So, as of just under five hours ago, the Rose Hill dispersal order came into force. It’s the first one in Oxford city, and it gives police the power to ask groups of more than two people in certain areas where there have been problems with anti-social behaviour in the past to leave and not reassemble for at least 24 hours.

The Rose Hill order will cover The Oval, Lenthall Road, Nowell Road, Desborough Crescent, Radford Close, Patterson Place and parts of Rivermead Road and Mortimer Road, as well as the Iffley Lock area, from noon until 6 am.

I’m really pleased that we’re getting something done about the problems that have blighted our area, but I’m really clear that the order is only half of the solution - the stick, you might say. I’m off to meet our area youth workers and Oxfordshire Connexions tomorrow as part of the quest for more things for kids to do on the estate - the carrot.

My heart sinks when I hear this phrase at the start of a speech, usually spoken by a concerned worthy, often as a prelude for excuses for not doing something or ignoring the views young people have expressed. Unfortunately, it was a phrase I heard rather too much at the conference in Budapest. Not only does it undervalue young people now, seeing them only in terms of their future role as adults, workers, parents and consumers and not in terms of their current abilities, it is also shortsighted, as although the particular young person in front of you will grow up, young people are a constant - there will always be young people.

If there was ever a hard-to-reach group that should be ripe for engagement through e-democracy and for whom lack of skills or intimidation by the method should not be a problem, it is young people. And e-democracy advocates seem to take the engagement of young people for granted just because they are using e rather than traditional means.

The lineup for the session on Engaging Young People was as follows:
Chairman: Peter Lauritzen, Head of Youth Department, Council of Europe
Kate Parish, Founder of UK Youth Parliament
Shane McCracken, Gallomanor, UK
Laura McVeigh, UK Youth
Tom Gaskin, Youth Worker for Norfolk Blurb Website Project

Notice the omission - no young people on the panel, and some dreadful worthy chairing. There were about ten young people in the front row, but at no point were they more than participants. We heard from four enthusiastic and engaged adults about how to engage young people, as the experts - already engaged young people - looked on. Most of the young people present are MYPs (members of the youth parliament) and those of you who are regular readers will know that I’ve in the past expressed concern about the inclusiveness of the UKYP concept. After meeting the young people - all of whom were without exception interested, articulate and great fun to be around, don’t mistake me on that point - I still have a concern about how representative the organisation is in terms of class and background. In the words of Shane McCracken, who gave by far the best presentation on the Gallomanor projects “I’m a councillor, get me out of here” and “lifeswap“, the young people in the room were “shinys” - already engaged young people.

Where were the groups of young people up at the front, presenting to the audience through drama, dance and art? Where were the carefully-prepared hard-to-reach young people, supported by their youth workers to bring their points of view to the table? I’ve taken teenage mums to meet ministers and speak at party conference, supported by the excellent work of YWCA’s youth workers - it’s hard, but it’s not that hard, and it’s not like cash was a problem at this conference. Don’t get me wrong - I enjoyed this session a lot, and it was one of the ones circled in my agenda to attend from the start. It was just a shame that the presenters talked about the importance of young people taking control of the agenda and having thechance to meaningfully participate in the design, delivery and evaluation of projects aimed at engaging them, but there was precious little of it going on.

UPDATE: judge the session for yourself - audio of the main speakers is available here.

Eve of poll leaflet pushed through doors for the Hinksey Park ward by-election in south Oxford last week by our local Lib Dems:

Tony Blair stands with President Bush in refusing to condemn Israel’s bombing of Lebanese civilians. Are you happy for him to do this in your name?

Are YOU happy for Tony Blair to speak for YOU?
On Friday morning senior Labour party officials will be assessing the results of this Thursday’s local by-elections.
They will look with particular concern at results in wards like Hinksey Park, in the marginal Oxford East Constituency.
If Labour have done badly it will send them a clear message that voters are not happy with Blair’s refusal to condemn Israel’s tactics.
If Labour do well it will be taken as tacit support for Blair and Bush.
Lib Dem leader Ming Campbell has called for an end to the killing of civilians.
If you agree with Ming, and Blair does not speak for you, vote Liberal Democrat on Thursday.

Printed on recycled paper by OLDPS, published and promoted by M Godden on behalf of N Pyle and Oxford Lib Dems, 27 Park End Street Oxford.

Nice to see they are so confident of their record running the council that they make it the focus of their positive, upbeat by-election campaign to win a city council seat.

