Many people in the voluntary sector will feel a small glow of satisfaction at the election of Ed Miliband as Labour leader, no matter what they think of his politics, the mode of his election or the fraternal ‘psychodrama’. His first job in government was at the then Office of the Third Sector, a new… Read more »
Posts By: Stephen Cook
Big society means big change ahead
Lord Wei, the government’s big society guru, weighed in recently with a warning that some charities and social enterprises had become too bureaucratic because they received most of their funding from the state. “They have ended up becoming big charity, not big society,” he said. This chimes with Conservative arguments in recent years about the… Read more »
Should think tanks be charities at all?
There are some senior figures in the Conservative Party who are not very keen on campaigning charities. Oliver Letwin, now Minister of State at the Cabinet Office with the role of providing policy advice to the Prime Minister, was more vocal than most about this before the election. There is a certain irony, then, surrounding… Read more »
Proceed with caution on the Right to Ask
The Institute of Fundraising has been holding more meetings about a campaign it is planning which has been provisionally called Right to Ask although it has also been mooted that it could be called Right to Give. It’s not surprising that the launch has been delayed from the original target of spring this year. It… Read more »
If we all gave one per cent of income, the sky would be the limit
Francis Davis, a policy adviser on the big society, has published a paper called The Diamond Dividend in which he estimates that £4bn more could be raised for charity if people gave one per cent of their income. Only £4bn? He is no doubt wise to be restrained in his estimates, but a back-of-the-envelope calculation… Read more »
The government’s decision on Refugee and Migrant Justice is reminiscent of the Thatcher years
David Cameron spent a lot of time in opposition playing down comparisons between his politics and those of the Thatcher government. When he came into power in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, it seemed their influence might strengthen the government’s credentials on social justice. Now, a few weeks into the new regime, a junior minister… Read more »
Baroness Smith of Pitsea?
There was the usual fighting talk when Angela Smith lost her seat at South Basildon and East Thurrock at the election: the seat’s only on loan to you Tories, we’ll be back, and so on. It may well be that Labour will regain this marginal constituency when the pendulum swings again, but it won’t be… Read more »
Civil society sounds grandiose, but what is it?
So off we go with the name game once more. A couple of years ago the Conservatives said the Office of the Third Sector would be renamed the Office of Civil Society to denote the increased importance they wanted to give it. Then they said there had been a rethink and money was too tight… Read more »
Will the new Government stick with the ‘big society’?
At the weekend, some Tory MPs were complaining anonymously that the big society idea had not gone down well on the doorstep and might even have played a part in denying the Conservatives an overall majority. Today on Radio 4, Tim Montgomerie, who runs the influential Conservative Home blog, said that the idea had never… Read more »
Is David Cameron about to shelve the ‘big society’?
Headless chickens come to mind as we watch Labour and Conservatives running around in search of the best way to neutralise the Clegg effect. It’s brought the election alive in a slightly disturbing way – might we actually end up with something daring, like scrapping Trident or joining the Euro? Of special interest to the… Read more »