Will the new Public Service Mutuals Succeed?

It's been a good week or two in the media for social enterprise. The fifteen new NHS `Right to Requests' have been announced and then, yesterday, we heard from Francis Maude all about 12 new `Pathfinder' mutuals about to be launched with mentoring support from John Lewis Partnership and other marquee names from both the corporate and social enterprise world.

The mentors include Lord Victor Adebowale, CEO of Turning Point, and staff from the John Lewis Partnership, PriceWaterhouseCooper, KPMG and Local Partnerships, among others. Other social enterprises involved includeSunderland Home Care Associates, Central Surrey Health, and GLL.

I have been trying to find out a bit more about these new mutuals beyond this and detail is still a bit thin on the ground. The pathfinders, I understand, include a co-operative providing adult social services and community health in Swindon, a Department of Health disability team, which will be a community interest company, housing support services for vulnerable people in Mansfield and a social enterprise helping homeless people in Leicester.

The big question is, of course, will they succeed in first stepping out of the public sector and then becoming viable businesses? At the moment it is, of course, hard to tell. My own view is that this will depend on three main things.

The first will be the scale and capacity of the mutuals to hold their own even in a protected marketplace. Will a department of health disability team - which I presume is a relatively small venture - cut it in the wider disability health sector in which there is perhaps already a lot of competition? It may or may not - but this needs to be given very clear thought before a decision to spin-out.

Likewise, I worry a little for very small chunks of councils or PCTs with dependence on perhaps one customer (I realise that the Pathfinder also includes larger orgs). I may end up being wrong, but I am not sure whether thousands of very small mutual businesses will make sense, when you take into account the support required to get them going and viable in the marketplace.

When I go speak to CEOs and Directors in local authorities and PCTs they are thinking about very large spin-outs. And would you fancy trying to hold your own as a small new local mutual in 25% cuts with commisssioning all over the place as the LA or PCT lurches towards a scale solution, whether this is private or social-enterprise in character? As I keep saying, I may end up proved wrong, but my own instinct is to go for much bigger mutuals which can compete on scale with the private sector in a marketplace which is pretty chaotic just now.

The second will be the quality of the teams leading these new mutuals. For anything to work in management terms you need committed leaders and fantastic top teams. While there will probably be no shortage of deeply motivated folk, I am a little anxious that beyond the CEO-figure there will exist senior teams with the right level of financial and operational nous to work in a brand new, commercially competitive environment, particularly if the venture is small and dependent on a single business relationship. Sure, mentoring and secondments will mitigate this risk, but I suspect each new venture will need investment in new roles and people who bring something new to the party.

The third, of course, will be the quality of support. The Pathfinder has identified some magnificent mentor-partners. This is a great start. Imagine having people with you who have already made the journey. Or support from one of the Big Four consultancies. What will also count is the range and intensity of that support. As somebody who was mentored to grow a 0.5 million business into a 7 million business, I understand the power of mentoring. But it also took a much deeper and more intensive set of external supports - around change-management, rebranding, marketing and sales, value-chain management - to achieve and sustain that growth. Mentoring matters, as much boots matter on a hike. But you also need waterproofs, a map, Kendal mint-cake etc. Wrap-around support. This needs to be out there during years 1-3 of these new ventures, in my view, to lower the risk of business failure.

Overall, as my readers know, I am a supporter of the Coalition in its broad aims. I believe that state provision has to move in large chunks from the state sector to the civil society sector - ideally in the form of social enterprises and into enterprising charities. So I am delighted with what I see going on. My comments here are really to say - let's make sure these new ventures are market-shaped, have access to proper investment and the necessary new blood and are supported in a very full-on way, with the kind of attention you see any investor putting into a growing new concern. This is not a time for a light-touch

Being Owned and Being Free

What is being free? I am getting a sense of that at the moment as I slide freely along the arc of my new life.

Today I was sorting out my new business most of the morning then involving the local media in my pavement-problem (see last blog), meeting on the phone with a Trustee, lunching with fellow East Anglian social entrepreneur Robert Ashton, visiting the Southgate Partnership (the new development trust I have helped set up) and finally sealing a speaking gig in 2011 where I am to appear alongside either Mark Steele or Mark Thomas (I am not sure who scares me most). In between all of this I manage 40 lengths at the local pool, dodging between canoodling teenagers and the occasional "bomber" (remember those?).

Today's highlight was probably Robert Ashton. We met at Elvedon, just in Norfolk about halfway between our homes. Robert has been quietly building an international reputation as a social entrepreneur through his achievements in Norfolk, his books (about ten so far which sell by the truckload across the globe) and his public speaking (see www.robertashton.co.uk).

Meeting Robert was great. We have a lot in common - running, writing, speaking a rather right-off sense of humour - and it is soothing to meet a kindred spirit. On a practical level, as fellow East Anglians, we have a shared landscape and I can easily imagine working with him.

There's also something I enjoy about the folk from our world with roots and lives outside of London (not that there aren't people in London who I deeply enjoy too!). Rob Greenland up in Leeds. Martin Kinsella in the Midlands (though increasinly everywhere). John Niland in Essex. Martin Clark in Cambridge. Rob Harris in Manchester. The list goes on. There's a welcome detachment from the "she's up, he's down" world of central London, where the utterings of politicians are given disproportionate weight. Further away from the capital, there is a sense of proportion and healthy scepticism about the daily drama of the capital.

I spoke at length with Robert about being free. He's been his own man since the age of 35 (he's now mid 50s). One of the best things for him is not having to compromise. Good for health, both mental and physical.

I am inclined to agree. All of my mates who work for big organisations, even as CEO, feel owned and controlled by their jobs and employers. The higher paid - over 100k - particularly so. Lack of control seems to be very damaging to human health, something I first observed about 20 years ago among people with learning difficuties - and now among my friends with weight problems, booze issues and mild depression.

All people who are, for want of a better word "owned", not free.