I’m going to post in more detail on some of the aspects of the conference I attended in Budapest last week, but first I thought an overview might be useful.

The conference was three days long, held at the Hotel Intercontinental in Budapest, and organised by the UK’s department for communities and local government (DCLG), formerly ODPM. I was invited to go on a bursary paid for by DCLG; I will try to give an honest assessment of the conference, but bear in mind that the fluffy pillows on which I slept and the wine I drunk at the evening reception was paid for by the great British taxpayer, helped out by a variety of corporate sponsors, so I may fail in speaking truth to power.

Before I went to the conference, I mentioned that the agenda seemed to consist of many of the great and the good, and was embarassingly corrected on one particular attendee by the symposium director. And whilst I enjoyed the symposium immensely, I’m not sure that much of it wasn’t as I had predicted. The great and the good - you know, those people from collection-of-initials organisations, most of which have EU, UN or Council of Europe in the title - predominated in many of the sessions and plenaries, overtaking the make-it-happens. Maybe it’s to do with my lack of formal engagement with the subject - after all, I’m pretty much a blogger by accident - but I couldn’t get straight in my head the various instruments, directives, initiatives and funding streams in this immensely active but complicated world of e, so appreciated most the speakers with direct experience of delivering projects that worked - whether that be Norfolk county council’s youth website, Gllomanor’s I’m a councillor get me out of here (any other Oxford councillors fancy having a go at that this autumn?), Public-i’s live and playback streaming of council meetings and Bob Kerslake and Paul Bettison telling us how e-democracy improves local services in Sheffield and Bracknell Forest.

Unfortunately, this was one of those conferences where most of the speakers delivered powerpoints with far too many words onscreen in a monotone, oblivious to the positive effects of engaging one’s audience, or the successful tactic of considering in advance, “now, what do this audience want to hear about, rather than what am I desperate to tell them about?” So, we ended up listening to presentations of research containing 25 slides of data and methodology and one of conclusions. I don’t know why this surprised me; I guess I thought these technologically-switched-on people, so committed to e-participation, would be great at designing participatory workshops. I guess seeing the people in front of them rather than hearing the ping of new email or updated blogs must have foxed them rather.

/tangent When I rule the world, there will be mandatory powerpoint training. It will start off something like this: if you must type out your speech, why not read from a word document, rather than playing the slightly odd game where the audience read the words from your powerpoint as you say them and the whole thing resembles a collection of teenagers singing along to a new album by reading the lyrics off the sleeve? Excellent. Now, you may have a maximum of seven words on this slide. Which ones convey the most important concepts that you want your audience to remember? Come on now, you really don’t need the words “the”, “on” and “to”, do you? No. That’s better. Even the most boring research project has a photo illustrating something, somewhere. Oh, and resist the temptation to use tables or word art. For advanced students only, try looking up at the audience occasionally (you can put your thumb on the sentence you’ve just read to keep your place if you like); attempt the odd feeble joke; grin widely and inanely; consider having a prop such as a silly hat. Didn’t that go well?! /end of tangent

So, the quality of sessions was patchy, and the love of e-people for acronyms and obfuscation apparent. What to make of this aim for the conference?

Provide a framework for the follow on to the UN Global e-Government Readiness Report 2005: From e-Government to e-Inclusion

No, I don’t know either, but then as an elected member in frontline politics I was a rarity. Most of the attendees were managers from British local authorities, and the idea that party politics could - and probably should, given the extent to which it is political parties that keep local democracy alive in many areas - be part of the e-democracy and e-participation agenda was anathema. All this local engagement and taking part is great, but as soon as anyone assumes a party label, then suddenly it’s sullied.

There were some fantastic seminars, and I’ll report in more detail on some of them presently. But what I really loved about the conference was the chance to meet some really great people and have the type of conversations that make you want to stay up til 3am chatting even when the bar has closed. And there were some impressive keynote speakers, who’ve done things I couldn’t even begin to imagine in the world of e-engagement. There are more posts to follow, specifically on the people I met; the youth and hard-to-reach seminars; and the blogging masterclass and its implications for this site, and the conference weblog, with podcasts of many of the speakers, is available here.

