Why People Matter More Than ‘Defending Public Services’ »

The dust blown up by an election campaign tends to obscure a clear view of what government is really about. Or should be about.  Take the locking horns of the two major UK parties over the NHS.  Neither has successfully moved the debate along beyond who would transfuse more cash into State healthcare (or rather [...]

Give Us a Mouthful – nominate bad language in the making! »

Happy New Year and a new decade too! It’s now ten years since the invention of Big Brother; ‘local strategic partnerships’; ‘tsars’ for different parts of government policy; Pokemon; an ethical foreign policy (remember that one?); the New Deal for Communities…. and, of course, the Millennium Bug. Which suggests some ideas just aren’t meant to last. With that in mind, what’s about now we could do without? We invite nominations for ‘bad language’ in the making: buzzphrases that shouldn’t be allowed to buzz…

Why Co-Production Isn’t What They’ll Say It Is »

Co-production is a really important idea – it’s something that could transform the way neighbourhoods look and feel; it could make sense out of a lot the things about society that don’t make sense to people now.  NESTA (which is a research body set up with Lottery money) yesterday launched The Challenge of Co-Production, a [...]

What the World Wanted to Talk About – Twitter Trends 09 »

Social networking and microblogging service Twitter has shared information on the top trends of 2009 – what the world has been twittering about.  In between the informal, indecipherable and the downright inane, here’s what folks have been discussing over the last 12 months (thanks to Twitter for producing the graphic):

The striking thing is not that [...]

‘Cut to Spend’ or ‘Invest to Save’? »

‘Cut to spend’ or ‘invest to save’? News today from the National Audit Office that short term cost-cutting at the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has actually driven up the eventual price should ring alarm bells in neighbourhoods served by public services facing cuts. Neighbourhoods that depend most on public services are likely to be blighted by ill-considered cuts and some politicians are making it worse than it meeds to be.

Look at the Laws of Your Community »

What are the rules of ‘belonging’ round your way?  The places we live, the places we work and the places we spend our free time – there are unwritten rules that apply in each.  Rule number 1 in most places is that we tend not to talk about them.  Perhaps that’s why we ridicule those [...]