, more than that culture is integral to how we are coming to terms with some very complicated issues.

In March 2007, I went to a conference on cultural diplomacy in The Hague. One of the keynote speakers said something that marks a turning point in thinking about culture at political and international levels.

‘Every day', he said ‘our lives are affected by culture and interpretations of cultural identity. Who we think we are affects how we think about others and how we behave towards them – whether in our community, our country, or at a national level’.

The really interesting thing was this was said by a man called Gijs de Vries, and he isn’t a cultural commentator, and he isn’t a cultural professional: instead, he’s a former Counter-Terrorism Co-Ordinator of the European Union.

***

de Vries’ comments reflect an important shift.

Policy-makers are rapidly becoming aware that culture is central to many of the challenges and developments of the world today.

In foreign policy, for instance, soft power and the increased focus on cultural diplomacy are examples of this.

But, while recognising the importance of culture, policy-makers can often miss a beat.

Culture is often thought of as a space in which values are communicated and, of course, it is.

It is important as such because people enjoy culture. This is more than demonstrated by the numbers who come to Edinburgh at Festival time, or the thousands who flocked to the British Museum to see the terracotta warriors and, more widely, the millions who upload little gobbets and videos to sites like Youtube.

But the mistake often made is assuming that the values that culture communicates can be controlled, and that it’s limited to the institutions of cultural provision, like museums, theatres, the BBC or funded cultural production.

Culture is what we make of it.

And to develop policy that can respond to this, we need to understand it in different ways.

***

One of the central themes of this afternoon’s discussion has been that culture is a space in which we recognise difference and commonality.

It’s central to our identity formation, and that makes it a very individual thing as well.

Of course, culture has always has fulfilled this role, but two things are making this a turning point for policy-making now and they both relate to interconnected shifts in our behaviour and our attitude to culture.

The first change is the intensity with which we encounter a far greater number of different cultures.

And the second is the change that has come about in the way that we perceive cultural forms.

***

Turning to the first, cultural encounter characterises our lives, and it also determines how we relate to the people around us.

It’s through culture that we form such ideas as similarity and difference or - and this is not without risk - how we get on with each other.

On the internet, on the streets, on television or when we choose to engage with culture in a formal sense, which about 90% of us do each year, we are exposed to a vast array of signs and symbols that convey the beliefs and attitudes of those around us.

Communications technologies have become more advanced and more widely accessible, bringing more and more cultural forms into our homes and, as Travel has become easier both in terms of the cost of transport and - within Europe - because border and immigration controls have been relaxed, Diaspora communities have become more prevalent and influential.

As this happens, it has become apparent that ‘cultures’ are no longer so easily defined.

Anthony Appiah and others have shown that our identities are fluid.

Increasingly, they combine lots of different cultural origins, and we can switch between these according to circumstance.

On the one hand, this piques our natural interest in cultural encounter: we like foreign foods, and we are interested in foreign art foms.

But, at the same time, it makes it harder for us to make sense of the world.

The increased frequency with which we encounter different cultures means that there is more and more with which we have to cope.

Culture has become the space in which globalisation and the confusion it causes is played out and in which we most feel it.

As was discussed in the last panel, this is already challenging existing senses of identity.

Furthermore, many of the assumptions by which we operate and around which we structure our daily lives can’t necessarily accommodate the very different values of many of our neighbours.

In an increasingly fluid and quick moving world, we can often suffer from what might be called an inertia in the face of the cultural differences we encounter.

So, our contexts shift, but our means of responding to them lag behind.

At an extreme, take the debate that rages over traditional cultural garments like headscarves: the liberal mindset champions tolerance, but at the same time, its desire for openness kicks in and we end up with uncertainty.

Such clashes are part of any society and progress comes about as we learn to manage them, but the danger comes when society ossifies around values and doesn’t allow challenge to its own assumptions.

Gordon Brown should know this only too well – he learned it first hand courtesy of Big Brother.

In the behaviour shown to Shilpa Shetty in the Big Brother House, we saw cultural inertia combine with the effects of global communication and the interconnectedness of diaspora communities to spark an international incident.

In the future, what will matter is people’s capacity to live in conversation with those who hold different values and form and negotiate the social bonds on which community is based and this boils down to making more widespread the means to respond to change as encountered in daily life.

This will require citizens making choices at an individual level that will contribute to the well-being and integration of the wider whole and policy responding to these accordingly by giving them recognition.

