The Disraeli Room
The Disraeli Room
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Dancing On A Pin Head
Author and ResPublica Fellow, Jules Peck, analyses Phillip Blond's debate with Charlie Leadbeater at the 'Names Not Numbers' event
"...I think there are many of us from the left and the right who are tired of the atomised, individualistic, consumerist and ‘for and to’ state of society. We are reaching out for something different. Initiatives like my favourite, the Transition Towns movement have given up waiting for Big Business and Big Government to provide solutions. They are the living, emergent example of ‘with and by’ society. Local people - butchers, bakers, candle-stick-makers, teachers and mothers - doing things with each other to bring about new forms of relations, production and consumption led by the citizens. They don’t look for things to be done for them. And they are no longer willing to have things done to them..."
Liberty, Innovation, and an Invitation
ResPublica's Deputy Director, Asheem Singh, on the radical future of our most ancient freedoms
"...Only the innovators on our side can stem the tide of the innovators on 'theirs.' And it is not in regulating or auditing the innovators in our communities that we will develop community innovation and ethos – and so real power - but by reforming the concrete connections of the human commons of the future, and so binding future innovators to the cause of helping those communities..."
A Psephological Quandry
A pragmatic view of the electoral reform debate
"...As though in riposte to our Great Debate on electoral reform, the Conservative poll lead fell to 2 per cent nationally over the weekend - a margin small enough that, were this a national election rather than an internet poll of roughly 2,000 adults, election experts would translate this outcome to a Labour victory, with a majority of seats no less. Politics being what it is, this, more than any argument, might be what it takes to reverse Tory opposition to a more proportional form of representation..."
Poverty, Politics and Brain Size
ResPublica's Sandra Gruescu questions the emerging consensus on and use of neuroscience in parenting
"...brain size is affected, but the level of neglect has to be extreme. Unfortunately Mr. Duncan Smith forgot to mention that the study in question looked at 'extreme extremes': at children in Romanian orphanages who, before the madness of Mr and Mrs Ceausescu came to a violent end in December 1989, were kept in cages, tied to their beds and treated worse than animals over a prolonged period of time. The question we have to ask is the extent to which data based upon these horrific cases should be imported directly and applied to 'Broken Britain.'..."
Election, Election, Election
How true community empowement can counteract Britain's democratic disengagement
"... ‘a generation of Ms Mistrustfuls and Mr Boreds [...] hold the key to No. 10’. A combination of long-term alienation from the political sphere and short-term rejection as a result of the expenses scandal has left the political engagement of the British public at gravely low levels, with only 10% of the 2,000 voters surveyed being defined as ‘politically committed’, while 14% were active campaigners, 14% were interested bystanders and 8% politically contented. The flipside of the data is that 54% of the respondents fell into the disengaged/mistrustful, alienated/hostile, detached cynic and bored/apathetic categories. In other words, over half of the surveyed sample of the British electorate are disengaged from politics..."
The Customer and the Citizen
On the limits of government imitating business
"...The managerial trend within government, that began in the 1980's, during the feverish days of Thatcherism, has gradually spread and infiltrated to every facet of public services. This has become sometimes onerously evident for workers in the public sector with the emphasis on meeting targets. For the broad mass of the population, the trend has perhaps become notable in a subtle even seemingly insignificant way as there has been a change in the way we find ourselves addressed when using public services. We have now, it seems, become the customer..."
The Loan Shark Killer
The Future of Money, Part One: A pre-budget post on P2P lending's great opportunity
"...Websites like Zopa are more like cutting-edge credit unions, resting on the simple but radical notion of mutual assistance. Consumers may not be tied by geography, as they were in the days of Victorian mutuality, and still are in the microfinance schemes of the Mo Yunus' Grameen bank. Yet the principle is the same, updated for the 21st century..."
I or We
Secretary-General of Co-Operatives UK, Ed Mayo, on how the words we use can reveal more than we intend
"...Both David Cameron and Gordon Brown scored over 2.5 - with Cameron just ahead - while Nick Clegg was well behind with 1.85..."
On Ineptitude in Public Services
Management Thinker and ResPublica Fellow, Simon Caulkin, on the critical path to better government illuminated by John Seddon's new book
"...Instead of standardising demand through dumb computers, you put knowledgeable, concerned people on the front line as the first port of call where they can absorb the myriad variety of human need and allow it to ‘pull’ the appropriate solution. Initial transaction costs go up – sharp intake of breath from factory managers at HMRC – but overall costs go sharply down as time and rework are reduced. Processing times fall from weeks to days; customers send cake and flowers instead of brickbats..."
Doing The Right Thing: A Video
Corporate Philosopher and ResPublica fellow, Roger Steare, in a short video, presents ideas for a values-driven economy
"...Roger is lead author of a major ResPublica project entitled 'A Force for The Greater Good,' which examines the role of ethics in business and economics more widely..."
About the Disraeli Room
The Disraeli Room is ResPublica’s blog, dedicated to radical, progressive ideas and analysis. ResPublica’s experts, fellows and friends of all political stripes from the worlds of policy making, social innovation and entrepreneurship meet here to swap ideas, debate and provoke.
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Most read blog posts
- by Alan Riley 17
"...Too many Conservative commentators look back to the glory days of Baroness Thatcher and assume that all is required is a return to the eternal Thatcherite verities of sound money, low taxes, a strong defence, tough on Europe and tough on immigration to deliver a substantial Parliamentary majority.
This recipe did not work in 1997, 2001 and 2005, and only the more progressive message of David Cameron in 2010 delivered substantial gains, which despite being considerable left the Conservatives still short of an overall majority..." - by Asheem Singh 40
"...A small, social start up finds that its biggest competitor is the state it is trying to help. Not only that but the state attempts to crowd out its competitor by using the very same domain name. She would be entitled to ask: whose side are they on?..."
- by Phillip Blond 5
"...The existing First Past the Post (FPTP) system is creaking at the seams, it was defensible when the threshold for winning an election was around 45 per cent of the vote and the two parties that alternated in power could each rely on 40 per cent or more..."
