A couple of weeks ago I went along to a Citizen’s Advice Bureau roundtable thing, to have a chat about a report they’ve just produced; ‘Going with the grain’, examining how our democracy can be made more fit for a digital age; essentially, it was very much my cup of tea. As is usual with this kind of event, I saw some old faces and also met some new ones, one of which being Mevan; fact checker, democracy exponent, good egg and now, most importantly, the latest member of the immortals; Democratic Hero. Mevan is one of the few people I know who has a cooler job than me and now – thanks to the wonder of words, the internet and my copy and pasting skills – she’s going to tell us all about it.
Let’s jump right in.
1. What’s your name and where are you from?
Mevan, its a weird Kurdish name. It’s “me” and “van” stuck together. I was raised in London, but I was born in Baghdad. I consider myself British. It all gets so complex so fast.
2. What do you do for a living?
I work at the UK’s leading factchecking charity: Full Fact.
3. Favourite band and/ or artist?
Bjork, Grimes – slightly kooky incredibly talented women are my thing.
4. Android or iPhone?
Android
5. PC or Mac?
I was pretty devoutly PC till I started to learn how to code, then I quickly realised the error of my ways.
6. Creature of habit or maverick thinker?
I think its always good to reimagine a system for the better if you can. Although its pretty cool when you fall into the safe comfort of a good one. So how about “Maverick thinker when I need to be”
7. Your house is on fire, what do you save?
Assuming my family and friends are safe, I would probably not save anything. I’ve always been pretty into the idea of not owning anything. Although I wonder if that’s one of those things that you think in theory, but regret pretty soon after your house burns down.
8. Biscuits – dunk or leave unsullied?
I like to smash them with my fists, turn them into a ball with the dampness of the tea, and then consume it as if it were a ferrero rocher.
9. Best project you’ve worked on at Full Fact?
We factchecked the 2015 election for 6 weeks straight. We were going from 6am to midnight every single day. Our tiny team was augmented with more staff and 40 volunteers a day. We saw more excitement about factchecking than ever before. We got corrections in every national paper, got Ed Miliband to change the way he spoke about Zero Hours Contracts, live factchecked every leaders debate, and were described as the “anti spin doctors”. To get it all off the ground I raised £33k in crowdfunding too. It was all pretty immense, and tonnes of fun.
10. Where do you hope the field of digital democracy will be in 10 years? Opportunities and pitfalls.
I just hope that we’ve sorted out the easy wins. Every interaction with government should mean that you’re registered to vote. Every election you should know who your candidates are and know where to vote – that shouldn’t be hidden away in a pdf somewhere, it should be a google now card that notifies you. I hope that if you wanted to find out if a claim that a politician or newspaper has made is true or not, you could. I want to equip people with the tools to make up their own minds. I hope that factchecking comes back into newsrooms, and becomes an important part of political debate. I hope that where tech can ensure that we keep services fair and efficient, we do. I worry that legislation isn’t keeping up with technology. I hope that in ten years time that gap is smaller.
11. Best Gov/ Civic site you’ve seen and why?
yournextmp.com – an easy win – executed beautifully by Democracy Club.
So there you have it, 11 questions answered by the now legendary Mevan Babakar. We laughed, we cried, we might even have learnt a few things. If you’d like to talk to Mevan online, she does Twitter here).
Until next time.