As we encounter many different cultures and many different understandings of different issues with greater and greater regularity, we will need this at the local level and at the global level too.

To manage this, we need the curiosity and approach that will allow us both to find similarity in different outlooks and accommodate difference not with hostility but as a starting point for conversation.

It is in our cultural institutions, and through engagement with cultural work that we can develop and build such curiosity.

***

The difficult thing, of course, is how we actually set about achieving this, and that’s where the second big shift comes in.

Our attitude to culture and cultural forms has changed to become more proactive and individualistic.

This has come about through a whole series of developments.

On the one hand, technology now allows us to shape and produce, as well as consume culture.

Take MP3 players: it is rare now that we listen to an album or other collection of music as it was designed. Rather, we have it on shuffle mode, or channel down to our preferred piece of music.

Today, iwe have a self-creating culture, in which we can download videos made not just by professionals, but by countless fellow members of a global public.

And we can use interactive technologies to upload our own opinions too.

Some galleries have adapted the way that art is presented accordingly. At MoMA in New York, for instance, young visitors can download podcasts about given works…But they can also upload their own for others to listen as well.

In other words, they can respond to artworks as conveying meaning, and upload their individual responses, all of which then become part of a discourse and conversation around the piece.

This reflects a wider change in social behaviour.

Across society, the relationship between the professional and the public has changed.

The public is becoming more assertive of its right to decide. For instance, while many scientists assure the public that GM food is safe, many of us still doubt it and so buy different sorts of food.

In the cultural sector, we see this with critics. Academics and critics alike tore the Da Vinci Code to shreds, and yet millions bought the book, saw the film and believed it.

As well as challenging the role of expert, such confidence in consuming culture brings opportunity.

It has come to influence the way that culture is provided and presented as well. In the Tate, for example, you can pick up leaflets that map paths around the galleries not just according to curatorial interpretation, but also according to moods and feelings. There’s the ‘First Date’ tour and for those coming from a less upbeat perspective the ‘I’ve just split up’ tour as well. Most interestingly of all, there’s also a blank leaflet that enables visitors to create their own tour according to their mood, and leave it for others to follow.

Such a change in approach means lots of different things. On the one hand, many curators, gallery educationalists and others have reinterpreted the role of the arts professional to move beyond the presentation of expertise and to include the outlooks that people engaging with culture bring. On the other hand, more participative engagement with the arts signals their importance in providing a space for conversation between values

***

So what does all this mean for cultural-policy makers and artists?

In policy-making, culture is too often thought of in its functional forms be they films, art, music, museums, theatres and so on, or the professionals who work in them.

But these are the touch points of wider behaviour and attitudes.

They are the spaces in which the cultural choice of citizens is played out.

Artists and other cultural professionals don’t just deliver culture: they also reflect and on occasion challenge it.

As our relationship with culture is renegotiated using new technologies, the role they could play in helping the public take greater ownership of building and shaping the public realm is becoming clearer.

***

At the moment, we’re still in the early days of coming to terms with what this means.

In part, that’s because culture itself is so difficult to get a grip on, but that is one of its great values.

Earlier, I said that the term ‘culture’ encompasses a range of definitions.

It’s the art we produce, the way we behave and the patterns of our consumption.

Well, spotting the commonalities across all these is central to realising just how important culture is, and as technology makes cultural production more widespread, and the will to participate and take ownership over meaning becomes stronger, culture is becoming the space in which we, as individuals, manage our response to the changes in the world around us.

So, where in the past cultural policy has related primarily to the functions of culture, there could be merit in adopting a new definition for the purposes of policy-making.

Culture is:

The everyday calculus of histories, behaviours, consumption and production that has made us - and makes us who we are - and identifies each one of us as being either different or similar to others.

It’s evident as much in the art we see in galleries and objects we see in museums as it is in the objects and food we encounter in daily life and the products we create.

What connects these as a culture is our capacity and will to read meaning and identity in them.

The challenge now is to build the approach of reading across cultures, seeing difference as a starting point for conversation, rather than as a point for closure at which similarities end.

By giving people the opportunity to see the gamut of cultural forms we encounter as being statements of value and opinion in constant dialogue with one another, we can open a new space for the intercultural dialogue that we will need to manage an interconnected world.

We will all need the means to overcome cultural intertia.

Major challenges, from global interrelation to community cohesion, will depend upon it.

The question is where we will get them.

This is why artists can bring much to a wide range of policy agenda.

