Morality on busy buses and how to win elections: posts of the week

Welcome to my weekly round-up of two blogging highlights from the past week: the post that I found most interesting or enjoyable to write and the post from someone else that I found most interesting or entertaining.

A post from me…

Want to run a successful campaign? Read Minority verdict by Michael Ashcroft

Michael Ashcroft’s book, Minority verdict: The Conservative Party, the voters and the 2010 election, should be on the reading list of anyone wanting to run an election campaign whether at local or national level in the next few years.

Read the full post about Lord Ashcroft’s book here.

… and a post from someone else

The moral abdications that lead to empty rush hour buses – and my Big Society solution

Amol Rajan writes in The Independent:

Down the Caledonian Road come a series of buses. It’s rush hour. They stop at my bus stop. And they’re full, so a couple of people get off, but the driver doesn’t open the front door and instead sets off, leaving 15 people at the bus stop furious.

Except, the buses are not full. They just have a lot of people at the front. Upstairs there are seats vacant. Hell, downstairs there are seats vacant. There’s plenty of standing room, if only people could be bothered to use the space more intelligently. Rarely are the buses more than two-thirds full, in fact, and yet, during rush hour, on they go, leaving us workers stranded.

This has a multiplier effect, of course, as anyone who can spell economics should know. The more people left stranded at the bus stops, the more unlikely another bus driver is to open the doors when he comes along.

The moral failures here are obviously legion.

So what should you do?

Read on to find out.