New Shit, Old Shit

Managed to miss Any Questions from Bury St Edmunds. Had I managed to get along I would have asked why more people are not supportive of the Coalition. In the circles in which I move, the Coalition is deeply unpopular: there's a new sense of `Who's side are you on?' emerging, which brings back memories of the 80s. As a supporter of the Coalition I find myself playing the role of Defender, despite having very human doubts and reservations. But I detect a change in atmosphere with one or two people I know, particular those who support left-parties - who are just seething. Put up taxes a few pence they say - and we won't need to do all this. It's all so UNNECESSARY.

Well, let's look at this. Is this all about tax and spend. Yes and no. Sure, we could jack up tax on people in work to keep the public sector at a comparable level to what is now. We could leave the welfare state as it is, in which a third of the populations of places like Manchester and Glasgow live entirely on benefit. We could allow the NHS and other parts of the public sector to operate like nationalised industries with levels of productivity that are, frankly, shameful.

And we could tolerate the insane levels of bureaucracy that all of us encounter every time our lives connect with the state. I say that as a local Councillor who, in a current attempt to get a very and obvious safety change done to a patch of pavement and road (seven feet by five) have had to engage seven public sector staff (police, road safety people, engineers, planning people) over a period of five months for a total of about 100 hours - and that's a generous guess. At forty quid an hour that's four grand to solve a grand's worth of problem. Frustratingly, this particular problem could have been sorted in a quarter of that time, and that's generous. I dare say it could all have been resolved in a day. Instead, there's a mini-industry built around it, largely by the councils themselves. We just need to do away with nearly all of it.

Back to my point. The attackers of the Coalition forget three important things. First, the state is in desperate need of reform. This cannot be ducked if the we are going to deal with the challenges of the next 50 years. Second, this would have had to happen anyway, even if Labour had won, something the Harriet Harmans forget. Thirdly, Labour has absolutely nothing to contribute to the discussion of where this country is going. Neither before or since the election has a senior Labour person said anything remotely convincing about where we need to take our economy, society and polity. Its leadership contest is a joke and it is going to be a long time before they are in the game again, in my view. The only people who could have got them there (Milburn, Purnell etc) have all been purged. David Miliband MIGHT come up with something. Ed is just an old-style social democrat and Balls is a useful attack-dog but little more.

I say all this because I am a bit sick to the teeth at the moment of the Polly Toynbee anti-coalition feeling being opportunistically whipped up by the party who got us into this shit in the first place.

Back to Choice

Back to the blog after two very pleasant weeks away. The first was spent in Swanage on the south coast, one of the few places down there which is nice but not London-On-Sea. We took the camper and hooked up with two of my schoolfriends and their families. Work is not discussed by unspoken agreement which is refreshing. Our kids are all small, our lives kind-of working out ok and there is something quite cool about hanging out with people you've known since you wore short pants.

Then the Isle of Wight on a House-Swop. We do this about four times a year and its normally pretty good - a trust-based like-for-like exchange. While I wasn't excited about it, the Isle of Wight felt like a proper escape, helped by poor mobile signal. Our house didn't have a computer in it either, which was ususal. Much of the island has the feel of West Wales or Northern Scotland. The chains are only present in the main town, the rest a tapestry of men's outfitters, old cafes and jewellers who haven't replaced their signs since the Seventies. I love all of that, except, of course, when I want to find a good cup of coffee.

Time away gave me a chance to reflect on where things are for me just now. Since leaving I have had a hectic three months of non-execcing, coaching and preparing for my new venture. I also realised how much, overall, I had enjoyed myself since ceasing to be a CEO. Normally, the job thunders round my head as my body seeks to pace itself to holiday-rhythm. This time, I slipped right into it, no problem. Temperamentally, I am probably a little too stress-prone to be a CEO, though I do miss parts of it, particularly the teamwork and the big wins. Much of it though, especially the inevitable confrontations and disappointments when things go tits-up, I do not miss one iota.

Of course I kept in touch a little with events via Third Sector Daily. There is this huge worry that Big Society is the right idea at the wrong time in the wrong hands. I couldn't disagree more. Now is the right time. There is no money. We had years of plenty but that encouraged the state just pumped itself up like a body-builder. Today that isn't any longer an option. Big Society is the only game in town. The idea is also in the right hands. You could never trust Labour with this stuff. Their addiction to the state meant they were never going to allow our sector any serious role beyond our traditional one of Vitamin-Supplement to a corpulent state.

The response of our sector to Big Society has been interesting. True to form, we are slightly on the defensive. We have `Cutswatch' websites and our commentators are very much in `Yes, but...' mode. The view you hear most is that now, of all times, is not the time to kick our sector in the nuts, just when society and the Government needs it most. To this end, we complain, politely, about cuts to Capacity Builders, V, the Compact Commission.

Voices will become shriller in the Autumn when the action really starts. At the moment, a long list of well known organisations will lose their core grants from the government. Thousands more will lose grants and contracts from local authorities.
How we respond to this is, however, our biggest test yet. Will we go into 1980s' Oppositionalist mode, just putting the word `Coalition' where `Thatcher' used to be daubed. Or do we actually accept that if the public sector is about to be vanquished we might just have to take a kicking ourselves - and just get on with it?

My bet is that the sector will go `Ashes to Ashes' on this - and turn to the mind-set of 1980s not the 2010s. Half the people I talk to in the sector still talk about the recession as a creation of the banking sector in which `they' got off scott-free while `we' suffer. This is hokum. We were headed for this with or without the traders of the Square Mile - and if you don't believe me talk to the Institute of Fiscal Studies who have been quietly making the point about the need to control public spending since the middle years of the last decade.

However, we do have a choice still. We can accept that there are far too many `strategic' organisations getting public money and that fewer may well be better. We can recognise that the long-boom produced tens of thousands of charities which now are unsustainable and therefore must either merge or find new ways to deliver. And, perhaps most importantly, we can drop the mentality that renders ourselves helpless in face of outside forces. Whatever happens to us, however unfair, we have a choice about how to respond. We can get angry. We can roll over and die. Or we can decide to survive and thrive. This is an existential choice familiar to millions of us in our individual lives, at some point. I know which is the right route for me, when night fell on my own life. This experience helped me to create an organisation which itself was pretty resilient. Because whatever shit happens, the one thing we control is our response to it. These are, of course, not my own words - for more see Tony Robbins - but he is right. The choices facing our sector are exactly the same.