They provide the spaces in which we can encounter different opinions and they can provide the means by which we can question our own values.

Not only have culture and the arts proved popular, but technology and other shifts in behaviour have prepared us to view them critically and from our own standpoint.

Policy-makers must now support artists and other cultural professionals because our response to the values that their work encapsulates can help us come to terms with many of the changes we encounter in the world

This is not an argument about instrumentalising cultural production, but about shifting the terms in which it is seen

Culture is not a tool for politics … but it is a space to which we are increasingly likely to turn to come to terms with the world around us.

Identity and information

peter.bradwell@demos.co.uk ( Peter Bradwell ) — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 14:25:39 -0100

'The Internet was built without a way to know who and what you are connecting to.' - The laws of identity.

Kim Cameron, digital identity 'guru', this week published a simplified version of his 'laws of identity'. The original is somewhat of a milestone in online identity thinking, setting out in detail the key challenge of incorporating what it calls an 'identity layer' - basically a system that solves the problem of there being many different, competing ways that companies and websites get around the problem of finding out who they are interacting with.

I'd recommend giving the original a read. But the need to outline this area in a way that anyone - not just those with an interest in or innate understanding of the area - can read has only grown over recent years. I still feel that not many people have really succeeded in making the case in plain enough terms why people should care about particular kinds of identity systems. And how they can use them.

In FYI: the new politics of personal information, whilst it wasn't our main focus, we argued that focusing on identity in the debate about personal information is difficult but a key challenge. Still, the issue is too often seen as a data protection problem. Which is important, but partly (not only) because it fits into this broader problem of how important personal information is in shaping how institutions and organisations judge the kind of people we are.

So this is really great to see. Here are Kim Cameron's simplified laws:

People using computers should be in control of giving out information about themselves, just as they are in the physical world.
The minimum information needed for the purpose at hand should be released, and only to those who need it. Details should be retained no longer than necesary.
It should NOT be possible to automatically link up everything we do in all aspects of how we use the Internet. A single identifier that stitches everything up would have many unintended consequences.
We need choice in terms of who provides our identity information in different contexts.
The system must be built so we can understand how it works, make rational decisions and protect ourselves.
Devices through which we employ identity should offer people the same kinds of identity controls - just as car makers offer similar controls so we can all drive safely.

Podcast: George Osborne 'On Fairness'

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:09:12 -0100

On Wednesday, Shadow Chancellor George Osborne delivered a speech at Demos entitled 'On Fairness'. In this Demos podcast you can listen to our new Director Richard Reeves' introduction to the event, and the Shadow Chancellor's speech.

As always, there are five ways to get hold of the Demos podcasts:

1. Via iTunes
2. By subscribing via feedburner
3. Listening via the Internet Archive
4. Downloading the mp3 file (77MB, mp3)
5. Listening below on the embedded player (you need quicktime)

Protecting the Lord Protector

samuel[dot]jones@demos[dot]co[dot]uk ( Samuel Jones ) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 09:59:04 -0100

We're currently doing some work on heritage conservation and the importance of caring for the material world.

Two of the core themes will be the symbolic importance of conservation, and the opportunities for engaging people in caring for different heritage and cultural forms and the implications that has for identity.

With this in mind, it is interesting to see the work currently being done to clean and restore the statue of Oliver Cromwell on Cromwell Green in front of the Houses of Parliament. The work is scheduled to finish in time for the 350th anniversary of his death and so conservation is an important part of creating a sense of moment that will contribute to the celebrations of an important figure in British History.

Another interesting aspect of the work is that the restoration is being documented on Flickr. So, the process of conservation is charted in a way that has the potential to reach new audiences, as well as those who pass the statue en route to an office in Whitehall and might not even notice the work underway.

That's an interesting combination of new technologies being used in heritage work, and I think it shows the potential of things like social networking not only in engaging people in heritage, but also bringing new opinion to bear on it that will be an important negotiation of assumptions about the past and its relationship to the present.

Tube-ing

peter.bradwell@demos.co.uk ( Peter Bradwell ) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 13:14:35 -0100

We're busy writing up the Children of Europa project at the moment. We're really excited about how the pamphlet is shaping up. The launch will be in early September - do get in touch if you'd like to know more.

We've digested a lot of online video over the past 9 months. Yes, there's a lot of nonsense. But there's a lot of cracking content out there. Here's just a couple of videos I've enjoyed:

The web is us/ing us
Dr Michael Wesch has some cracking videos on his YouTube channel. This is still my favourite:

EUTube
The European Union has it's own YouTube channel, and one short film really stood out. It's about careers in research. Apparently.

