I have said before that the operative word in ‘citizen journalist’ is not the latter, but the former. Fay Young’s short, personal report on the happenings of an Edinburgh City Council meeting seems to be a good example of ‘citizen journalism’ and the importance of new Internet technologies. The happenings at the meeting were probably not newsworthy enough for The Scotsman or even the Edinburgh Evening News, so a reporter might not be paid to file a report on it. Now, Fay is an established journalist, but it was in her role of ‘citizen’ that she was present and able to post her report (“Hot air stifles climate change debate”) on her blog. More information for the rest of us, which we hope leads to a more accountable, participatory democracy.
Fay was not impressed by the councillors’ collective time-management:

The meeting rattles through some fairly important stuff about poverty … Then the meeting spends 25 minutes debating whether to replace or restore the old Davenport desks and chairs. Finally one Labour councillor protests at this waste of time when there is still a motion on climate change to debate, not to mention the capital city’s alcohol problem. Still they drone on, and it is another five minutes before they vote [27 to 29] to replace the old heavy mahogany with something that can be easily shifted and stacked when it is not in use.

I wonder if Fay Young has read C. Northcote Parkinson’s eponymous Parkinson’s Law? This is a fantastic compendium of satirical essays, first published in the Economist, and collected in book form in 1958 (I have a fourth edition from that year, which carries some delightful illustrations by Osbert Lancaster). In his essay, “High Finance; or, The Point of Vanishing Interest”, Parkinson describes a committee that bears a remarkable similarity to that which Fay witnessed last week. Finance committees are, he says, made up of people who know nothing of millions, but well accustomed to thinking in thousands:

The result is a phenomenon that has often been observed but never yet investigated. It might be termed the Law of Triviality. Briefly stated, it means that the time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.

So, Fay’s experience seems all too familiar! Parkinson also presents an amusing essay on the ‘Coefficient of Inefficiency’, definied as the size at which a committee ceases to be of any effective use whatsoever. This he puts at somewhere between 19 and 23 members. It is interesting to note that the number of councillors voting at Fay’s meeting was more than double that estimate…
Whatever the accuracy of his theories, Parkinson’s Law is a great read, and a highly recommended stocking filler for the economist or policy wonk in your life.