What NEED does this meet?
need for travellers and citizens in rapidly deveoping economy to get best use from transport system.
What is the APPROACH?
current railway website is indexed by train number and difficult to navigate. A route based service has a distinct benefit.
What are the BENEFITS to people?
far quicker determination of journeys. better resource for businesses.
What is the COMPETITION?
depends on upgrade to india railways website.
What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?
quite straightforward to applying a route planning system. network appears limited and data is clearly scrappable.
What NEED does this meet?
THE WHOLE COUNTRY
relates to trying to contact you and e mails coming back when the fax your MP is being illegally maladministrated by PAs MPs with no DISCRETION
What is the APPROACH?
What can be done about PAs to MPs ignoring DISCRETION or NOT directing
> to MP what he should be dealing with. or them deferring They are
> illegally maladministrating like everyone else since derregulation-
> Thatcher – and IT and is Civil liberties abuse NO DISCRETION .
How about getting a petition together for PM from all l those whose MPs are
> doing this and find lawyers operating same system. But you will need to
> monitor otherwise it will never get there!!!
The BNP doesn’t need to get in it is here.Why are the least able in society – cheapeat labour running it unmonitored like robots[ reading off computers] directed by the corporate solely ?
>
>
What are the BENEFITS to people?
ALL society is taking its lead using consumer based approach using the dreaded CALL CENTRE on corporate remits buying in the unqualified professionals on CONTRACT who have not taken oaths of discretion so defer . When lawyers , politicians & jDoctors do this it causes human rights abuse access & provision fair trial
.It is not current research practice to rely totally on dubious statistics complied by the unqualified ethically .
What is the COMPETITION?
It is not economic to have Call centres that do not address Discretion as those who need it do not go away.NB Charities & all regulatory organisations operating same system
What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?
Could be done initially via your website You could ask MPs, Lords MEPs to join & promote starting with LAs / PCT/SHA Bring back system before Thatcher where the public had direct contact & those in charge accountable . Those full time should not be just the corporate ??!!
What NEED does this meet?
This is a program which would make recreational sport in London easies and people would be more informed what is going on in their area or in discipline they are into. By simply putting in your post code, or sport discipline, date or ability, you find out where is your nearest sport facility, sport shop, bike shop, or just something happening etc.. People be also able to post their experiences with different stuff to do with leisure in London. This website should be as friendly to use as possible. You can find many websites which deal with different types of sport but would be good to have something simple and friendly to use. Also finding people doing the same thing in the same area, would be great. There is for example the Friday Night Skate, which is well organized, so everybody knows about it. There are other things which people don’t know about or just simply find partner to go rollerblade, run or cycle on a particular day. Information on the www would fill up by users and can be flagged by quality and popularity, so you can always know what is good and what is bad.
What is the APPROACH?
Start mapping areas where is what happening and make rough information. Then it would depends on the users what information they would put in. The look should be really simple and easy to use and searching in the database as well.
What are the BENEFITS to people?
People would find what is going on in terms or leisure and sport in their area or in discipline or on a date they want to find out the information. Finding partner for doing particular sport on a particular date would be also very beneficial as well.
What is the COMPETITION?
I think that London as a host for the 2012 Olympic games should have more active sporty people. In my opinion people would get more involved if there would be more information what is available.
What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?
I’m not sure about the technical requirements, hosting etc. It will take lots of work at the beginning and than basic maintaining.
What NEED does this meet?
The international public, as well as NHS organizations, are remorselessly targetted for the sale of inappropriate pharmaceuticals at inflated prices. The corporations work within a system of legalized monopoly and hide important information. We need a presentation of the facts drawn from different sources that can be used as the first line of defence. It would also point out what information we do not know, suggesting the questions that investigators should be looking into.
What is the APPROACH?
Very helpfully, new pharmaceuticals are given new invented unique names, so it is very easy for software to tag them, and track their appearance in the news media, and watch as the companies post their propaganda onto places like wikipedia and build their marketing campaigns. It is well documented and utterly predictable that the money is available to promote a drug that is in patent against one that is out of patent, even when it is undeniably more dangerous and less effective.
We need an automatically updated chart like publicwhip that scrapes the patent and trademark databases, and lists who owns them, on what date the patent expires (**very important), links to all news publications citing the drug in chronological order, cost of drug per patient, cost of manufacture (**usually a blank, drug companies refuse to divulge this, or blatantly lie about it — see the case of AIDS drugs that Cipro began to manufacture), names of the doctors who have conducted the drugs trials, list of similar drugs, evidence of who invented the drug (**often the drug company just buys it in from a taxpayer supported university, and then pretends that they spent 500m pounds on it).
