Tag Archives: New York

New York – Newport – Brussels

The original (53 million views at the time of writing)

The Newport spoof (ace, especially for me as I grew up there, 1.2 million views at the time of writing)

The Brussels (half-)spoof (where I live now, 26k views, some catching up to do!)

Set all of those playing all at once and you’ll sure get an interesting mix!

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The schizophrenia of the land of the ‘free’

Personal Democracy Forum - CC / Flickr

Personal Democracy Forum - CC / Flickr

I’m in the United States for just the second time in my life and I’ve had some time to reflect a little on my impressions of the place. Last week I was at Personal Democracy Forum (PdF) in New York, and I’m currently writing in Washington DC. I’m here simply to feel what the place is like.

I feel there’s something terribly schizophrenic about the United States and it’s fascinating.

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Tools for European political organising

PdF 2010 - pic © Personal Democracy Forum

PdF 2010 - pic © Personal Democracy Forum

I’ve been at Personal Democracy Forum in New York and I’ve started to get thinking about which US political organisation tools could be effectively used for politics in Europe. Here are a few ideas…

  • Groundcrew – a system of rapid mobile organising via SMS, iPhone apps, and Google Maps. Could be used to organise Fair Votes Now flashmobs, get Swedish social democrat activists to particular Valstugan?
  • Meetup Everywhere – simply and quickly organise events offline – everywhere! Use for fundraising events for politicians?
  • See Click Fix – an idea similar to FixMyStreet in the UK, yet with 2 additional advantages – it works well of mobile devices, and it allows citizens to network between each other.
  • go.usa.gov – a US government link shortener, style of bit.ly but with trust and reliability for government URLs. How about a similar one for UK, FR, EU twitter use? The original code is open source and the system is based on Drupal.

Last but not least: it’s not an organisational tool as such, but it is fun: hint.fm/seer – it compares the predictive Google search for two key words. Here’s the result for a couple of Labour leadership candidates.

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Riding the Railroad

The cloud sits heavy over Albany, NY and drips of rain slide down the windowpanes of the coach windows of Amtak train 69 “Adirondack” bound for Montréal. After a nightmarish bus journey in the opposite direction this is much more civilised. I wonder whether the border crossing is going to be as bad on the railroad as it was on the highway (how it’s hard to write those words – I’m still British at heart after all), but the joys of the Department of Homeland Security await sometime this afternoon.

Relaxed is probably the best description of Amtrak. The seats are huge, there’s plenty of space, and no one seems in the remotest hurry to get the train to its destination. We’ve been parked a good 10 minutes at Albany – no idea quite why. They are pottering around with the locomotive, and I assume we’ll leave at some point. The train itself is typical American style, corrugated stainless steel cars and a revving diesel engine at its head. Continue reading →

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