Bertie Ahern 'on' Dragons Den
A mash-up of Bertie Ahern's campaign speech with some decidedly sceptical responses from the panelists of Dragon's Den.

Obama
He's basically YouTube president. In a way. There are plenty of Obama videos to choose. I enjoyed this one though:

Wine gums experiment
Vlogger charlieissocoollike invested a not inconsiderable amount of effort mapping the frequency of different coloured wine gums in wine gum packs. Not as banal an event as it might seem, I think.

Scifoo 2 - Foo Who?

jack.stilgoe@demos.co.uk ( Jack Stilgoe ) — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 03:45:35 -0100

I love this place. Alongside Jane Lubchenco, I ran a session on a new social contract for science, looking at the politics of science and the potential for a new breed of citizen scientists. Jane has written about this before, and had some fascinating thoughts on what such a contract might look like. I argued that, although the once solid social contract was now undeniably in flux, this might be no bad thing. Pitching into the discussion were Phil Campbell, Martin Rees, Paul Rabinow and Steve Schneider.

Sorry, let me pick those up. In fact, many of the most telling comments came from the younger scientists who are feeling the pressure of renegotiating their place in society. We argued about the necessity for scientists to collectively represent their consensus while individually engaging as citizens. We heard about the rise of military funding of American engineering research and the messy showdown at Berkeley over their deal with BP. And we whether public dialogue was in fact "all talk." My excitement and confusion has only been compounded by the discovery of free ice cream. If you asked a seven-year-old to design a conference, this is what they would come up with.

Scifoo 1 - The Wisdom of clouds

jack.stilgoe@demos.co.uk ( Jack Stilgoe ) — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 23:18:53 -0100

I'm weekending at the Scifoo camp inside the Googleplex, Silicon Valley. Geeks, Nobel laureates, Astronauts and hangers-on have gathered at science's bleeding edge to share their thoughts with no agenda, no hierarchy and ridiculous amounts of food.

As though it had been decreed, today's first session clawed towards Science 2.0. Tim O'Reilly, the man to blame for everything 2.0, began with some explanations. Web 2.0, apparently, is about participation. Google is king, even though its model relies on participation being largely unintentional. Wikipedia is the foot soldier. All very 2006. But what does it mean for science?

In the absence of watertight explanations, we have to look to examples. So we have Epernicus, a social network bringing scientists together. And we have Alzforum, which brings scientists together, points them in the direction of Alzhimer's disease and introduces a level of patient participation through various forums. We have 23andme, which will do you a personal genome for $1000, build science's knowledge base and try to dampen down any ethical quibbles. Most interestingly, we have Wikiprofessionals.

Wikiprofessionals tries to solve the big problem of science 2.0: How does the participation ethic of the web work with the disciplined, disciplinary and arcane language of science? The site uses experts to collect synonyms and draw connections between areas of the life sciences. One of its founders describes how a "knowledge cloud" produced by the site about Malaria threw up a link to a previously-unconsidered drug. Is this the beginning of the Semantic web of science? Or is this, as Chris Anderson suggests, part of Google's inevitable scienticide? It is, of course, far too early to say. But that doesn't stop people in Silicon Valley.

UPDATE: Betsy Devine, who organised the session, has blogged it.

The National Risk Register

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:52:57 -0100

The National Risk Register (NRR), published today by the Cabinet Office, marks the latest initiative as part of the Government’s overhaul of the UK national security architecture – a process started with the publication of the National Security Strategy (NSS) in March. Unlike the cross-departmental National Risk Assessment (NRA), which Government has kept classified for years, the NRR represents the first publicly available risk assessment from the heart of Whitehall. It is therefore a very welcome development, though arguably overdue.

Some of the NRR’s key points:

* Following the approach of the UK NSS, the NRR is ‘intended to capture the range of emergencies that might have a major impact’, rather than blindly favouring any single risk, such as terrorism. This is something that the former Permanent Secretary, Security, Intelligence and Resilience at the Cabinet Office, Sir Richard Mottram, has argued persuasively for.

* Risks are assessed depending on their likelihood and potential impact. According to these criteria, pandemic flu is judged the most significant risk currently facing the UK.

* It is important to note, however, that the document seeks to avoid ranking risks, stressing that it is ‘not predicting that any particular type of emergency will materialise or that, if it were to do so, it would happen on a specific scale’.