What are the BENEFITS to people?
It will expose the big picture of this this market commodity in one page. Those who are using particular named drugs, have been prescribed particular named drugs, have been virally marketed at to ask their doctor for a particular named drugs, will have a source that’s slightly more structured than just typing the name of it into google, and getting a pile of links, none of which includes price or patent expiration data. This would be easy to make it possible to inform oneself on the pattern a sudden set of negative publicity against a drug (after years of good publicity) that is shortly to go out of patent in order to convert people to the next patented drug — which will be more expensive but might not be better.
What is the COMPETITION?
Public Citizen runs the worstpills.org site. This proposal is a simpler across various sources of information.
What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?
The software may have wide applications, across products outside medicine. We need to scrape trademark and patent data into a single table, and scan across all of bbcnews sites or online paper news sites for a chronological list for each known unique name. This on its own is better than the google shambolics.
The other data, such as prices and manufacturing costs, could be lifted from the wikipedia, if people include the data there in slightly structured and scrapable form. ie, rather than make our own wiki, use the one that’s there already to gather and host the data.
One day I hope people in these companies may start to leak info about the manufacturing and research costs on actual particular instances, so we can have an informed public debate about these matters, not just layers and layers of excuses and faked expenses from the most profitable companies in the world.
What NEED does this meet?
It’s expensive to advertise jobs in traditional media (print, or online job boards), which means that low-wage jobs are not advertised, or are advertised only incredibly locally (a poster in the shop window).
What is the APPROACH?
I propose a project which aims to help employers either directly advertise their jobs online (at their own web presence, less likely), or directly into the projects website in a format which other sites can syndicate (I’d anticipate being able to email or phone-in situations vacant ads too). Basically, cutting out the advertising cost, and therefore incentivising people to list their vacancy.
Once job postings are available, other sites would be able to syndicate the jobs and therefore come up with answers to more local questions:
“Show me all the jobs within walking (or public transport) distance which operate within school hours, and require IT skills”
“Show me all the gardening jobs in tower hamlets”
“Show me all the jobs in a one mile radius”
I see this working with a new breed of job aggregation sites, perhaps with (eugh) value-added elements like CV screening, intial phone interviewing etc for higher job-value employers.
The intention would be that jobs could be syndicated to online and offline (e.g. local newsletters) and government agencies (e.g. JobCentrePlus).
Here’s a picture which might help explain what I mean.
http://neilphillips.com/mysociety.jpg
What are the BENEFITS to people?
1) The cost of advertising a vacancy is reduced to nil
2) More jobs are advertised
3) More people are able to see the jobs nearest to them (travel is a huge impediment to the poorer, older, younger or disabled job seeker).
4) There is likely to be a better fit between people looking for jobs and people finding jobs.
What is the COMPETITION?
Competition:
Newspapers, existing online job boards.
This idea is an improvement because it helps both ends of the job market (employee and employer) and shifts the value-added element to cv screening, interviewing and aggregation (more specific search) rather than sheer volume of eyeballs on the site.
What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?
The budget for the site itself could be incredibly cheap ($10k + bandwidth), more with a call-centre type operation.
However, what this idea is really about is making something quite difficult and expensive, into something simpler. I’m relying on what mysociety does best: spreading the word.
What NEED does this meet?
People today are crying about getting taken for their dollar by purchasing homes that are defective. I purchased land back in the 1980s and it’s time to develop it.If you are looking for people who are looking for other avenues of investment, you might want to look at what I’m doing in the Dorchester, MA area.
I have ‘Incorporated in Las Vegas, NV USA, for legal purposes and to show legitimate business Enterprise, with eventual expansion to the Las Vegas area in the future. I am looking to build
Two-two family ‘Condo’ units in the metro-Boston, MA area, on land I own. The units will sell for between $380,000.00 and $400,000.00, price range. These are and will be the state of the art units with many features most modern homes of a higher price range contain. I can do this because I do not have to include the cost of buying the land.
My ‘Business Plan’ is to raise monies that will aid in the procurement of a construction loan: construction is to start this summer,
your monies will go into a protected account and serve as collateral for my construction loan – twelve months, I’m looking for fast sales and pre-construction sales; when the project is sold, the account is closed, you are paid with an earned interest rate of 18% on your principle. This is a contractual Agreement.
