I have recently finished a book called The Tyranny of Numbers by David Boyle, sub-titled ‘why counting can’t make us happy’.

Its an interesting book, but possibly less than the sum of its parts, by which I mean there are lots of specific parts which are fascinating but I am not sure about the overall theme of the book, which keeps changing in emphasis throughout, but its not a bad read. Best of all its by a British author, so it does not keep going into baseball or American football analogies to try and make things clearer. Even if the author is a Liberal Democrat, its a thought-provoking book.

One bit towards the end amused me. It is about Seattle and a new mayor who wanted to carry out measurements on quality of life, and so track progress in making improvements. At the time this was a relatively new concept and so…

It was a tough job and it was going to take years. The mayor was given his own weekly TV show where people were encouraged to phone in with suggestions and views. He and Gary Lawrence appeared on talk radio five times a week – this is after all the city of Frasier. Full colour brochures were delivered to every household; teenagers were hired by the city to translate the issues into language than other teenagers might understand. Lawrence himself did 400 presentations over two years. It was a gigantic exercise in local democracy.

Human cussedness being what it is – by the end of this unprecedented consultation, a third of the city had still never heard of the project. Worse, many of those that had heard of it said they hadn’t been consulted enough.

I thought that was priceless. Its a passage which should be read by anyone who is, has been or wants to be involved in politics at any level.

I can remember the frustration of having the council organise consultation events, on planning matters, publicising them in every way imaginable and then having 6 people turn up. And then when the planning committee met to make a decision there would be an angry mob overflowing the room saying they had not been consulted.

That passage shows the mixture of sheer optimism and naivety when an authority thinks that putting a flyer in the local paper will actually reach the whole population. It seems that Seattle did everything short of knocking on every door and speaking to everyone but it wasn’t enough.

I think that ‘poignant’ is the word I am struggling for here.