Common law

I was thoroughly unsurprised to hear that the government's first attempt at crowdsourcing (shudder) was something of a damp squib.

Now that we are all part of the Big Society, Clegg and Cam want to harness the power of our (half-baked) ideas. Almost 10,000 people responded to a plea to contact government departments and suggest potential policy changes.

With little fanfare, the coalition's responses were posted this week. They amounted to a slightly more verbose 'thanks, but no thanks', and consisted of little more than restating current policy. About 60,000 have already responded to an attempt to generate money saving ideas through crowdsourcing, while many others have got involved in a website asking the public which laws should be scrapped.

I reckon they've got this all wrong and should start with introducing a few laws. How about that says: if you've been (sort of) given a mandate to govern, then do so, because the rest of us have proper jobs to be getting on with'?