I feel the re-payment schedules are straightforward and simple: You invest:
$10,000.00 twelve months or sooner you are paid $11,800.00
$20,000.00 ” ” ” ” ” ” ” $23,600.00
$25,000.00 ” ” ” ” ” ” ” $29,500.00
$30,000.00 ” ” ” ” ” ” ” $35400.00
$50,000.00 ” ” ” ” ” ” ” $59,000.00
$100,000.00 ” ” ” ” ” ” ” $118,000.00
$480,000.00 ” ” ” ” ” ” ” $566,400.00
Your money is never touched, but acts as collateral for the construction load.
Should the project not sell at the advertised prices, and then it is sold at market value and the investors are paid and I absorb the lost.
Ted Lewis
CEO ‘Living Life At A Different Level’
What is the APPROACH?
The financial backers money is used as collateral for a construction loan. Once the project is built and sold [by Christmas 2006]. all monies are returned as noted in a signed agreement plus 18% interest.
What are the BENEFITS to people?
This is a completely built home with all applicances and finished from basement to top floor: plans can be sent to interested parties, now!
What is the COMPETITION?
People need homes, and they need good homes, now. It has been noted via the newspapers that in the coming year there will be 50,000 new jobs, the inflow of these professional people will drive the home building market crazy.
What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?
$435,000.00 complete.
What NEED does this meet?
There are many different ways to get from A to B. Walking, training, flying, driving, taxi, coaching or blagging a lift with someone. Every time, I spend ages running through all the options, working out the various pros and cons.
It would be great if I could share this information with others.
For example, my current trip takes me from Edinburgh to Cardiff. KLM want £1,250 for a flight via Amsterdam. Using some not very advanced local knowledge, and a willingness to do a little driving, I can get to Bristol and hire a car for £125 all in.
Another : if there are four of you, travelling up to 100 miles can often be almost as cheap in a taxi as on the train.
Lastly, London is the classic example here. How often have you (or known someone) spend 30 mins, on three tubes to do a journey that would probably take 2 mins to walk?
What is the APPROACH?
People enter their start and end points, and their suggested routes.
They can rate them by various factors, enter approx costs.
Then, I can search the site, and find the recommended best way to travel.
It would aggregate known travel blackspots, and as it matured, the site would be a logical place to bolt on “a ride sharing dating service”.
What are the BENEFITS to people?
Transport in the UK sucks. Driving is often the easiest and cheapest, and it shouldn’t be that way. It is not only better for the environment, it is a heck of a lot more fun to travel different ways.
It would help share all that “local knowledge”, learned the hard way with other infrequent travellers, visiting tourists or people new to your area.
What is the COMPETITION?
None that work.
I should be clear – this isn’t about air-fare aggregation. People might want to enter the cost of their journey, including airfares, taxi costs (you might get a cheap flight to London – then pay twice as much to actually get from the airport to London Central). Over time, these will add up into data that might be useable somehow.
Yet another example: best way to get cheap return tickets from London to Edinburgh? ATM, buy singles. The specials are released 10 weeks prior to travel. 71 days before travel, you could pay £200 for a standard ticket. 70 days before travel, you can go first class for £60.
What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?
I’m sure you guys know better than I would 
What NEED does this meet?
If there are two or more individuals in a community who desire to pull themselves out of the hole of apathy and powerlessness, they can introduce a hybrid system of physical/virtual decision making (already developed in NSW Australia). The virtual part is www.1062.org. This hybrid system is fair to both computer literate and non-computer literate citizens. This system has the potential for enabliing the community members to exercise whatever level of authority they choose.
What is the APPROACH?
These individuals can introduce a campaign to their communities that allows the community to sign a specific performance contract with candidates that requires the candidate to use this hybrid system that enables community members to exercise their civic responsibilities and participate in the local government decision-making process. This contract (already designed and introduced in NSW Australia) may specify what decisions a politician can make using his or her own discretion and what decisons require specific authorization from the people – before he/she casts a vote in chambers.
What are the BENEFITS to people?
If you could divide the local government decision-making process into two catagories: decisions made by local representatives without the consent of the people and decisions made by local representatives requiring prior approval of the people, what would be included in those two catagories? This is the choice of each community. It will make the local governance process much easier for both the community and the politician. If a politician breaches the contract, it is no longer the typical response: “vote for somone else when my term is finished.” The people can command real control in real time in a real democracy. The politician may be sued in a court of law for breach of contract.