Life in all its Glory

Just about to sign off for two weeks. It's about three months since I left my day job (as CEO of Speaking Up) and, although I have hardly stopped, I feel happier now than I probably ever have.

Can't quite work out why. I think its three things. The first is the powerful drug of freedom from the limitations of daily organisational life. By the end, this was getting to me a bit and I was totally ready to go. The second is the variety I now enjoy. Life's now split three ways between my non exec stuff (including Councillor and Chair of APSU), a third speaking/teaching/writing and a third on my New Thing.

After my break, New Thing will get about a half of my time and I will cut down a bit on the money-earning stuff. It feels like a fascintating time to be venturing out. The First 100 Days of this new government has been incredibly energetic, giving a real sense of seriousness about change. Although some of it worries me, I am willing to go with it, like many people because I felt that Labour was fucking it up really quite awfully. Even without the financial crisis, we'd still be in a major mess.

Blogging, you will notice has taken a slight back-seat. I hope to resume with gusto in August - I really have been running hard recently.

My biggest laugh came this week when I arrived early for a meeting at the RSA and overheard all the staff in the cafe backslapping over some report they had brought out which, somehow, had got loads of coverage on Today and Five Live. The RSA was calling for everyone to be trained to intervene in anti-social behaviour. It sounded like a very weak attempt to sound `Big Society' but which ended up caught in a hare-brained call for `training'for all public sector workers in intervention skills. Something for the Big Society straight from the toolbox of Ed Balls.

Listening to them, quietly in the corner with my laptop, I had to wonder whether any of these immaculately educated people really had much idea of just how scared a lot of people are of getting involved. There's too many examples of it all going wrong for many of us to bother. This they put down to `media sensationalism'. Had someone started kicking off down in the cafe there (not very likely I know!), I wonder how many of them would have been putting matters to right. Most, I suspect, would continue staring at their laptops, as one, quite sensisbly, normally does.

Quite what Samuel Johnson and Benjamin Franklin would have made of this latest output of the RSA I really don't know. But I can't imagine they would have thought much of it.

Where next for social enterprises `stepping out' from the public sector?

THIS PIECE WAS PUBLISHED IN THE GUARDIAN ON 14.7.10.

The coalition government has called for staff in the public sector to "step out" and move from public employment into John Lewis-style mutual bodies, social enterprises or charities. The vision is for vibrant new ventures, owned and led by former public sector professionals and service users.

For staff, this could offer refuge from a shrinking public sector that no longer offers security. For commissioners, social enterprises, it is claimed, look cheaper, are more community focused and more pliable than either in-house or large private sector providers, while the public get business like services, that run for people, not profit. What's not to like?

So is the social enterprise balloon about to take off? Despite the well-crafted words in the coalition agreement, which talk of "empowering" millions of public sector workers to become their own boss, this is not yet clear. Progress has been decidedly patchy. While council leisure services in many parts of the country have moved into social enterprise models, in the NHS only a handful of social enterprises have been set up.

And for many of those stepping out of the public sector, life has not always been easy. Several NHS and council spin-outs are still grappling with trade union opposition, the sheer complexity of extracting themselves from the public sector, and the need to learn new skills. One NHS leader described her experience as like learning a new language, as she grappled with the strategic and financial requirements of a new commercial entity after 25 years in the NHS.

Looking forward, there are two big questions. The first is whether there will be a supply line of entrepreneurial public managers. Many will prefer the devil they know to the unknown pleasures of a new mutual or social enterprise. How they are supported and incentivised will be critical.

The second question concerns whether these new ventures will cut it as serious businesses. While most will start out with a decent contract and a lot of goodwill, all will, very quickly, have to compete with the private and voluntary sectors. It is easy to envisage a flotilla of new social ventures freighted down with residual public sector culture being sunk by the cannon of less encumbered players. These ventures will need the freedom to restructure.

But the biggest question mark hangs over the role of the private sector. The massive global outsourcers have so far stuck mainly to the less visible side of the public sector: waste management, the back office and customer service centres. But in future, private sector firms may want to take over entire frontline services from councils, by promising cost savings of anything up to 25%. The biggest of such functions by far are adult and community services and children's services.

Contrast this with the potentially more complex and fragmentary task of floating new social ventures, and hoping for the best on cost savings and innovation. All too easy to envisage councils and primary care trusts (PCTs) going for the easier option and choosing private sector suppliers.

What is wrong with this? On one level, nothing. The big outsourcing firms have a track record in generating efficiency and improving services. But history suggests that they struggle to innovate and to engage the community in the delivery of services. Private sector services are not focused on less easily measured outputs, such as social capital. This is perhaps not a fatal flaw – but it is one that will be noticed by those councils placing the generation of social capital at the heart of their strategies.

So where next for social enterprise spin-outs? As councils and PCTs weigh up their options, the John Lewis model – as well as others such as community interest companies – will need to exhibit all the attributes of that iconic brand: reliability, trustworthiness and "never knowingly undersold". What they offer will have to be inviting, reassuring and well packaged. If not, we may be looking at the majority of public sector services by the end of this decade being run by global outsourcing businesses.

For supporters of social enterprise, the immediate task will be to ensure that buying from social enterprise is as appealing and straightforward as privatisation. No easy task but one from which the sector cannot shrink if it is to succeed.

Pickled

To Bournemouth and my first Local Government Association conference. It’s better than it sounds, particularly given the Coalition Government’s pending bill on `Localism’.

This was trailed in a fringe meeting by Andrew Stunell MP, a Lib Dem Local Government Minister. These include a mixture of operational freedoms for Councils about which the public probably cared little – the abolition of the Standards Board, abolition of the Comprehensive Area Assessment, freedom to revert from the Cabinet system to a Committee system) .

But, more interestingly Stunell spoke of an updated version of `Total Place’ – I think they termed it Area Based Budgets - to include a wide range of public sector spending over which, as an elected body, Councils would take the strategic lead (Councils directly spend only about 15% of public money in a given place). While this leaves unanswered the knotty question of how you boss the other 85%, it feels like a step in the right direction.

