Living in Britain

As someone who was involved in writing what have now become the Coalition’s Big Society policies and who stood for the Conservatives at the 2010 General Election, I am – Read more

On Monday, someone asked on Twitter for a definition of Big Society. Some of the positive answers: A good idea claiming to empower ‘little platoons’ and improve ‘social fabric’ (Burke) Read more

I want to start this post by declaring an interest. Indeed it is a special interest. I love the concept of the Big Society. Unequivocally love it. Striving to build Read more

Building on the conversation I had with Sean in the comments this morning… Even though I STILL (after an hour of trying) can’t get to the information for my postcode, Read more

Despite the fact that I would never describe myself as a policy analyst, expert or wonk (or indeed very interested in the details), I thought I’d explain why these are Read more

This article was first published on Thursday 9 December at 15.06, but we have reposted, as it got a bit lost in the tuition fees blizzard yesterday! The main reason Read more

A fringe meeting on the theme of the Big Society—Engaging Communities was first event of opening day of the Conservative Party Conference for me.  I was delighted to chair it Read more

There is a buzz of energy running through Conservative activists in the run up to the party conference, something that I can’t put our finger on, but it’s there. Has Read more

Last week, I wrote about my annoyance at the announcements on the Tube asking us to move down inside the carriage – when it’s perfectly obvious that if there are Read more

The IFS has recently released a report criticising the Coalition’s claim that the budget was “progressive” by stating that it will hit the poor hardest. Instead of criticising the IFS’ Read more