onionbagblog

Citizens of Lambeth! Are you part of the privileged 0.11% of the borough’s population that has actually received an invite to sit on the Citizen’s Commission?

Nope. Me neither.

According to our good friend @cllrstevereed, “over 300” citizens have been invited to sit on the commission that will help transform @lambeth_council into a Big Society co-op council.

Who are these citizens that have been invited? How were they chosen ? And what of the remaining 99.89% of the Rotten Borough?

But it’s all about, stats, stooopid. Or another way of putting it – 0.0011% of the citizens residents of the Rotten Borough currently sit on the #lambethcoop Citizen’s Commission.

Or perhaps our friends from @LambethLabour would prefer the stat if it stated that 30% of the New Labour cabinet currently sits on the Citizen’s Commission?

And so even assuming that all 300 citizens accepted the invite to take part in the Citizen’s Commission, this still doesn’t make the main policy formation platform for #lambethcoop very democratic.

Participation in the Citizen’s Commission should require some form of accountability. Invitations from the current council cabinet doesn’t seem very fair or representative to me.

I presume we are talking about citizens, and not big business here? There’s no B in Citizen’s Commission. But it is shaping up so far to be a load of old bollocks.

[Figures based on 2006 Lambeth census count of 272,000.]

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