Later on we hear from the porcine Eric Pickles who manages to combine a tangible air of menace with being rather funny. He sounds as thick as mince, like a fat bloke down the pub with his Daily Mail - but this belies a bright mind and sharp political instincts. While Pickles is more likely to drop dead than get promoted, I hope he gets taken seriously rather than just written up as merely a thug.
I escape an utterly tedious seminar about the recession-beating efforts of Broadland Council (Norfolk, if you’re interested www.broadland.gov.uk. No? ) and go visit the stands.

Here the local government support-industry is out wearing its best smile. Serco are there with free juice and a funkily-lit set that wouldn’t look out of place on the Other Stage at Glastonbury. You could get free Domino Pizza (yes please) and I spend a long time talking to two richly-accented northerners trying to promote the de-industrialised wastelands of East Lancashire where I grew up as a trendy new place called ‘Pennine Lancashire’. Their lovely video and photo-boards depict not the pitbulls, derelict shops and former factories I remember but people mountain-biking and holding hands on windy moorland. Apparently the designer Wayne Hemingway helped on the rebrand. Boy, does it need it.

I then head off the workshop entitled `Inspirational Speaker’. I am a sucker for a good story so I lapped up Karren Brady’s account of her time with Birmingham City. She comes across as real-nice but I tell you, I wouldn’t mess. Indeed when one of her players called out “I can see your tits from here” as she walked past on the coach, she joked back that he wouldn’t be able to see them from Crewe. Which is where he was by the following week – playing for the lowly Alexandra. She may not have a dick, she told us, but she has big balls.

Brady’s serious message, which I liked, was that talent is useless without persistence, hard work and stick-ability. She is no genius and she knows it. But she is tenacious, determined and therefore and inspiration for non-geniuses everywhere who see a bit of themselves in her. She also understands culture and its importance to success. People need to be energized and leadership is about creating an atmosphere of success and shared purpose. This, she tells us, means dealing with our R.I.P.s – Retired in Post. People who have given up and just don’t care any more. Plenty of those in local government, of course.

I thought I had seen the best of the day but then landed up in a seminar run by CIPFA – the Chartered Institute of Professional Financial People – or some-such. This deeply unpromising event turned into the highlight of my day. We heard from the CEO of Brent Council, the Leader of Kent and the head of CIPFA who was that rare thing – an engaging accountant.

The focus was finance. Everyone agreed that some kind of enhanced pooling of public money at local level is a necessity. `Kent PLC’ spends eight billion a year of public money which only about a billion comes under the direct rule of Kent County Council. All railed against the protection of health and the refusal of health to come into any local co-working. As for Lansleys proposal to give 80 billion to GPs, the CEO of Brent (rather incautiously) compared it to giving vampires control of the nation’s Blood Banks.

There was consensus about the slack still there from non-front-line roles. Fascinatingly, only 29% of Brent Council’s staff are `front-line’ or people-facing. This can be raised to 40 or 50 %. For this reason their CEO feels most of the pain can be absorbed away from the front-line. But only if cutbacks do not exceed 25%. The 40% bandied around in last weekend’s papers would, all agreed, not be possible to implement without the risk of serious breakdown in service-provision and the potential for unrest that this would create.

Three things were striking about this session. The first was the unanimity that the level of deficit spending has to be attacked quite radically and within a single Parliament. The second was the preparedness of local authorities to move well beyond what they have previously done in terms of reshaping themselves as smaller, more facilitative entities rather than as large, slowly growing providers.

The third was the shocking level of duplication in services and spend across the public sector – and how unresponsive this has been so far to any form of political co-ordination and control. Local Area Agreements and Total Place – the only things tried so far – have produced mainly meetings, hot air and minutes but little on the ground.

The big remaining question for me is that if the Localities Bill does not sanction a bigger co-ordinating role for Local Authorities – including one which enables a steering of health spending (if not full Governance), then how we get beyond the risible efforts so far is beyond me.

Although I didn’t get near the beach or enjoy more than a moment’s sunshine, I caught the train back feeling that Bournemouth had been good to me that day.

Big Booze Versus Big Society Revisited

Found out on Friday that the Council have given the historic Corn Exchange to Wetherspoons. I have penned the following letter to the local paper which I fully expect not to be printed.

Dear Sir

Like the majority of Bury St Edmunds, my heart sank when I read about the Wetherspoons decision. What is most painful is that it was made for supposedly sound financial reasons. Yes, this will boost the coffers of St Edmundsbury Council by a few grand per annum, even after the pavements have been cleared of the evenings’ excesses. But it will cost other public bodies and the taxpayer a whole lot more: Suffolk County Council will be shelling out for extra policing; NHS Suffolk will be patching up the brawlers; the Ministry of Justice stumping up for court appearances, legal aid and so on. On top of this, there be empty shops where independent cafes and pubs once stood.

I travel widely and Bury’s `brand’ is fantastic with its charming streets, its Abbey Gardens and incredibly safe atmosphere. You mess with this at your peril. And you do not put down-market propositions like Wetherspoons bang in the middle of your offer. Image matters. Contrary to Councillor Mildmay-West I do do not believe a typical visitor to Bury rings Tourist Information ahead to check if we have a Wetherspoons. Can you imagine it - `No Wetherspoons? Never mind dear, we’ll have to go to Ipswich or Newmarket if we want to get fed and plastered for a fiver’… Sorry, Councillor, but your claims don’t ring true. By contrast, I think our typical visitors will go elsewhere when an air of boozed-up menace replaces Bury’s once peaceful, unique atmosphere. Another big mistake by a Council that has lost the plot. How many more can we afford?

Councillor Craig Dearden-Phillips
Liberal Democrat County Councillor for Hardwick Division

Blog from the Bog

I write this sitting on the cubicle the Virgin Pendolino Express between Birmingham and London. Not for any bodily reason but because I am hiding from the ticket inspector as I once did as a penniless student 20 years ago.

What has brought this 41 year old social entrepreneur,local Councillor and father-of-two to this rather graceless place. It started when I booked a ticket online, something I had never done before. When I got to the station I could go an get the ticket from a machine.

