Over the past decade, support for an English Parliament has grown, from 18% to 29% – and 40% believe that the current “Barnett forumla” system is unfair.
The way devolution has been set up to work currently is untenable. There is a massive democratic deficit as Scotland and Wales both have:

Their own Parliament or Assembly with various law-making powers

More MPs than their population justifies

Scotland and Wales benefit massively from the Barnett formula, gaining £1-1.5k extra per person every year – all paid for by English taxes!

There is no denying that the …

Democracy appears to have become a hot topic in politics at the moment, starting with Gordon Brown’s amazing and sudden interest in AV. This has now culminated in some rather dodgy statistics being touted as potential results had AV been in use in previous general elections. WHo knows what might have happened!
At least one good bill has a very slight possiblity of becoming law: requiring returning officers to begin counting votes within four hours of polls closing. Jack Straw has thriwn his weight behind the cross-party campaign to save election …

If prisoners are not allowed to vote in this years general election, it will break European Law:

In 2005, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights declared that it was unlawful to deny all sentenced prisoners voting rights in UK elections…
The Committee of Ministers at the Council of Europe expressed “serious concern” that there was a “significant risk” the election might fail to comply with the European Convention on Human Rights. (BBC)

Frankly, I couldn’t care less. Criminals who are currently serving their custodial sentence do not deserve to …

What precisely is the point of pushing for a referendum on the way we elect MPs? That’s not really a problem right now. There are far more pressing issues, both politically and democratically.
Long before any referendum on the electoral system – which no-one beyond ardent Lib Dems actually sees much of a need for – we need referendums on our relationship the EU and on organising proper and fair devolution (ie. an English Parliament) long before we bother thinking about that.
There are also other democratic issues that need to be …

The principle of elected mayors is all well and good. But if they are to be of any real point, they need proper powers and to be people who don’t want to just open a few fayres and get a few photo opportunities. To do this though, they need real power.
Hence, I agree with this:

Directly elected mayors should govern every big city with powers to raise or cut local business taxes by 4p, an influential think-tank says today.
This would enable mayors to raise tens of millions of pounds to spend …

I will never understand why people feel the need to physically attack politicians. How ever you much you hate them, be they Silvio Berlusconi, Nick Griffin or even John Prescott, physical assault is never the way to go (especially in the case of Prescott…).
Democracy entails a certain level of restraint and acceptance. They may have views which we disagree with, even violently disagree with – but that does not mean that violence against their person is the way to go. As soon as we lower ourselves to that level we …

The people of Switzerland have voted, democratically, to ban the building of minarets. More than 57% of voters and 22 of the 26 Swiss cantons voted in favour of the ban, in defiance of the government (although in support of the largest party in parliament) as “a vote against minarets as symbols of Islamic power.”
Democratically, this is a decision made by the people of Switzerland. The Swiss people can hold a referendum on any law passed by its government if they can get enough signatures – they are the only …

The Scottish Parliament should not be given any further powers as it currently stands. There is already a massive disparity between Scotland and the rest of the UK, both in the amount of UK money spent on it and through the democratic deficit.
Holyrood should not get any furthers powers until the Welsh Assembly has been given some more and England has a parliament of its own. The democratic deficit is still massive, the West Lothian Question is as poignant as ever.
If Holyrood are given any more powers, it should come …

So the Czech Republic, the final country, has now ratified the Lisbon treaty/EU constitution and it is expected to come into force as soon as December.
Of course, it is wrong that we – or any of the other peoples in the EU – have not had a democratic chance to have our say on it (Ireland does not count – being forced to vote twice because you gave the “wrong” answer the first time is not democratic). But there is simply no point in holding a referendum on a treaty …

There have been several events and reports worthy of note in the last week in the world of local blogs and websites . I thought it worth a roundup, and some reflections