Public opinion: Your blogs

New Model Army

Young people…they’re everywhere.

And many of them are getting involved in running our towns, cities and villages to make things better for all of us.

The regeneration story no-one wants to hear

Elijah is a 90-year-old war veteran, whose home of 56 years has been CPO-ed. He wants to end his days there and doesn’t see why it should be demolished under Oldham’s Pathfinder scheme – particularly since the recession has led to building been put on hold.

Will LEPs live long and prosper?

‘It’s economic partnership, Jim, but not as we know it.’

Big Society: principled protest or vested interest?

The default position in much of the larger charity sector seems to veer between falsely claiming it has always and forever championed local unpaid community action, or a visceral resentment that there in no longer any money to be had as preferred arm’s length contractors of the state.

Evaluation: does it have to be all or nothing?

I’ll come clean: some of what my company does now as evaluation is a waste of money. Taking really very modest projects and programmes and applying to them the full panoply of the Government’s Impact Evaluation Framework is simply daft. We do it because our clients’ funders require us to do it.

I cherish the moment when a former colleague gave a public sector client a little lecture on how to do a perfect evaluation, only to be told: “we all know about the Gold Standard: I’m interested in what’s realistic”.

Maude and NAVCA on volunteering

“And what volunteering do you do?”
“I do...golly, what do I do? Umm, a whole load of things....Um, gosh, that’s a really unfair question cold...” (Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude in an interview with Eddie Mair on the PM Programme yesterday evening to talk about the Big Society). There was more:
“Well, I do various things. It’s a great question to err… drop on me err… and if I had time to think about it…”

It was both hilarious but painful to listen to. You can hear the original interview here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qskw or read more about it here: http://jocote.org/2010/07/walking-the-volunteer-walk/

Maude’s interview made an interesting contrast to this exchange within Kevin Curley’s speech at a Sheffield conference yesterday:

Curing ‘bloated’ Britain requires precision surgery

It is now clear, that there is no lack of aspiration, desire and enthusiasm for reform and making UK local government better.

There is a real zeal being displayed, and I think parts of what the government is saying and doing, is extraordinary, ambitious and an opportunity. David Cameron asserting that ‘there is such a thing as a society, it’s just not the same as the state’ reflects an emerging political philosophy in which notions such as Big Society represent an engagement with ideas around reshaping the social contract between the state, community and individual.

National Citizen Service could learn from Blastbeat

Last week I went to my first gig at the O2 arena. Tinchy Stryder and the Saturdays are not the artists you’d usually find on my ipod, but this was no ordinary gig.

The short (and sweet) life of National Tenant Voice

My in-box has been a lot busier than usual this week, and I've been getting messages at all hours of the day and night from people with whom I share a common purpose and passion.

Why we need a co-production guarantee

Let’s face it, governments are deregulators in their youth – filled with optimism about people and communities – tending towards frustrated and ever more controlling regulators as they hurtle towards pessimistic dotage.