Trouble is, when I did this the bleedin' thing didn't work and I missed the train. I went to the box to explain that the train I had booked onto had gone and could I have my ticket? No duck, I was told, you'll have to buy an entirely new ticket for seventy quid. But I have already paid 55 I pleaded. Oh but it was on the internet wasn't it, you can't transfer those.

I almost went for my wallet then I stopped. Thanks, I said, I'll think about what to do. I then raced to the barrier, sqeezed through at a busy moment and got on the train. I took position near the bog ready for the inspector's arrival. He started his slow movement down the carriage and I got out my next set of Board papers and headed for the cubicle.

Twenty minutes later I am to emerge and hope for the best at the other end. A full ticket inspection and I am dead-meat. But I am fucked if I am paying again for something I have aleady bought.

The point of my story is that as a consumer and a human-being I feel I am being fucked-over. Under nationalisation we were fucked-over by late and dirty trains. Now we are fucked over by a massive disregard for commercial decency. I like Virgin and I haven't completely lost faith. But my patience has been sorely tested.

Almost as much as the queue of people who will be waiting for me when I eventually come out of this bog.

To my Labour-supporting friends....

I have had a hard time at your hands this week. Love you though I do - you're mostly in the caring professions - you've been, how can I say it, annoying in your naivete...since Tuesday's Emergency Budget announcement.

All of you, to a person, have conveniently forgotten that Darling set out cut of 20% next to the Coalition's 25%. Some of you are telling me this is "so un-necessary", as if the deficit didn't exist and all was well. You are forgetting that public spending is still going to rise to 750 billion by 2015 (today it is about 625), much of it paying-back 2001-09 debt). Provocatively of you talk about Lib Dem betrayal as though we had some other alternative than create a Coalition. And then you get onto the banks and how it's all their fault etc.

Which of course it partly is...but let's get real here. About three years ago I shared a platform with Carl Emmerson who is Robert Chote's deputy at the Institute of Fiscal Studies. This was well before the crisis and Carl's mission that day was to tell an un-witting third sector audience that all was not well. That the public sector was being pumped up unsustainably and that by 2011 we'd be looking at cuts, quite severe ones. And this was before the banking crisis.

The truth about the last Government is that it was held together was an ideology which says that clever, enlightened people can manage society through a large state which consumes 45-50% of the nation's resources. You get this view wherever you go in the Labour Party - except, possibly the uber-Blairites (who are now long-gone).

This model has been discredited. And while it was fine to turn the taps up when the receipts were there to cover it, to keep this going for so long when the money wasn't there is, in my mind, neglectful.

My party - the Liberal Democrats - will no doubt pay a heavy price in future elections. But whatever happens, I will be proud that we didn't join in the chorus of opposition to cuts. Don't get me wrong, I am worried. I have kids in (pre)school and depend on the NHS like everyone else. It won't be easy. But I have seen the public sector at close quarters for 20 years and there is massive scope for savings and, with it, long overdue reform.

Which gets me to where I am going with this piece. I am firmly convinced that the implementation of cuts by the Coalition will be executed a lot more effectively than would have happened under Labour. Reform of the public sector was stopped by Gordon Brown. This was over the head of a deeply frustrated Blair. Foundation hospitals, divesity of suppliers in the NHS, academies, you name it. Brown and Labour found ways to stop these things because they weren't part of the Master-Plan.Labour is the part of producers and has paid them more and put them before the user of public services for a very long time.


Neither Liberals or Conservatives think like this. Reform will be immediate and comprehensive. Neither party is funded by or owes anything to Unison, Unite or any of the other blockers. Bureaucracy will be hit a lot harder as will public sector pay and pensions - rightly too in my view. Only the Coalition can do this.
The alternative under Labour may have been a slightly lower level of cuts - but you can bet the cuts would have hurt me and you before they touched a public sector worker. Cuts under Coalition, though more severe, will, I believe, hit the producers much harder than me and you - which is how it should be.

So, my friends from the other side, I hope you do, eventually, smell the coffee on cuts. Labour people are, I tend to find, a heck of a lot nicer than Tories, the majority of whom are not people I would chose to hang out with. But I hope I don't have to spend the next five years listening to moaning about the nasty coalition. That would be no fun at all!

If you're ever invited to speak....

I do quite a lot of public speaking these days. I normally enjoy it. My audiences vary a bit but are normally public or social sector.

I am probably living proof that the training they send you on works. Before trooping off two years ago to a leafy media centre in the countryside I was your usual teeth-chattering nervebag who would read out something I'd taken about four days to write. The audience would snore away, I would creep off, un-noticed.

These days, there's no notes, a few slides with photos on (I have a collection of 50 slides which I use interchangablely) and an acceptance that it's better to go with the flow and see where that takes you. Because every audience is different. What animates one will bore another.

However, all audiences want to see the real you so whatever you say that day must feel authentic to you, and connect with them. I realise that this is also how stand-up comedy must work. There's an element of just going where your energy and the occasion takes you.

Step one therefore is to achieve a connection, an unbroken line of communication that lasts till you go off. First lines matter here. Either a gracious `thank-you for inviting me here to Scunthorpe' or a good joke (but never a mediocre or poor one).

Step two is to watch carefully how people are responding. Do they look bored - if they do, change gear, forget the plan. One person will always be sleeping. Ignore this if others look ok. The odd person will also suddenly get up and leave. Again don't worry - they are normally taking a call or a pee. The overall mood is what matters.

Step three is to tell stories. Don't make points, tell stories. People really love stories and learn better through them. The stories have to be things you have personally done or been involved in. Don't tell other people's stories - they have limited impact.

Step four is to make sure you have a Big Message. People feel entitled to take something away from their 30 minutes investment. Give this to them. Repeat it up to five times during the talk. The message must be simple `There may be doom and gloom but there are also opportunities' or `You are responsible for what happens to your business'. It need not be profound but it must be clear and recountable.

Finally I would suggest that you only speak about things that interest you. I was asked recently to speak on a subject that,frankly, bored me. I salvaged it by turning into my own show, but the stuff I did about the subject itself never came to life. Because I didn't believe it and it probably showed. At the end of the day, you've got to care about what you're talking about. If you don't give a shit, don't do it, is my advice.