What is the COMPETITION?
None
What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?
Already built
What NEED does this meet?
A central place to help people write a letter to their local newspaper. For individuals, it makes it easy to find out what local newspapers you have, and it saves you having to look up the address. For organisations (e.g. campaigining charities) it makes it easy to encourage your supporters to write to their local newspaper.
What is the APPROACH?
The same interface as WriteToThem. Enter your postcode, it shows newspapers with circulation in/near that area, and brief info about them. You choose a newspaper, and write your letter to the editor. A few weeks later, it mails you to see if your letter was printed or not.
What are the BENEFITS to people?
It will encourage more people to publicise and share their problems and opinions in their local community, via their local newspaper.
What is the COMPETITION?
The newspaper society has a database of local newspapers http://www.nsdatabase.co.uk/. But it has no feature to search by postcode, or to directly write to them.
What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?
Fairly cheap, as we already have part of the code to screenscrape the Newspaper Society database, and maintain changes to it.
What NEED does this meet?
In a globalised market we need a global tool for making our consumer power count, whether it is changing a corporation’s global policy or a small gripe about a local public service.
A resource that not only helps us find sources of info about and sign-up to boycotts big and small, but also regularly communicates to the target company the number of people boycotting and what the company needs to do to stop the boycott.
What is the APPROACH?
A neutral network building tool that:
a) lets people sign-up for or swap boycotts.
b) at critical numbers of signatories an email/fax is sent to the press office of the company/organisation concerned notifying them of the number of people signed up to boycott them who are waiting to receive a response from them.
So basically it is about creating change through strength in numbers and effective communication.
Here is a first stab at the process, comments gratefully received –
I’ve got a botcott I want to get support for, I enter into letsboycottit.com:
- Who they are
- Brief synopsis of Why I’m boycotting them – linking to another site if more info is required.
- How I’m boycotting
- what the company need to do to stop me boycotting them
- their email address (customer service dept., embassy or press office – easily researched) .
- my email address
My boycott would be listed by brand/company name and location and when I sign up to other boycotts it is cross-promoted amazon style to other signatories i.e. ‘people who boycotted this are also boycotting Nestle, Esso etc..’
Once 10 people are signed up the press office at the company get an email saying that 10 of us want to hear what they are going to do about the issue we want resolved. The process continues as per hearfromyourMP. If people on the list are satisfied by the response from the company (which is distributed to all boycotters via the site) they can take themselves off the boycott. The site could publish data on how quickly companies respond and resolve issues.
This would work for big and small boycotts and creates a dialogue between the boycotters and the boycotted, making it stand apart from other boycott lists.
What are the BENEFITS to people?
From global corporations to small companies, our life is probably shaped more by the commercial and services sectors than by the government of the day (whose party they may well be funding;-). We can encourage these organisations to change through group action, for instance I would:
* join a boycott of Asda (as they fund the Republicans).
* hassle our council about why there’s no green recycling bag scheme in our area.
* boycott HSBC because they gets staff you complain about to deal with your complaint.
* boycott films with Tom Cruise as part of Boycott Scientology (and for reasons of taste;-)
Without such a site the work involved in organising boycotts will remain prohibitive for most of us and we miss the opportunity for using this to change the small things that effect us everyday.
What is the COMPETITION?
There are numerous boycott lists, complaint sites for individuals and there is an overlap with pledgebank but I couldn’t find any generic tool targeted at bringing considerate consumers together and then communicating their issues to the company. Big boycotts can always create their own site but there is definitely a space for a site which helps create smaller ones.
Obviously if anyone can suggest a better name… letsnotbuyit.com, helpmyboycott etc.. I’m not even sure that boycott is the best word as you could use a tool like this to make a group complaint about, for instance, your GPs surgery opening hours and you obviously can’t boycott your Doctor.
What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?
While the detail of how the system functions needs more thought, at the core is the merging of functionality from systems mysociety.org have already created – pledgebank, writetothem and hearfromyourmp. Would be good to harvest mail addresses for major companies, embassies, public services (e.g. partner with howtocomplain.com?) and need to be cross checking boycotts as entered to stop multiple entries for the same companies/boycotts.
The only difficulty I can foresee is that publishing the reasons for boycotts as input by third parties could lead to libel action against the site. We would need to get a legal opinion on this and whether to moderate or not.
