Mikey Weinkove and Saul Albert (Part 1) (029-1)
View the rush: The People Speak
Mikey and Saul are co-founders of the people speak. In this interview they discuss the prospect of making politics more entertaining.
Transcript:
SAUL: There is a lot to be said for making politics or making participation in society more entertaining or more like entertainment. I do not know if that necessarily gives us the most responsible leaders as such and it is interesting that when they brought television into parliament, when they began televising parliamentary debates, I remember there being a big story in some newspapers about sales of head-pieces, wigs, all around parliament suddenly going through the roof because all of these MPs, who previously did not really care about their appearance that much, were smarting up and there is a certain degree to which the same is happening online, in that, suddenly, every MP has a blog, every parliamentarian, everyone who needs to garner an electorate will represent themselves online. I actually think that doesn't really solve the problem, that providing spaces that are still quite regulated for people to post their ideas about how a political representative should behave or is behaving -- I am not sure that that really empowers those people because they are not really given any sort of symmetric relationship and you can write as many posts, as many blogs as you want, it doesn't really do anything. I think what Mikey was talking about earlier and what I think is much more exciting are these experiments in local democracy, in actually decision-making, not representative electing or throwing stones at your politicians. I think it is the small things, the minor transactions, that people can really see their effects visibly evident to them. Their participation produces those visible effects. I think that is where I think the potential to really change society in a beneficial way lies, because the entertainment factor of representational politics, which I think we see every election, time is such a raw deal and it is a raw deal any number of times, in any number of ways -- whether it is on television or whether it is mediated by the internet or, yes, democratised by newspapers, it is not the real deal. The real deal is making decisions, is communicating, doing things, as a group and getting a sense of who the group is.
MIKEY: (2.47) Yes, I think there is something to be said as well, which we have not really talked about, which is the idea of a public sphere or domain which as the people speak we are very interested in really using and expanding and I think one of the trends in our recent history has been that that actual public space is becoming more diminished and more controlled and I think that is actually a very bad thing but, at the same time, we have the ability to open up that public space but a lot of places these days, which we think are public spaces, are actually privately owned. So there's not that same sense of a public and I think one of the things we are trying to do is actually to try and reignite that sense of public, which I think existed when people really believed in the democratic political process in the past.
Q. What do you think of things like 'They Work For You' is it increasing (can not hear)?
SAUL: (3.58) I use 'They Work For You' reasonably often. I use some of their automated services to check when my MP is speaking in parliament. It is a interesting view on a extremely complex and alienating system of political representation but it is still a fairly alienating system of political representation when you can see what is happening or not and the distance between seeing that, recognising it and then doing something about it is still so vast that I am wary of joining any cheerleading parties on that particular front, although I really applaud what Tom Steinberg and the Our Society people are doing. I think a lot of the projects are absolutely fantastic but, again, I think it is the potential for people to recognise themselves as members of a society or a social group that is based on a common interest and a common set of desires and watching themselves then actually accomplishing something. That is really the place that I see political change happening. I think that mediating the activities of parliament in a small, user-friendly way goes some way towards that but it doesn't really give people the ability to do anything about the problems in they see in society and the issues relevant to them, themselves, to take responsibility for it. It is still somebody else's job. You can complain about it them -- fine -- but it is much more empowering to actually go and do something and it is those minor -- it is those teeny little baby steps people are taking that are really exciting and empowering and if the work that we do can provide a way for people, really, do that for themselves, then I think they have accomplished what we were have been trying too achieve and really we want it ourselves. That is is actually, mostly, why we do our projects. Not necessarily out of a sense of higher social purposes, because we actually want them to exist and want them to happen. Mikey wants to be able to phone his girlfriend and get her to tell him where he left his keys (laughter) or some other popular questions. I want to be able to use those kinds of social infrastructures and it is out of the sense of personal curiosity that you sort of find other people share that and, you know.
Q. You are saying you have the tools for a direct democracy or some sort?
A. Yes.
Q. What is the system that you are advocating or where are you trying to get to you are into everyone being directly involved in decision-making that sort of referendums all day everyday or adding to the towards the ideas as well. How does it work?
MIKEY: (7.10) I think we have the technology to be able to -- any vote that is parliament could be offered to the entire country. Just -- despite -- through our networks, our system. I still see a role for MPs in having a debate but the whole country should decide. I think, mostly, you would get the five or ten per cent of people actually participating in those votes but they would participate in the things that they were interested in and so I think it would work and then really big votes like, 'Do we go to war?' Everyone will have a say and they will be satisfied with the outcome.
Q. What about people sorting out this and that something or other paedophiles immigrants (can't hear again)?
MIKEY: I think if people want paedophiles lynched really or immigrants kicked out and that is the majority of people then we should respect that view. But I have more belief in the people that actually they don't want those things and I think if you give people, like I said before, that sense of responsibility then the majority of them will grasp it.
SAUL: (8.29) It is also very paranoic, the kind of limits that are placed on decision making, which have historical precedent and are there for a reason -- those reasons, really, for the especially for the first past the post system gets very party political when you start talking about electoral reform. Nobody is actually interested in electoral reform. Such a small percentage of people are interested in electoral reform. It is not an election issue really, apart from the Liberal Democrats, which is another story.
MIKEY: But all they want to change it to is a is to proportional representation which is an even worse system than the first past the post.
SAUL: (9.11) But again I think it is not necessarily about making these decisions like should we kick out all the immigrants, should we bring back lynch mobs -- those are not necessarily the kinds of decisions that you would make if you implemented a direct democracy system tomorrow. I think it is the encroachment of democratic participatory decision making on to all parts of public life and not just about making decisions about policy but about implementation, about how do we actually do this thing, because so often decisions are made by organisations and institutions that have so many more questions left unanswered which are then left to established processes or civil servants or bureaucarcies to accomplish but more questions come and there is no tradition of participating in making those decisions and I think there is a great potential for decision making to actually start on a ground level, on a far less grand stage than parliament deciding about immigration laws but actually about participatory budgeting and deciding how a small community deals with the problems or the issues that surround it.
MIKEY: I think the Olympics is a good example. They have been talking a lot about consultation and a lot of the themes could be decided by asking the people of London that are actually paying for the event so that could be a very good theme for getting people involved in deciding on how it is actually put forward. Like, for example, I was at a meeting of allotment growers very upset that their allotmentss had just been demolished but I think if they were in some kind of voting system and they were out voted by a larger majority that thought that this velodrome was more important then I think they would feel much more happy about the way the decision was made.
SAUL: Yes you don't have to get your way way to feel enfranchised. The decision doesn't have to go in your direction, as long as you get the feeling that you have participated in it. A lot of the times when we are involved in the direct democracy processes, as entertainment, the kind of projects we do, we find that what actually comes of giving people responsibilities for decision making is that they really care about the decisions of the minorities within a group and people are very willing to compromise and compromise is very very achievable once everybody's cards on the table and people can really understand the viewpoints at work and I think that it is working on establishing that as a mechaniism that people are used to using and that people feel comfortable with and that is actually still entertaining and compelling -- it is by doing that that the largest decisions and the largest compromises can happen in a way that doesn't become very brutal or very simplistic.
Q. Is it all to do with easiness and practicality, if it easy for you to make decisions about the world around you then you are going to start going doing it you can read your later news later letter if these things become integrated in your life then it is immediately entertaining it is the stuff you talk about in the TUB TKUPBLT it just need to be SPWREGTD in a different way in our lives?
A. Yes.
Q. How would you?
A. Who you would you integrated it into ...