But if you get a chance to speak in public, definitely do it. It's an experience and to be able to do it well gives you a fairly unusual skill. Plus it is good fun, mostly.

Big Booze versus Big Society

There's a bit of drama in Bury St Edmunds this week. It's all centred on the historic Corn Exchange, a public building used, till now for the odd gig or antique show. Now that our brand new public venue is open it's time to dispose of the Corn Exchange.

There are two bids. One is from a social enterprise called Abbeycroft who want to turn the Corn Exchange into a town-centre play-centre for children and have lots of indepdendent outlets selling stuff. The other is from Wetherspoons who want to turn it into a huge boozer selling pints for one-fifty and all-day breakfasts for a quid.

Amazingly, Abbeycroft is still in the game. It's down to these two and, as I speak, the public debate is going on down there now - the consultation closes today. Wetherspoons have sent in an extravagent bid that promises to restore the Exchange to its former glory. How glorious we'll find their all-day-breakfasts splattered all over our pavements on a Sunday morning I don't know, but they are offering silly money to a council that hasn't got any.

Abbeycroft meanwhile have a secret weapon. Or rather two. One is that they are a spin-out from the Council. They run all our leisure services and enjoy high respect in the area. Even I, a former health-club member, use their spotless facilities and find them to be everything they weren't when part of the council.

The other secret weapon is Norman Tebbit. Yes, the old bastard now lives in Bury and is a totemic figure for the massed-elderly in Bury who love the place how it used to be. Who opposed our new shopping centre (and, yes, it is shite) and who stop every single nightclub application. This cadre of Tory-voting stick-wavers is jab-jabbing away at local councillors. They point to Wetherspoons killing the cafe-culture of the town (true). The threat to other businesses in the town (also true). They get Norman to go apeshit in the local paper about the town becoming the place in West Suffolk to get off your tits for under a tenner (at the moment the yobs stay in Brandon, Thetford and Mildenhall because Bury so dear).

And you know what? I feel grateful Norman and the gang. On this one, they are right. I don't want Bury's traders to be fucked-over by Wetherspoons. I don't want the town to be like Newcastle on a Friday night with fighting and cops everywhere. And I certainly don't want slip in sick when I pick up my Sunday paper. Bury is a nice place - let's keep it so.

In addition, I like the Abbeycroft idea. It's different. It's about people. Let's give it a try.

An Unsocial Entrepreneur?

What I am loving at the moment is the start-of-the-affair feeling you get with a new venture. It animates everything. You can think of little else. Your stomach flicks when you think about it. My mind drifts back to it while I am watching the TV or driving the car. In short, I am hooked and I will need to be because while starting a business is fun it is bloody-hell too.

This is the forgotten truth of entrepreneurship, be it social or for pure-profit. The personal cost is total. You hand your normality in at the door and emerge five years later blinking at the light. While I won't disappear, I know my world will have to shrink down to making this baby work.

I also have a secret for you too. I am going private. Yes, this won't be a social enterprise, well certainly not in the way set out by the CIC rules and I doubt I will get the Social Enterprise Mark. No, it will be owned by me and my partners. There will be social aspects - it will be a balanced business that will be socially accountable. A proportion of its profits will be given away, probably through a foundation. But it will, repeat, be private.

Am I turning my back on social enterprise? Most certainly not for the reasons above. Yet, I am turning my back on some aspects of being a social entrepreneur that I do not like. Such as putting my ass and my money on the line but being rewarded with peanuts. Such as not having control over the organisation I founded. Such as not being able to benefit much if it is ever sold for a lot of money.

I have concluded that those bits of social entrepreneurship seem to me a bit unfair. 30 grand and six months of my life are going into this. If it doesn't work I am worth less in the market than I just got myself a nice job. This new venture could cost me financially and reputationally. Yes, you'd shit yourself too, particlarly if there was a pauper's reward at the end, as social enterprise orthodoxy currently insists.

SO, if I do another purely social enterprise, you can be sure it it will not involve this level of risk and return. It is likely to be a side-project to which my social commitment exceeds my need to make money and survive. The simple fact is that as a 40 year old man with kids and a daft mortgage, I cannot afford, long-term to be a social entrepreneur.

I say this with no shame. Indeed I hope I would not be judged by those in the sector are paid either by the state (directly or indirectly), are `retired' with high net worth or with few enough responsibilities to manage on a small income.

Yes, there are some superheroes who risk and toil for low-return who also carry responsibilities, and while I take my hat off, I do not want to join them. It's not fair to those around me who will have to suffer my absences, cash-crises and stress these next few years. To make the choice of entrepreneurship now, at this stage, I need to be able to tell the family that it will be worth it. For all these reasons, I am now, in the eyes of many, just another unsocial-entrepreneur.

In my own eyes, I remain somewhere on the sliding-scale between pure-white and red-claw, but so far we can't accommodate this in our language - I'm either social or not. End-of. So great is our fear of assimilation that we have drawn the bridge high, meaning all those not like us are viewed as the same. So I guess, for some of you at least, I am, from now, not the Naked but the Unsocial Entrepreneur.

Ploughing Through the Bank Holiday

Bank Holiday Mondays feel a bit odd when you don't have a proper job. `Should I be working',I ask, knowing that nobody will be paying for my slice of National Leisure. Peer pressure won when the children appeared with swimming gear in my study at half-nine and five hours later the in-tray feels... less compelling.

There were plenty of grown-up around today so I swam a mile in the pool, my first time out since I completed a rather long triathlon before Ruby was born in 2006. I forgot how hypnotic it can be, the rhythm overcoming all thought. Unlike running, swimming doesn't leave you gasping but imbues you with the deep muscular tiredness you get from a massage. It also leaves you with a few hours of endorphins which even quite intense running doesn't achieve for me these days. I

I diary in a swim every Thursday evening from now on, half-knowing it won't happen but enjoying the intention. The pool is one place where my body doesn't feel 41. No wonder the oldies love it so. I even check online for my nearest triathlon event this summer. There's one up the road in July. Bit of practice on the bike and I'll be there. Then I realise that this won't happen. I'm away in the camper with the kids. Probably where I am meant to be. But it was nice to pretend otherwise, for a short while.

