Demos Greenhouse
- Global Conversations David Miliband has resurrected his blog and has been joined by a group of diplomats including Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, Ambassador to Afghanistan, Lindsay Appleby, a Private Secretary and Strategy Adviser to the UK Ambassador to the EU and Sarah Russell a new entrant. While the Foreign Secretary’s musings on Iran will no doubt be of interest, I can’t help thinking the big test of the Foreign Office blog will be what Sarah thinks of the FCO, its good and bad points. Look out for newspaper stories soon... continue reading on 27th September 2007
- Speaking blogs to power It seemed worth highlighting the unfortunate blogging saga involving billionaire and Arsenal shareholder Alisher Usmanov (here's his wikipedia entry - it should be interesting to see how this develops).Earlier this month Craig Murray, former ambassador to Uzbekistan, posted a strongly worded, um, 'critique' of Usmanov containing a number of allegations regarding his conduct during his rise up the ranks of rich post-communists. Usmanov denies them and via law firm Schillings forced the post to be removed... continue reading on 26th September 2007 Comments (1)
- Who's afraid of the Respect Party? I've got an article in this month's Renewal arguing that the government's approach to Britishness (broadly characterised as an attempt to agree upon what we agree upon) needs to focus more on the areas where we disagree. Attempts to 'construct' Britishness in a top down, stage-managed way is producing a vision so content-lite that it is emotionally unengaging. We need to acknowledge the problems and conflicts created by diversity and then work through them together. It's only by embracing the... continue reading on 21st September 2007
- Please Dave, I want some more science... The Tories have just let another policy review report slide forth. They're notoriously difficult to find, so here's a link. This one is on Science. And their radical recommendation is that we should have more of it. All very white heat of technology.No new budgets, of course. Just shuffling around of money. But, considering that the upward Brownian motion of Labour's science budget has followed years of Tory cuts, this isn't so surprising.Beneath the headline, if anyone gets that far,... continue reading on 20th September 2007
- A lot done, a lot to do As the CRE winds down, the new mega equalities commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR) prepares to take up its role as custodian of the race equality agenda. This agenda will share space in the CEHR with the territory previously covered by the Equal Opportiunities Commission and the Disability Rights Commission.Not surprisingly, each of the disappearing commissions is concerned that its aims are given proper (and equal) importance under the new umbrella. But it is fair to say that the... continue reading on 19th September 2007
- International Quidditch Just a brief post to draw attention to this article in the Guardian.Apparently, the English language version of the last instalment of the Harry Potter saga sells more overseas than in the UK - people don't want to wait for the translation. A million copies were sold last month in Germany alone, and the Chinese love it, racking up a number of pre-orders 200% higher than the last one.Apart from wizard-fever, this shows how important popular culture is in relation to the globalisation of... continue reading on 19th September 2007 in As You Like It
- The only thing we have to fear... Just a quick post to flag up an article i have up on the Guardian's Comment-is-Free site. The basic point that i try to make is that traditional economics lacks the tools to understand the Northern Rock saga properly. This is because it what we have been seeing is a social phenomenon aswell as a straightforward economic one. continue reading on 18th September 2007
-
The Politics of Public Behaviour seminars, October 8th and 22nd
Just a quick post to let people know that we’re holding two more seminars on The Politics of Public Behaviour – exploring the public implications of private-decision making.
We’ve got great guest speakers for both sessions. On October 8th Daniel Finkelstein, of Comment Central fame, and Patrick Diamond from Policy Network will be along to talk about the relationship between laws and social norms. And on October 20th Jeff French, from the National Consumer Council and Dr Fiona Adshead from the Dept for Health will be here to talk about foregrounding the future in the decisions we make as individuals and as a society. More details for the seminars are below – drop me an email if you would like to come along. continue reading on 17th September 2007 Comments (3) - New publication (sort of) Shelagh, Charlie and I wrote a paper about inclusion in the creative industries last year, but for some reason we never got round to publishing it beyond a handful of industry cognoscenti. It struck us a few days ago that some of the themes were still pretty relevant - not least because Demos is currently exploring this territory in far more depth. So here it is.The argument is basically that the creative industries do a pretty lousy job of living up to their inclusive ethos. It's not because... continue reading 14th September 2007 Comments (1)
- Global privacy standards? Data and information about us, for reasons fair, foul or just opaque, travels across nations and continents as an almost necessary by-product of whatever it is that we call the information society. But how can we be sure about what that means for who sees that personal information, and how it is used?Google's Peter Fleischer is talking about this today in a speech at a UNESCO conference on ethics and human rights in the information society. He's arguing that we should develop some global... continue reading on 14th September 2007 in Private Lives? Comments (1)