poverty
The Emergency Budget Needs to Make Work Pay
Local councils around the country should have the power to set their own living wages
"...We can move towards locally set living wage levels by empowering councils to set and enforce their own living wage. This would marginalise the national minimum wage but not dismiss it, as it should be retained as a reference and would continue to ensure a basic standard of living. A locally set living wage would be sensitive to the affluence, demographic composition and the electorate’s concerns in each locality..."
The Big Society: A Radical New Approach to Social Mobility?
The complex relationship between putting down roots and moving on to better things - and what it means for civil society policy
"...There is evidence to suggest that geographical mobility is associated with the primacy of the personal over the collective self. This can have a less than positive impact on society..."
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.'..."
