The imposition of soviet-style ‘one size fits all’ Parliamentary constituencies on the complex organic realities of England is an extraordinarily clumsy and contentious move. It smacks of moving towards Amercan-style boundary ‘Gerry mandering’, as well as distancing Parliamentary representation from real local communities. From a government supposedly committed to ‘localism’ this is a strange move, […]

The appointment of Bernard Hogan-Howe as the new Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police is a political appointment, and all the poorer for it. I don’t mean Mr Hogan-Howe is a Tory, although he has been publicly cosying up to their law and order agenda. I mean that the decision to appointment him, as opposed to […]

This doesn’t really have anything to do with Whitehall or Public Management, but I got this extraordinary Press Release this morning and was so taken aback I just thought I needed to share it. Maybe it should be relevant to public management – should government provide an e-death service along with all the other e-gov […]

see my post on the Guardian Public leaders Network

The ‘Arab Spring’ has raised, yet again, the issue of how modern publication administrations can be created in emerging and transitional states – especially ones that have long lived with some sort of autocratic regime. At next years IRSPM Conference in Rome (11-13 April 2012) Beryl Radin (American University) and I are organising a panel […]

PA Times (USA) 21 September 2001 The column below was written immediately after 9/11 and published by the US magazine PA Times. You can find the archived online version here. I was going to write a fresh piece for the 10th anniversary of 9/11, but I think this stands the test of time rather better […]

I wrote earlier this year for Huffington Post (UK) about the differences between the UK and USA when it comes to Universities and Public Policy – in exactly the opposite way most would suppose.  Whilst the more government-sceptic USA has lots of activity in Universities, the UK is notably weak – at least when it […]

The right-wing Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) has come up with one its most potty ideas yet – a “military style” Free School staffed by ex-service people to impose discipline on youths involved in gang culture.

Gaddafi is gone, and Libya faces a new future. Of course, the fighting is not completely over and he and his scions are still at large, but few doubt the regime is no more.

“In my last comment I demonstrated that the US public debt is not very large, and its annual servicing quite small.  It occurred to me (and to several people who wrote to me in response to my comment), that it might be illuminating to carry out a similar exercise for the annual public deficit.  You […]