The Reformist: ideas for a better world
-
fixing local democracy
local democracy is broken: there is a deficit of trust between the public, councillors and council officers, owing to poor communication and, in some cases, poor performance. the deficit of trust extends to central government’s view of local government, leading to a reluctance to devolve more power. councillor allowances are so low that few people […]
-
solving the traffic problems of Cambridge, UK
Many of these ideas are now being developed by the Smarter Cambridge Transport group, led by the author of this post. options to reject bus lanes/ways the Cambridgeshire Local Transport Plan and first phase of the City Deal transport initiatives contain some excellent, eminently worthwhile schemes, but the main solution that councils are proposing for […]
-
driverless cars
the introduction of driverless cars will be hugely disruptive, a revolution comparable to the introduction of computers, the Internet and mobile phones. it will make roads safer, taxis cheaper, and radically alter the built environment. but, just as computers made millions of pool typists redundant, so driverless cars will make millions of taxi and truck […]
-
national identity cards
purpose fears relating to terrorism and illegal immigration, and the growing problems of identity theft and fraud have induced several countries’ governments to propose national identity card schemes, most recently the US, UK, Japan and France. identity cards are nothing new: in developed countries most people own numerous identity documents: passport, driving licence, bank cards, […]
-
international sign language
what is a sign language? sign language is a complete language like any spoken language, but using hand and facial gestures (primarily) to convey meaning. some gestures are ‘pictorial’, and convey their meaning without reference to any other language; other gestures refer to words in a spoken language, usually by ‘finger-spelling’ some of the letters […]