Blogs

The furore over the Facebook page set up for Raul Moat and the media frenzy it generated reminded me of many similar problems we faced at Cybermoor a few years ago, before Facebook had even been invented.  Our open discussion forums generated lots of comment from the community on issues affecting their everyday lives and in a tight knit community, some of these topics strayed into areas which were rather unsavoury. Our challenge was to balance the right of people to offer their views with ...

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The day's news has been full of how ordinary citizens should have a say in how public cuts should be made over the coming months.  Commentators have broadly lined up in 2 camps; don't trust ordinary people with the decisions as they will be biased towards their own circumstances and if you get ordinary people involved you will get some good ideas and everyone will feel that the pain has been shared. At Cybermoor we have carried out some exercises in on-line budgeting with our communi...

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              If you and your community were promised a park, and got excited about the effect some trees and shared space might have on your overcrowded low income area where clashes with police are common… And then it turned out some deals had been done and your ‘park’ is now going to be a multi-storey concrete car ‘park’… You’d be forgiven for being angry. You’d be right to want to do something. You’d be justified in ta...

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Your know your in trouble when you're reduced to an acronym... just ask any NEET BAMER N.E.E.T. = Young person Not in Education Employment or Training.           There are currently up to a million ‘NEETS’ in the UK aged under 25, and around 200,000 of those are between the ages of 16 and 18 (one in ten 16 – 18 year olds) Nearly half of them have an excuse and a note from their mum, they’re either travelling, volunteering, at her majesty’s le...

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