* Sensibly, risks are categorised into accidents (such as industrial or transport), natural events (hazards) and malicious attacks (threats).

* The register then goes on to offer a detailed examination of the specific risks in each category, as well as what might be done in response to their occurrence.

* Interestingly, it also offers specific advice from the perspective of both business and individuals, communities and families – providing links to Government departments relevant to the particular risk and the context in question.

Reading through the Register there are several concerns, however, that immediately spring to mind:

1.    Closing the rhetoric-reality gap – as highlighted above, the Register focuses on the multitude of risks facing the UK. This marks a departure from some of the Ministerial chatter regarding the predominant threat of terrorism, particularly in the run up to the Commons vote on 42 days. Comments by the Home Office Minister, Tony McNulty, about the potential of ‘two or three 9/11s’ or ‘two 7/7s’ on the same day especially stick in the mind. Hopefully, with the publication of the UK NSS, reinforced today by the Risk Register, the political rhetoric can begin to catch up with the practical reality – reflecting the diverse range of risks that we face today.

2.    Resources and Capabilities – accepting the NRR’s focus on ‘the range of emergencies’ and the recommendations it makes in responding to these, it is important that the necessary resources are made available. Simply, the next step must be to ensure that this comprehensive assessment is matched by new capabilities on the ground. Fail on this score and public expectations about the Government’s ability to provide security will likely be dealt a heavy blow.

3.    The Risk Register and community resilience – also to be welcomed in the NRR is the emphasis that it places on the role of communities in building resilience. This chimes with a current Demos research project entitled Resilient Nation, which seeks to explore how communities respond to systemic breakdown.

There is still a feeling in the Register, however, echoing the Government’s Civil Contingencies legislation, that Whitehall has all the answers. In short, central Government seems intent on advising communities (providing information and instructions concerning immediate emergency response), rather than engaging with them more directly (that is, providing the necessary support for communities so that they can build longer-term preparedness and mitigation from the ground up). As one of the NRR’s recommendations suggests, ‘4.15: In the event of a pandemic, the Government will provide clear and considered messages to the public to advise them on other required action’. Basically, sit tight, central Government is on its way to help.

As our preliminary research has suggested, it is likely to be in engaging rather than simply informing those at the local level from Whitehall, that we can help to promote self-resilient communities. After all, this is surely the foundation on which resilience – whether at the local, national or international level – should be built.

Michael Harvey
michael.harvey@demos.co.uk

President al-Bashir's new clothes

peter.harrington@demos.co.uk ( Peter Harrington ) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:05:49 -0100

Recent developments in Sudan have provoked legal and diplomatic debate, but a particular story about people there giving voice to their sentiments fascinated me. Apparently a design of tobe (the traditional garment worn by Sudanese women) called "the Ocampo" went on sale this week in a market in the capital, Khartoum.

Sudan is in the news because the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court (ICC), Luis Moreno-Ocampo, just requested an arrest warrant for Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. It is the first time charges have been brought against a sitting head of state in the ICC's history. You can read the rest of the post here

Floodsim

charlie[dot]edwards@demos[dot]co[dot]uk ( Charlie Edwards ) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:55:32 -0100

One of the 92 recommendations from the review into the 2007 floods was that the Government and the insurance industry should work together to deliver a public education programme setting out the benefits of insurance in the context of flooding. One insurance company has gone away and spent a fortune developing Floodsim, a simulation designed to put the public in control of flood policy decisions and spending in the UK. It's quite good fun. Sure, it's good PR for the insurance company but it's also an excellent approach to public education - a key plank in building resilience. I'm talking to some experts on resilience tomorrow so will let you know what they think but in the meantime see how you do.

Hollowmen

charlie[dot]edwards@demos[dot]co[dot]uk ( Charlie Edwards ) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 05:38:22 -0100

We seem to be going through a dry patch when it comes to political comedy in the UK. Headcases on ITV hasn't really hit the mark (think a poor attempt at Spitting Image meets a sad imitation of Toy Story) but don't worry, all is not lost. Hollowmen on the Australian channel ABC, is brilliant.

Set in the offices of the Central Policy Unit (set up by the Prime Minister to help his election) the series follows the lives of the men and women behind the scenes. It's a brilliant piece of work (and apparently to those in political circles in Canberra very close to the mark sometimes). You can watch the latest episode here. This is a world of words, blink factors and whistle levels. Watch it.