Participatory Budgeting is a process, encouraged by NuLabour, under which local authorities may "ring fence" an amount of the moneys gathered by them from us and put it aside for projects suggested by and voted on by the local residents. The projects that receive most votes at a public meeting are the ones that get done whilst the others are forgotten. It has a tendancy to bring out every one legged, black, hook handed, Irish travelling lesbian group in your district with some madcap scheme that will benefit only them. Thus the rules when a local council decides to participate have to be tightly drawn in the beginning and then the qualifications for spending drawn even tighter. In other words it has to be rigged or you end up spending the council tax on a load of crap at the expense of more essential services. That is what we were discussing ~ in particular how best to arrange the democratically arrived at result without leaving our own finger prints all over the ballot box. OK now?