Last week I was at the international e-participation and local democracy symposium, held at the Hotel Intercontinental in Budapest. After an early start to make it to Heathrow for the 7.15am Malev flight direct to Budapest Ferihegy, I had two hours to sightsee before the conference began, and another five hours after the conference ended on Friday. I hope you’ll agree that I made the most of this time…

I’d never been as far east as Budapest before, and I suppose that I hadn’t expected the heat to be as intense as it was. While I was there, the mercury was stuck at 36-40 degrees, and at night it barely cooled. So all my sightseeing was done in a fug, with a water bottle clutched at my side, darting from one patch of shade to another. With my trusty Rough Guide to Budapest (20% off from Borders), I was determined to march around as much of the city as I could, despite the heat, but finally gave in and paid just over 7000 HUF for one of those open-top bus tours. The commentary was in English, and in two hours the bus took me further than I could have walked and pointed out the bits that I wanted to explore further on foot, so I guess it was worth it.

Coming from a tourist city myself, I suppose the thing that surprised me about Budapest was how scruffy it was. I was taken aback by the amount of graffiti everywhere, even in the smartest streets and at the most photogenic tourist traps, looping and curling across the front of smart shops doing steady trade.

Here are some photos of the highlights of Budapest:

This is the view from the top of the Gellert Hill to the Danube. Don’t want to make you jealous, but my hotel was on the Pest side (the right of this photo), on the banks for the river, and is just immediately out of shot.

Budapest is a city of statues and memorials, with a sense of its history on every street corner. Here are memorials commemorating two of the more recent episodes - the liberation of the city by the Red Army in 1945, and the reformist Communist prime minister, Imre Nagy, who was killed following the failed 1956 revolution. Without making a comment on the politics, I loved the Nagy memorial. A real man, ordinary, dressed for a Hungarian winter, not a heroic pose. While I was there, ordinary-looking Hungarian women tied flowers to the bridge in between the constant stream of toruists running up for their photo to be taken next to him. I took this photo in a rare moment of quiet.

The Hungarian parliament building was next on my list. Here it is, in its full glory. Remind you of anywhere?

My route march also took me through the former Jewish ghetto, where over 50,000 women, elderly and children were crammed into accommodation for 15,000 during world war two. I wandered past the rebuilt central synagogue and briefly stopped to pay my respects at the Holocaust memorial, a willow tree with the names of those victims recorded inscribed on the leaves.

Finally, I took the chance to do some people-watching on the main shopping street, Vaci Utca, and in the Great Market Hall.

Curiously enough, many of the souvenir stalls on the first floor were selling Communist memorabilia - KGB badges and the like - which I thought in pretty terrible taste. This display of Russian dolls, though, was I thought, a pretty equal opportunity offender. Yes, for just 3000 HUF, you too can own seven dolls of Osama Bin Laden in varying sizes, complete with handy internal stacking mechanism! Or if Osama’s not your cup of tea, how about Lenin, Stalin or Saddam Hussain? And if you prefer your world leaders to be of the elected or not-quite-elected variety, choose from a wide selection of US, British and Italian leaders or would-be-leaders (yes, that is John Kerry at the back there!)

So, Budapest, my friends. No photos of the Castle or Varhegy, as didn’t get the chance to spend much time there, sadly. I fully intend to revisit and do all the things the guidebook tells me I should - visiting the Szechenyi baths and the House of Terror, the statue park where old Communist statues go to die and taking in that river cruise of the Danube. Someday.

While I was in Budapest, the Oxford Labour party were working hard to retain the Hinksey Park (south-central Oxford) seat vacated by Rick Muir, who’s had to resign after starting a new job in London.

Turnout was 33.5 per cent and the results are as follows:
* Oscar van Nooijen (Labour): 676 votes
* Lilian Sherwood (Green): 436
* Nathan Pyle (Lib Dem): 217
* Carolyn Ten Holter (Conservative): 155

All-round a great result, and I was only sad not to be there to see it! I’ve known Oscar van Nooijen (his surname is pronounced something like noy-en) for years, and he’ll be a great councillor, as well as making another contribution to keeping the average age of the council down. I learned at the conference in Budapest that the average age of a councillor is 58; in Oxford, with ten or so councillors under 35, including Oscar at 24, I reckon we’re ahead of the pack. It does feel odd to be blogging about a by-election victory and not be gingerly rubbing my poor feet, as I was after Jericho and Osney and Northfield Brook.

