Disraeli Room

...Many small businesses do not have the capacity or the will to train up new staff from scratch, but business clusters could hold the answer. Clusters are real world social networks of like-minded entrepreneurs who could share fragments of their knowledge with those who seek it. The trick is to put SMEs in a ‘pro-active learning’ mind set. For this to happen, they need to be provided with infrastructural solutions pulling resources and experiences together for the sake of collective benefit...

...Let me be clear, there is nothing wrong with going to university. Quite the contrary, as someone who went to University, I do not want to deny anyone the same opportunity. However, what about those people not offered any real choice about their futures? What about the young person who wants to go into further education or get an apprenticeship? Why should they feel that their qualification is socially any less worthy than a degree...

...There is a growing sense that, given the acute inequalities that markets are now generating, getting the economy restarted (the Treasury focus not unreasonably at present) is only half the story. If you restart the same economy, you get the same problems, as night follows day. A second central economic policy issue is therefore how to widen the distribution of ownership and prosperity. It is what I call an agenda of creating mass ownership...

I do have to pinch myself that party leaders are now wanting to debate the future of capitalism. All power to ResPublica among others I guess for arguing that it is not just policy we need, but a deeper rethinking on policy and society...