Shifting Values

`Is that chair safe to sit on?` asked Prince Phillip when visiting a Mencap furniture workshop recently. I had to laugh, although I was probably supposed to show concerned disapproval as the story was related. But it was the funniest thing I had heard in days so I didn't hold back.

We are in strange days as far as norms and standards are concerned. Today I learnt that David Laws, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, is in trouble over expenses. Turned out he didn't want his friends and family to know he was gay so pretended his boyfriend was his landlord and claimed rent. Laws is 44 and says he didn't want people to know. Even though times have changed, he says he grew up keeping it quiet and wanted to keep it that way.

Being 41, I can sympathise with Laws on one level. Nobody admitted to being gay in 1986 unless you were Danny Larue or Holly Johnson. Gay friends my own age tend to be low-key about it, even now. There's still a tinge of fear somehow. Today, thankfully, kids - middle class ones anyway - discuss it with their parents and each other. Indeed, I would hope Wilf or Ruby could, rather than feel alone or ashamed.

I hope Laws survives, though I fear he might not. I wish he had felt able to be be open with those close to him and not got himself into a mess. He is wealthy and never needed the money - and the claims were pretty low. It would be a terrible waste of the talents of capable and essentially honest man.

Its Academic

The Coalition is wasting no time. Today all Heads received a letter from Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Education, that they can now, if they choose, look to become independent of the local authority.

As a school governor and Chairman-designate of a local school, this is music to both mine and the Head's ears. Last night, the Governing body met to discuss a new 10 year vision for the school. The three words are Community, All-Round-Excellence and Different. Our biggest aspiration is to be far more adventurous with the curriculum. We want our children to learn and pass exams, sure, but we don't want to be restricted to formats which actually hold many of our children back. We want our children to THINK, to interact and learn how to function. We want proper links to companies, to people in our communities. Schools have become cordoned-off. Even Councillors need 'safeguarding' training to be allowed near the place. In pursuit of safety, we have lost trust. We all aspire to a different future.

Key to this is throwing off the monkey of our local education authority. This is an expensive adjunct to our system that sucks away money while adding very little value that I can see. All that I as a Governor see are documents written by expensive people which we have to `pass' as a committee. Well, I am sorry, Eton doesn't work like that so why should my school? Myself and the head want to take the school into a new place, one free of local authortity nonsense. My own party is more enthusiastic about the role of LEAs. I do not share this view, unfortunately. I see a commissioning role and that's that. Ten people max, not the current - which runs into the hundreds.

Full Council tomorrow. With a shocking financial settlement it will be interesting to see how things are shaking out. Everyone is bought into `doing thing differently'. But nobody has a clue what that means. What I think it means is everyone working a lot harder, faster and with less of the usual faffing about. And all for less money, a smaller pension and less time allowed for sickness.

Welcome to the real world, comrades.

I hate to say it but George Osborne is right

Saw the news yesterday and found myself nodding along with George Osborne. What the world coming to eh? Had just come off the phone to a Councillor mate of mine who said, quite rightly, that this is what we've all voted for - and we need to remind them of that once the pain comes.

I was struck recently by an excellent Sunday Times piece by the academic Alison Wolf. Her view is that all this public sector reform is buggered if we don't get rid of national pay agreements, the pensions set-up and the juggernaut of legislation which locks costs into the way many things are done in the public sector (take `Safeguarding' as a very good example of high costs).

As someone who represents the users of public services, primarily - though I know a lot of people also work in them - I am concerned that the price will be paid disproportionately by users and not staff in the form of lower wages and reduced terms and conditions. In the public sector, you get a pension that is pushing two thirds what you earned if you pay in for a whole career. You can take off six months sick on full pay and you get paid the same whether you work in Guildford or Glasgow. All of this needs to be challenged and we can't do it from local authorities. We need the centre to make this happen, even if it means we have teachers nurses and coppers marching down Whitehall.

In Suffolk we are in brace-position for the imminent crash down to earth after seven years of being pumped up on Gordon and Alistair's budgets. Even last year, Suffolk recruited 1800 staff. Now we will hardly be recruiting anybody and deciding where the hammer will fall. While the public voted for it they won't be happy to see their new school buildings cancelled and their roads left unrepaired. But that's where we are just now.

Following this last election I now so crave sensible, far-sighted governance and hope, in this coalition, we get a bit of it. I believe that Labour are now out of the game for at least ten years - and deserve to be. I hate to say it but Thatcher was right when she said that Labour Governments always, in the end, spend us into trouble. This one was no exception.

Back in Business

Some wag once said that having a young family is like running a small business with your ex-girlfriend.

I say this because I am in the process of preparing to go into business. Yes, guys I am at it again. I know I said I wouldn't but here I am. It's not that I am a `born entrepreneur' or any of that bollocks. And my demons are more or less sorted now, it's just a) that I can't get revved up about of the jobs around just now and b) that I am still attracted to the space that currently sits untouched - I want to make my difference.

This time is different to the last. I have six months before my money runs out. Last time I could mess around for a year. Also, I was invisible before and young enough to get over it if I screwed-up. This time I would fail publicly, risk my mortgage and possibly never be offered a decent job again.

So why am I doing it? Well, I have weighed it all up and come to the following conclusions. Firstly, if I fail I don't actually think I will be untouchable. I have enough cred to carry me into another life, as long as I behave well. Secondly, I think people will admire me trying, even if I don't succeed. And thirdly, I want to do it - or at least try. I don't want to look back in regret. If I do end up in a big CEO job working for someone else I want to be able to say that I chased the dream before settling for the safe option.

I won't go on about my plans yet as they are still embarrasingly ill-thought out. But I think I am onto something. My principal fears concern not the quality of my ideas or my native abilities but being able to summon the energy, time and focus to pull it all off. My biggest weakness is the dispersal of my time - kids, the council, speaking, coaching, running, Trusteeship. All things I love. How I pull off a new business without losing some or all of this is the circle I somehow need to square.

Answers on a postcard please... But whatever happens, I feel a big need, at 40, to follow my true north, whatever that is, however the risks look. I am blessed with my health, a great network and people who will, if it all goes wrong, stand with me, financially as well as emotionally.

