No, not the Beetles hit, but the flavour of many of the meetings I’ve been attending in recent weeks and will be in the next few weeks. First was a Guardian ‘roundtable’; this was followed by evidence I was asked to give to the Northern Ireland Assembly Finance Committee; another roundtable, this time organised by […]

I thought I’d share this interesting message from David Halpern, Research Director, Institute for Government London: NEW BOOK: HIDDEN WEALTH OF NATIONS DAVID WRITES: As you may know, since leaving No10 and Cabinet Office, I’ve spent some time revisiting the last 25 years of data on value change, the social and economic challenges (and opportunities) […]

In the never-ending, and now more important than ever, effort to do more-with-less, a new initiative has come out of Whitehall: OneTotalLocalPlace. There have been quite a number of initiatives that have been focussed on getting the best value for money our of local spending. These have included: – Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) – these […]

I detest even having to blog about this – the Sun’s manipulation of a grieving mother of a dead British soldier today is disgusting. But, let’s be very clear. Gordon Brown lost the sight in one eye when he was a kid, playing Rugby. The sight in his other eye is adequate, but not brilliant.

My new book on ‘Theories of Performance’, which has come out of my ESRC Public Services Programme Fellowship – is more or less finished, bar some minor edits. I’ve added a new page (ToP Book – see tab above right) which has the contents, a description and some comments from colleagues who have read the […]

I’ve just been discussing with a colleague what sort of crisis we are in and what the effects for Public Management Reform are likely to be. Lots of people are discussing what the financial crisis means for public services and public management, without stepping back to think about what sort of crisis the public sector […]

from Professor Geoffrey M. Hodgson Two Nobel Laureates and over 2000 Signatories Uphold that Economists have Mistaken Mathematical Beauty for Economic Truth

Today’s controversy over the far-right British National Party using images from the British Armed Forces to promote themselves has one rather ironic element. The BNP has featured the Spitfire on their literature as an symbol of the Battle of Britain – the air clash between the UK and Germany at the start of the war.

Gordon Brown put reinforcing parliamentary accountability at the heart of his premiership. One major change was to involve parliament in the appointment of senior public officials.

So – MPs expenses are back, but this time with a slightly more complex plot. Former civil servant Sir Thomas Legg has been accused of retrospective re-writing of the rules in calling on MPs to repay anything above certain set limits for things like cleaning their second homes.