Freeborn Adam

The second Louder wordpress plugin has now been up loaded to http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/louder-campaignlist/

The Louder Campaignlist plugin will display a set limit of campaigns (including optional campaign logo) with links to the relevant Louder campaign page, drawn from the selected Louder directory category. So you can display links to campaigns of specific interest to you and your readers in, for example, a column in the sidebar of your blog.

At the time of writing, you can see the plugin working on the right of this blog. You can find the basic Louder API here http://www.louder.org.uk/apidoc.php

If you do use the API or the plugin, do let me know. I always like to find out if this stuff is useful

I don’t know if Gillian Duffy is a bigot or not. She is quoted as saying “You can’t say anything about the immigrants. All these eastern Europeans what [sic] are coming in – where are they flocking from?” to Gordon Brown. To me, that reads as an elderly woman with anxieties about immigration. Now I think those anxieties are utterly unfounded, but I also want to live in a pluralistic society where people are understood and accepted as having differing opinions and concerns. So, if she were willing to talk about her anxieties, I would be willing to discuss them and put forward arguments that aimed to allay those fears.

But what does our Prime Minister, the leader of our elected (and supposedly representative) government do? Goes and gets himself recorded calling this woman a bigot behind her back.

I live in a constituency that a few years ago had 25% of those who voted in the council elections voting for a BNP candidate. 25%. 1in 4. Now I walk through the streets, go into the shops, visit the park with these people every day and it is not easy to dismiss them all as bigots. Most of them are normal every day folk who have anxieties about the world they see around them. And no one in main stream politics is taking those anxieties seriously. Taking them seriously does not mean agreeing with them, it means not dismissing them simply because you disagree with them. Because the alternative is disenfranchisement, and creates a society where those who disagree with the government are “dissident”. Disenfranchised dissidents prove fertile soil for minority extremist parties who promise to lend an ear to those concerns.

All it would take is for politicians to acknowledge opinions and feelings within the electorate that are contrary to their own. Why is that such an unreasonable thing to expect?

Addendum: The point I am trying to make is that the problem stems from an approach to politics that discards and devalues difference, that only surrounds itself with like thinking, complacent in the belief that it is “right” thinking. It is NOT acceptable in my opinion to lazily vote for a party like the BNP that appeals to your baser fears… this post is not an apologist post for BNP voters. But nor is it acceptable for those in power with the responsibility of representing the elctorate to marginalise swathes of that electorate because they express opinions that you might find uncomfortable. It is also dangerous.

OK, we launched the (barebones) API yesterday with instructions here, http://www.louder.org.uk/apidoc.php, and the first WordPress widget is now available on http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/louder-petition/. Whooop!! Though I must say, navigating WordPresses readme doc specs etc. the first time round was harder work than coding

My twitter account username is Freeborn_Adam in homage to John Lilburne, a 17th century “domestic extremist” who, among other things, promoted the concept of freeborn rights. This, from the ubiquitous wikipedia

“Freeborn” is a term associated with political agitator John Lilburne (1614–1657), a member of the Levellers, a 17th-century English political party. As a word, “freeborn” means to be born free, rather than to be born in slavery or bondage or vassalage. Lilburne argued for basic human rights that he termed “freeborn rights”, which he defined as being rights that every human being is born with, as opposed to rights bestowed by government or by human law. John Lilburne’s concept of freeborn rights may have influenced the concept of unalienable rights mentioned in the United States Declaration of Independence.

I think I might change “party” for movement, but you get the picture.

Currently working on an API format to provide access to Louder campaign details and dataset. This partly came about as I was working on producing the first set of WordPress widgets to display this content and access the Louder.org.uk campaign tools, and it seemed only reasonable to kill two birds with one stone. So look forward to announcements here, on Twitter, FB etc regarding the imminent launch of the Louder API progressive beta and the release of the first two or three WordPress widgets (at the time of going to press a couple of working examples are demonstrated here as I use my blog as a pre-beta testing platform ).

Hello World! About time I kept a little bit more detail about my work, projects, interests etc on the web, so time for a wordpress blog