It took me a while to find even a partial explanation of how a Citizens Jury is assembled, and that has only appeared on any government website thanks to lobby hacks asking about it this morning. Seems that the 40 or 50 "jurors" in today's inaugural, er, hearing comprised pupils and staff put forward by the new academy in Bristol that hosted the event, together with some chosen from a "list of community stakeholders" and others found by means of a "door-to-door recruitment programme" in the school's vicinity. Both the list and the recruitment were the work of the DCFS. How truly "representative of the local community" was this gathering, I wonder? Asked if the exercise was really much different from any other school visit, Gordon's spokesman described it as "a very structured event." Hmmm. Structured to exclude awkward questions, possibly? Who could be blamed for wondering?
It also emerged that the polling company Opinion Leader "organised things" - whatever that meant - on this occasion, and the spokesman seems to have been at pains to insist that Gord's pollster Deborah Mattinson is now a former OL employee. I'm not sure how that squares with this. Maybe it's just out of date. Whatever, OL's involvement does nothing to allay the feeling that this jury was effectively nobbled from the start. Surprise, surprise? Not really. That's politics, etcetera. But I did, for the first time, shout "Oh, fuck off," at the telly on Tuesday when the change-maker professed his admiration for Margaret Thatcher. A voter can only stand so much positioning strategy. Tell me, Gord, when does the "new-style politics" begin?
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