Disraeli Room

"... the Big Society will only be brought to life – and the public enthused – when its practical application is demonstrated more clearly. The Big Society’s vision of giving individuals and communities more control over their lives is laudable but must be translated into tangible, practical, visible solutions to local problems that voters can relate to, whether that be welfare dependency, anti-social behaviour, or child hunger, a problem that national food agency and charity Magic Breakfast was set up to tackle ..."

"... As it is, the CSR shed little light on the road ahead. Indeed, if I am being mischievous, I would posit that, despite the opportunities highlighted above, the Coalition still do not seem to be clear about how we are to pay for the infrastructure that underpins civic action. We had the Big Society Bank affirmed – thank goodness – and the allocation of all proceeds from Dormant Accounts to its capitalisation. At the same time, NESTA have run something of a crowdsourcing exercise on possible financial innovations that the bank should pilot. This then suggests that the Big Society Bank will indeed be what it should be: a fund of funds that o

"... I want to argue that we are now well placed to go beyond – perhaps even synthesise – the well-rehearsed debate between the Keynesians on the one hand and the neo-Classical economists (along with the so-called “Treasury model”) on the other. In a sense, there is a framing challenge, which is important both for the formation of government policy and also in trying to assess the implications of that policy ..."

"... Taken together, the combination of reductions in capital grants, new flexibility on rents and changes to housing benefit are comparable in scale to the launch of Right to Buy in 1980, the introduction of private finance and large scale transfers of council housing stock in 1988, and the introduction of housing association grant funding in 1972 - all of them also initiatives of Conservative administrations ..."

"... Rather than a cautionary tale of social abdication, Paul Gauguin’s self-made myth is today held up by many as the archetypal Artist going to the ends of the earth to remain uncompromised by the mutual obligations of civilisation. And perhaps that is the prerogative of the Artist, to pursue Nietzschean self-perfection at the expense of even basic social solidarity ..."