The Oxford Mail, of course, are only interested in one angle - that Labour have now become the largest party on Oxford City Council, though it’s still in no overall control. The scores on the doors are:
* Labour - 18 councillors
* Liberal Democrat - 17 councillors
* Green - 8 councillors
* Independent Working Class Association - 4 councillors
* Independent - 1 councillor

And no, having been back for 18 hours, of which 13 were asleep, I don’t know what the Labour group are going to do.

Hello all - I see you’re keeping busy in my absence!

I’m posting this from a hotel room overlooking the Danube and the Var. It’s about 40 degrees, but this hotel is beautifully air-conditioned, thank goodness! The seminar I’m attending is full of people whose blogs you read or whose projects are discussed at length on the internet, and I’m getting to spend three days with these bright people, picking their brains for improvements to this site. I don’t think I’d previously had a handle on the scale of the ambitions for e-participation and e-democracy, nor how pivotal to the agenda are councillors’ blogs. The full report will follow on my return…

I hope you like the new look of the site. Jo and I did several hours’ work on it yesterday to change the template to a less clunky one, personalise it so it looks like my space, and add some more information about being a councillor and about Rose Hill. Whilst I wanted the blog to remain what it is - a personal ranting space for things I’m interested in, not a dreary list of council meetings - I also wanted to use the site more generally as a resource for people living in the ward. So we’ve got seven new pages about the ward - an introduction, details about residents’ groups, information about the big issues in my ward at the moment, sources of help and advice, a news page, a diary page, and some information about my Labour colleagues on Rose Hill.

It’s a start, but I’m not quite satisfied yet. I’m trying to work out how to make the ward pages more interactive - at present there is no way to leave a comment or ask a question except on the blog or by emailing me. I’m also not clear how deep or wide internet penetration is in my area, and thus what degree of engagement to aim for. I’d really appreciate some guidance or advice on making this site one of the best councillor sites around. There are some pretty good ones out there already - my Oxford colleague Stephen Tall’s site is comprehensive and full of content; Miranda Grell’s site (built by my old friend Jon Worth) is lively and enthusiastic, and seems to be a real reflection of the personality of the owner, but lots of the other sites are either static and out-of-date, or blogs of narrow local interest only.

This is a bit of a personal project, as elections aren’t won or lost on the internet - certainly not in my area, where it’s all about the shoe leather - and my local party has an excellent site built by the lovely Jo. I want to build a record of this time in my life, to record what it’s like to be a councillor and what I’m working on; I wanted to put some information about my area out there, as there’s almost nothing on the internet about this part of Oxford; and I wanted to start to break some of the stereotypes about people who would choose to be Labour councillors and about councillors in general. Last week, a constituent (who, by the way, I’d never met or spoken to before) said to me, “Well, you councillors are all the same, you’ve all got your snouts in the same trough, haven’t you?” Well, no, we’re not all the same, and most of us aren’t in this for what we get out. Maybe this site will tell a few more people that.

No-one, whatever their politics, can fail to be moved at the suffering of people in northern Israel and southern Lebanon at the moment. I support the right of Israel to exist, and with a heavy heart, Israel’s right to defend itself. I want the current conflict over as soon as possible - and there’s one quick way for that to happen: Hezbollah should release the Israeli soldiers it has captured.

With the Stop the War coalition’s record on supporting an end to hostilities, I knew I wouldn’t be travelling to their demo yesterday. Even so, I was shocked to hear that George Galloway said “I am here to glorify the resistance, Hezbollah.” But if that was the tone of the protest, then maybe the BBC’s subtitles people got it right:

Strange phonecall a few weeks ago on newly-connected home phone: “Hi Antonia, it’s Dylan Jefferies at the Department for Communities and Local Government. We like your blog, and you’re a newly-elected councillor, would you like to come to a three day conference on the internet and democracy in Budapest at the end of July? We’ll pay your airfare and hotel…” Well, what would you have said?

So, on Wednesday I’m off to the international e-participation and local democracy symposium, held in a five-star hotel overlooking the Lanchid by the blue blue Danube. The agenda is here - seems heavy on the great and the good rather than the let’s-make-it-happen crew. I mean, wouldn’t you make sure you had someone from MySociety speaking? And maybe a blogging MP? And since when has the UK Youth Parliament been the voice of youth? The voice of intelligent articulate white middle-class engaged and already aware youth, perhaps. Still, now I’m excited about going, and I bet there will be interesting people amongst the other delegates.

So, blog-reading friends - is anyone else heading off to Hungary this week? Which workshops should I go to? And in the few hours I have off, what should be my sightseeing priority while I’m in Budapest?