The Treasury's Spending Challenge website was a good idea, badly implemented.
The idea was to ask us all for ideas on how to save money. That seems to me to be a good idea! And the list of suggestions is well worth looking at. Should we sell Gibraltar to the Spanish? Disband the Environment Agency? Turn off motorway lights between 2am and 6am? Put a tax on meat? Stop funding homeopathic remedies?
If you are interested in public policy, or in human eccentricities, then do have a look at the site.
Unfortunately, the search engine hardly works at all - a crucial drawback for a site with hundreds of things on it!
But you can no longer vote, and the site lost all its interactivity for ages, so it hasn't really lived up to its promise of gathering ideas and letting people sift and consider them. That's a shame - I would like the opportunity to vote on some of these ideas and to see how the votes pan out after a much longer period? Can one trust the wisdom of crowds to pick the best ones or not? The idea hasn't been implemented well enough to tell.
There is one very good idea here though - and it scored highly!
The Treasury website collected 45,000 ideas and over 250,000 votes. The RSPB's Letter to the Future is one really good idea supported by over 286,000 people. That's us doing the Treasury's job for them! This is Big Society speaking out. And, I will remind you, George Osborne, Danny Alexander and myself of what exactly the Letter to the Future says:
I’m writing this now to make sure our children have a chance of growing up in a world worth living in.
Today there’s still time to save nature.
If we act now, our children may yet be able to share their world with sparrows and polar bears, eagles and tigers. There’s still a chance that they’ll inherit a world where the engines of life – the air, seas, rivers and forests – are healthy. Where bluebell woods and rainforests won’t be lost forever.
Yes, I accept that recovery from recession has meant spending billions of pounds – one way or another future generations will have to pay for this. The least we can do is to use this money to create a future they’ll thank us for. I want governments to invest in a healthy economy and a healthy environment. As well as protecting jobs, I want them to tackle climate change and to protect our seas, countryside and wildlife.
I’m signing this letter to show that I care deeply about nature and the world we are creating for our children. In years to come I hope they’ll be able to see that their world is a richer one because of the action we took today.
I’m hoping that many thousands of people will join me in signing it.
Together we can be a powerful voice for nature.
Yours in hope.
That message, which we started promoting about a year ago, is crucially relevant over the next few weeks. To be the 'greenest government ever' the coalition government must not disadvantage innocent wildlife because we have got into economic difficulties. To do so is both unfair and unwise.
Please help us get to over 300,000 signatures as soon as possible and before the political party conference season starts! We will be at the Liberal Democrat, Labour and Conservative party conferences pushing the message that some cuts never heal - don't cut the countryside!
Mark, You are right about human eccentricity. I see your message attracted 16 votes whilst the idea of linking prisoners' exercise machines to the national grid attracted over 200 more. How are the Government going to use this information!?. They would be better off listening to the c300,000 people as above.
Hmm - under the tag 'Environment' the highest rated ideas are all about turning lights off - is this connected to being in the news today? I can't help thinking that asking the public to participate in this type of thing is a waste of time - I didn't even know this web site existed and I like to think I keep up with what's going on! Also had a look at the governments petition web site - some truly bonkers petitions on there! That's why the 'Letter to the Future' has got to be more powerful, a very sensible idea and affects us all in the long run.
Bob, Gert - thanks for your comments, as always. We would have pointed our members in the direction of the Treasury website had it been working reliably - but it wasn't!
Defra plucked people of the street in Wells and invited them to a forum to discuss SSRI's and wildlife funding. Apparantly they were talking about using carrots rather than sticks to protect them but I was told the evening ended with too many statistics for the "man off the street."
Mark, Having written to the local MP as requested I received a reply by return of post. I will copy it to SW region and The lodge but wasn't that impressed, it was undoubtedly a standard political letter. My MP is Conservative and says that bodies such NE, FC etc will be expected to take their fair share of cuts but any decisions on where 'job losses' will be made will be taken by the bodies themselves. Does this mean that we should now be writing to NE, FC and everyone else to help guide priorities.
Bob - the decisions are not yet made about the level of cuts - and those are made by the Star Chamber members. After 20 October those decisions should be clearer -though I doubt they will be clear - and the focus will then move more towards what Defra does with the budget it is given - we hope that it will be high rather than low. But then it is down to Defra ministers how they spend the money - will they make pro-wildlife decisions?