Internet gives new strength to people power

SO PUBLIC opinion triumphs again. Last week, "people power" flexed its muscles across the land - from the campaigners who saved A&E services at Ayr and Monklands to the 120 e-mailers who extracted a BBC apology over Kirsty Wark's "Gadaffi-gate" interview with Alex Salmond. Or, to be more precise, Britain's authorities suddenly became resensitised to the clout wielded by savvy groups of viewers and voters.

Last week, Channel 4 acted within hours to remove the racist-sounding Emily Parr from the Big Brother house after ignoring 44,000 complaints over the treatment of Shilpa Shetty. In Edinburgh a long-running campaign to stop demolitions in the Canongate won backing from new council leader Jenny Dawe. And in Musselburgh, lovers of the famous racecourse are expecting delivery of their political pound of flesh, after electing an SNP council and MSP pledged to stop construction of a floodlit all-weather track.

From TV to the SP (starting price), from London to Monklands, public opinion is back with a vengeance.

And all those community groups who abandoned anger, marches, rallies, meetings, petitions and lobbying opposition politicians in favour of quietly "influencing" the former Labour Executive, must now be kicking themselves - hard. Or trying the same tactics on the new kids on the block - the SNP.

Persuasion is a perfectly good tactic - and it has spawned a thriving industry of lobbyists, and media trainers ready to inch the minority voice closer to the seat of power. But for those who didn't have the contacts, cash or temperament to finesse their messages or develop long-term partnership strategies with Labour, the decision to organise well and bawl loudly in good old-fashioned pre-election anger at duff decisions has paid off very nicely.

Why were those voices previously ignored?

Perhaps, like weary parents, some ministers in the last Scottish government grew selectively deaf to the cries of constituents. Former health minister, Andy Kerr, clearly didn't care if he was perceived as uncaring as long as he believed his actions were in local people's best interests. And fair play. He and others worked towards their "higher" goal whether local campaigners squealed loudly or simply muttered in the face of proposed closures and went home.

But here's the snag. Adult voters are not children but informed campaigners who not only want local wards open, but also want to challenge health policy at a national level. Why can't Scotland train enough anaesthetists? Why don't they stay in Scotland? Are the Royal Colleges driving centralisation by creating specialists not generalists?

Scratch the surface of the Monklands A&E campaign, and you'll find folk able to nominate "Post trauma survival rates" or "Neo natal birth weights and social class" as their specialist subjects on Mastermind.

This is the calibre of modern "local" activist - a master or mistress of virtual organisation with a curious mind and plenty of spare time. And they may not be satisfied with the small but important wins they've made in recent weeks.

Especially if it appears there are ulterior motives behind the climb-downs that have let the "little people" win.

Channel 4 executives, for example, are still reeling from rows over excessive profits from premium rate phone lines. So they've halved the price of Big Brother calls, which is handy, because next week the premium rate regulator, Icstis, is set to rule on Channel 4's Richard and Judy phone-line scam.

So was last Thursday a good day for Channel 4 and Endemol to sack Emily for racism and finally appear sensitive to the public mood? Not half.

The BBC and Newsnight may also have been playing catch-up for ignoring Scottish sensitivities in recent times past.

Jeremy Paxman's faintly contemptuous treatment of Salmond and other nationalists in the Great Independence Debate before the Holyrood elections must have drawn at least as many complaints as the Kirsty interview. But there was not a hint of bowing to the changing public mood in Scotland by Auntie then - because then the SNP had not yet won.

Almost all these triumphs of public opinion have relied on one thing. The internet. Virtual comment is very different. Lead stories in The Scotsman regularly attract more than 300 comments online. Admittedly some correspondents post more than one message. And nationalists - deprived of "real" TV and public platforms in the past - are disproportionately skilled at posting - and disproportionately represented. But last week's gathering head of steam about the Newnight interview actually began in the virtual columns of this paper. People were able to see that others felt the same - and thus emboldened took the next step of contacting the BBC.

Meantime anyone who missed the "offending" exchange could see it again on YouTube. And since that medium allows very precise viewing figures, I can tell you that yesterday at noon, there had been 4,643 more viewings. The possibility for better, stronger citizenship created by the web is just becoming apparent.

The Votepods project which put highlights of pre-election debates online, found that for every person present at a debate, 17 watched it later via the web. Soon the notion that decisions can be made by people inside rooms without an online process will seem as daft as flaring gas off an oil platform.

We need all the human energy we can harness. And currently, much of it is sitting disengaged - but not disconnected.