I was inspired by the British public

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I was inspired by the British public

11.01.2010 // by Christopher Lovell

Participants blog their thoughts on this weekend's POWER2010 Deliberative Poll.

Christopher Lovell: I'm on my way home from the deliberative polling event now and thought I'd write up a few of my thoughts. So what was the event like and how did it go?

When we arrived at the hotel where the event was held we were split into small groups of about 12-15 people who we'd be with for the rest of the weekend.

Our group was pretty balanced. We had a Lib Dem, a couple of Labour supporters and a couple of Tory supporters as well as a lot of other people with other views. This made for a really wide ranging discussion.

Over the weekend we discussed the many ideas that had been submitted to POWER2010 by the public under six different headings. These were:

Elections and Voting
Parliament
Political Parties
Europe
Devolution and Local Government
Rights and Freedoms

Each session was structured in the same way. We had a discussion of all the topics in our groups and then we put questions to a panel of experts chaired by Helena Kennedy.

At the beggining of the weekend we had all taken a questionnaire on how we felt about the different ways suggested to reform our democracy then at the end of the weekend we took the same questionnaire to see if our opinions had changed.

Obviously two of the most contreversial topics were Europe and MPs expenses but, because of the way the event was structured and our excellent group moderater, they did not degenerate into a slanging match as normally happens.

I think it's fair to say my views changed on a number of issues over the weekend, mainly thanks to the reasoned and thoughtful way things were argued by everyone who was there and this was hugely helped by the process of 'deliberative polling'.

One thing that I will take away from the weekend is how I was inspired by the British public. Obviously there are always people with whom I will disagree but they still have very valid opinions.

So often people are taken for granted and ignored because they are deemed to not be the experts. This event showed that to be nonsense. It is only through engagement with people that we will change the way our democracy works.