Do we need a re-set in our democratic culture? We often tie ourselves in knots thinking that Northern Ireland is an exception to the rest of the world, but this week's guest on #CargoOfBricks Richard Wilson's experience is much broader and he thinks politicians are falling far short of current needs.

In it we cover...

• Our Victorian ideas of how representative democracy works are being outrun by a connected electorate which is losing its patience with politicians who don't know how to listen. Accordingly, trust across political identities and ideologies of left and right is falling. 
• Politicians need humility in order to balance the top-down flow of information and data from experts and simultaneously engage communities from the bottom up in order to resist the temptation to be definitive at a time when no one has the right answers to hand,. 
• Engagement is not about technology, but how you use it. Communities are more stable than politics representatives need a long, not a short game. New platforms afford opportunities for using enabling language and open questions to bring issues to ordinary people in a digestible way.
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If you would like to get involved in #TheReset, either as an individual or as part of an organisation, please do get in touch by emailing us at [email protected] with an idea for inclusion in a range of articles or events over September and October.

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