Hoon goes for compulsory voting: have they totally lost the plot?

This is madness - Geoff Hoon suggests that the way to reinvigorate our democracy is to make voting compulsory!
He has clearly missed the point. The three major parties in the UK, led by Blair's New Labour project, have successfully worked away over the last ten years or more to take the politics out of politics in the UK. Now they have succeeded they are wondering why no-one wants to play any more.
If the extent of democracy is to be limited to voting once every four years or so for a bunch of suits that are almost indistinguishable from one another, then its really no wonder that we aren't engaged in the process. When will they actually catch on to the meaning behind their own rhetoric, and truly enable ordinary people to take control in their own communities, and participate in the process of government, instead of simply allowing us to choose once in a while which amongst the elite will be able to exercise the power on our behalf. The people want a share of the power for themselves. Participative democracy is all we seek.
It's not revolution, but judging by their reluctance to make it happen, one might be forgiven for thinking that it was.
The internet gives us the tools and the power to do it for ourselves, without the need for hierarchy (if ever there was a real need for it) or massive party structures. These guys are living in the past, it's time they saw the cluetrain a-coming.

Live8 and the G8 summit

I'm listening to the Live8 concert from London as I write this.
It may be the spirit of the occasion that has taken me, but I think that if the G8 summit does not get a result next week - and by that I mean a substantial and immediate improvement on the commitments made to date regarding Africa - the nature of the relationship between the people of the G8 countries and their governments will be radically altered.
Trust of the politicians is already at a pretty low ebb. Failure of the G8 to deliver a result on poverty could fatally damage what trust we have, leading potentially to an effective failure of the current democratic system.
Turnouts at elections will fall away further, leading to a collapse in the mandate (already pretty flimsy) that our politicians have to do their thing.

Europe: why don't the politicians get it?

In the wake of the recent French and Dutch votes against the proposed EU constitution, it looks like the politicians are running around wondering what went wrong, who they can blame, and what to do about it.
I sense they are missing the point.
As I see it the people voted 'No' not because they necessarily disagreed with the constitution, but simply because they have not been included in the process that has got us to where we are. They see the EU as remote, bureaucratic, and unrelated to their daily lives and concerns.
The way forward surely has to be a major shift in how our elected representatives and national governments relate to the people they govern. The key word here must be 'participation'. If governments want the support of their people, they must be open, honest and enable real participation.
The rise in popularity of things like blogging and citizen journalism is not unrelated to this. We the people simply want to be involved, engaged and consulted over stuff that affects our lives. That's not too much to ask,is it?
We are no longer content to be passive consumers of government and big media spin. If they want our trust, they need to earn it. They do this by being open, honest, and placing some trust in us.
The sooner our elected politicians wake up and smell the coffee, the sooner we can get some real progress.