Cllr Rock Feilding-Mellon, the Cabinet Member for Civil Society in Kensington and Chelsea, says triborough savings are being used to boost civil society In the Royal Borough of Kensington & Cheslea, we have just decided to allocate an extra £500,000 towards the local charitable and voluntary sector. It might seem counter-intuitive at first, but I […]
When Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2009, not everyone was happy; according to her obituary in the Economist, there were those who "looked askance": It wasn’t that she was a woman – the first to win the economic prize – but that she gleefully defied conventional categories. For a start she […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter In last week's edition of the New Statesman I took a brief look at the state of Tory modernisation. I suggested that certain of the big change themes that Cameron has pursued since 2005 or more recently had not really stood the test of time – notably climate change […]
There was some good points made by Cllr Ian Parry, the Deputy Leader of Staffordshire County Council, in evidence to the Communities and Local Government Select Committee. He talked about an arrangement in Newcastle-under-Lyme where a group of social workers had been allowed to form a mutual, like a GP's surgery. The staff turnover – […]
Thom Wiseman says York Council are stopping the public having their say on community grant York had a great policy to allow a little bit of democracy when it comes to deciding who receives the community grants. However this has all been changed under the banner of ‘cuts’. The previous system worked well, any community […]
Politics is full of slippery words, but none is harder to pin down than ‘liberal’. In America, to be a liberal is to be on the left of the political spectrum; in many parts of Europe, the opposite is the case. In Britain, it all depends on which words you use in combination with 'liberal' […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter George Osborne gave a good defence of his Budget yesterday, declaring that he wasn't in this for short-term politics but had taken decisions for the long-term competitiveness of the UK economy. Putting aside my belief that he should have done a lot more on competitiveness a lot earlier, should have accelerated […]
David Cameron may not been seen as a visionary, but he does nevertheless have a vision. Or rather, if agree with Rowenna Davis in her piece for the New Statesman, he did have a vision: “Has anyone seen Dave’s ‘big society’? It’s an odd loss, because according to many, this was the closest thing Cameron had to a […]
Between 1939 and 1944, over two million children were evacuated from British towns and cities. But “rather than being placed in camps, they were mostly accommodated in private homes, and many stayed with their foster families for several years.” The author and philosopher Roman Krznaric describes this remarkable story as the “greatest meeting of strangers in history” […]
Three months before the Royal Wedding last year only a handful of road closure applications for street parties had been received by Town Halls. But they ended up with 5,500. The Diamond Jubilee, Saturday June 2 to Tuesday June 5, has already seen 3,500 applications. So it is likely that there will end up by […]
In June 2010 the new Home Secretary Theresa May called for CRB checks to be "scaled back to common sense levels." The good news is that the number of CRB checks undertaken by local councils on volunteers was down in 2010/11 compare to the previous year. It is now below a million. In 20010/101 it […]
Christina Dykes is working on a report, Tomorrow’s Councillors, which is investigating how Big Society and localism is impacting on the role of councillors. Two remarkable points about the Public Administration Select Committee’s recent report Big Society: One, it is concerned with implementation; Two, the term councillor is not mentioned in the main text. A […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter In the latest ConservativeHome survey we asked respondents to rate the importance of 23 policy themes for convincing voters "that the Conservatives are a modern, compassionate party". Respondents voted between 0 (unimportant) to 10 (very important). The average ratings are pasted below: Improve schools: 8.48 Keep inflation under control: 8.33 […]
Seldon says the Big Society phrase should be kept but it needs substance. Taylorsays it has become a toxic brand. Professor Seldon argues that "The Government needs to start 'doing' Morality" on today's Comment pages.
Another day. Another reason to leave the EU. The Public Administration Select Committee report on the Big Society. By applying the EU Public Contracts Regulations (2006) councils cause small local charities to give up in despair at putting in a tender to run services. The cost of bidding is prohibitive. The report says: We welcome […]