The disproportionate representation of UK private schools (confusingly called ‘public schools’) amongst Britain’s Olympians has been causing some controversy. For some on the right this highlights the superiority of private sector schooling over state provision – especially as a lot of money has supposedly gone into promoting sports in the public sector.

Philipp Krause has raised some very interesting issues about the development of public finance institutions in emerging economies (which are equally applicable to wider public administration capacity development in emerging countries).

Interesting new report on the Manchester/Salford riots:

guest post by John Alford and Janine O’Flynn  The G4S fiasco surrounding security for the London Olympics has sparked debate about the problems of contracting out. In a new book, John Alford and Janine O’Flynn argue for a broader approach to utilizing external providers as the key to avoiding or at least minimizing the pitfalls

In an interview for The Daily Telegraph Prime Minister David Cameron seems to say that the idea of another Spending Review is now a dead-duck, which is fascinating as they have just deferred decisions on social care “until the next Spending Review’.

Louise Casey, the serial trouble-shooting Czarina, has managed to get huge publicity for a report which purports to “research” the issue of “troubled families”. And we’re not even into the Silly Season proper yet.

When the Coalition Government published its Spending Review in 2010 it ambitiously set out spending plans not for 3 years, as had been the case in the 5 previous Spending Reviews under New Labour, but for 4 years. This was always “ambitious Minister”, as Sir Humphrey would say.

Public policy community comes together 12 Jul 2012 The University of Manchester has established Policy@Manchester as a network bringing together a range of academics working in a variety of public policy areas.

For three decades the idea has held say in most of our political class that “Big Government” was inevitably hopeless and only markets, competition, choice and private provision – even of publicly paid for services – will ‘work’. If we ever needed reminding that life is not so simple the fiasco surrounding G4S – private […]

As someone who’s been writing and working with performance measures and dashboards for longer than I care to remember, I found this post on ‘False Economy’ (link below) just so funny I had to reproduce it…. ———————- A preview of our new iPad app: Cameron’s Dashboard