You can't really ask for more than that.

Notes from a Small Island

Hello from Jersey! I am here courtesy of Jersey Citizens Advice Bureau as the guest speaker at their AGM. Being a `Third Sector' Columnist gets me to some unusual places. It all started as was staring at my empty post-CEO in-try in April I get an email from the CEO of the Bureau saying he likes my column will I come and speak? We quickly agree terms and here I am. For once I am not riding solo and Katy is along the ride, leaving the youngsters with Granny.

So what of Jersey? With my own knowledge limited to 80s TV hit `Bergerac', I had to go into research mode - and what I found was actually rather interesting. 90,000 people live here. Half are indiginous, half immigrants. Many British but lots of Poles and Portugese. Very much `two-nations' with a wealthy mainstream paying on average 360,000 pounds for a home and lots of people eking out on minimum wage. Financially, although full of the super-wealthy who pay low taxes, they are having a recession here with public services being cut back up to 5% a year for the next two years.

Which makes the politics fascinating. This is, for all intents and purposes, an independent country, with, since 1204, its own 53-strong Parliament - the `States of Jersey' and a distinct legal system. There is no party-system so its a Parliament of `independents' with all the benefits and troubles that brings. The Government here runs every aspect of what both local and national government administer in the UK. All 53 politicians are full-time. Some are elected on the basis of locality, others are cross-Island. It is a bit like having a statelet based on the City of Cambridge - which raises challenging questions to sceptics of ultra-devolution. If it works here, at this scale, why not, say a virtually independent Manchester or Suffolk?

I hear more from my host, the CEO of Citizens Advice, Francis le Gresley who is standing in a by-election for senator. Elected island-wide he is up against 8 others, including someone currently going through the courts, essentially for saying things he oughtn't about other people on the Island. Because he doesn't have a party machine Francis has to run his own campaign and, somehow, craft a message that targets his core vote (essentially the less well-off) while not putting off the comfortable middle.

On probing I find that while there isn't a party-system there are distinct groupings. The left is the smallest, the centre is substantial but lacking leadership and the right is in control. Given what the Island is up against, Francis is firmly of the view that all strands need to work more closely together to reach agreement on the difficult choices ahead.

The AGM itself goes well. It's well-attended and Francis is clearly a respected figure as 20 year CEO of Citizens Advice here. My bit goes down well. I have come to enjoy public speaking and seem now to be doing more and more. It's in a strange space between story-telling and stand-up. You need to hold on to your audience and you don't always know yourself where this is going to take you.

I have a visual `show' - some slides with photos on - which I often use - but each time is always very different to the last. Depending on the audience. This particular group appeared very formal, a bit older and disproportionately female. No swearing I immediately decided. A couple of gags about the Island's local newspaper and we were away, followed by questions and a lot of chat afterwards. I sell 8 copies of my book and people seem to go away happy.

Afterwards, out with Francis, who spent a career in banking before taking over the CAB 20 years ago, I ask him about what makes Jersey special. He cites the sea and the values of the place, which he seeks, through his candidacy, to uphold. I wish the future senator luck before bidding goodnight.

Don't Take this Personally Portsmouth Fans...

But I don't believe you should be in a Cup Final. As a club, you're 140 million in debt. Portsmouth FC represents the very worst in Premier league financial skulduggery and excess. Rightly the club was docked 9 points by the Premier League and relegated. It should also have been removed from the Cup and your place given to the last club you beat before your shocking financial problems came to light (probably a better-run club that wasn't willing to spend irresponsibly to beat you).

Now I hate Chelsea as much as the next person. But I hope they win today - and by a wide margin. For Portsmouth to win the Cup is a triumph not of courage over adversity or heroism but a triumph of everything that is bad about football in this country. And Portsmouth were still at, even when their debts were in the public domain, scrabbling around to pay money to sign bonus agreements and god knows what to highly talented players they have no right to have playing for them.

I support a boring but well run club that struggles every year to stay in the Prem. We don't buy flash players and we develop the ones we have got. We're about the size of Portsmouth. We don't get into Finals nor will we ever win the League. That is sad and says important things about the way football in England has gone. But it doesn't excuse what Portsmouth have done and their victory today would, for me, be the wrong outcome, not the David versus Goliath that we are being sold by the media.

Personalisation - Why it Matters in Cameron's Britain

`Personalisation’—where people are allocated their own personal budget to spend on the public services of their choice—is a hot topic among the UK’s think-tanks at the moment. But what’s driving it? What are its possibilities and pitfalls? And what does it mean for charities?

Personalisation hit the UK in the 2000s , driven almost single-handedly by the philosopher and social entrepreneur Simon Duffy and his pressure-group `In Control’. Duffy persuaded the UK Department of Health to try personal budgets in social care for older people and those with learning and physical disabilities, as an alternative to direct state provision.

Duffy’s argument was simple: The UK spends £20 billion (30 billions US dollars) on people who need help to live independently, 40% of which is tied up in `transaction costs’—bureaucracy in other words. Added to this was the fact that outcomes for these people were, at best, mediocre. So, Duffy argued, why not move to a system which cuts out the middle-man, costs less and results in greater user satisfaction?

Sceptical of Duffy’s claims, the UK Department of Health ran pilots in 2006-08 which proved Duffy to be right—now 30,000 UK citizens are in receipt of a personal budget.

Progress by 2010, however, has been slower than anticipated. The local authorities that control funding for individuals have taken a long time to reboot their systems to allow people to get their money out. There have been wide variations in the rate of roll-out ,suggesting that in many areas the local authorities don’t actually really buy into the policy—not a huge surprise as evidence shows that once people get their hands on a personal budget they often stop buying services from the state!
But this may soon change.

Up till now, growth in UK public spending has meant that life has been able to carry on undisturbed in Britain’s sclerotic public sector. Soon, however, the taps will be turned off—creating a huge driver for cost reduction. As a low-cost alternative to traditionally provided public services, personal budgets suddenly make a lot more sense

Personalisation is, of course, about more than budgets. It is also about creating a more customized or `personalised’ version of public services. At the moment, if you’re unlucky enough to rely heavily on public services in the UK, you will find that they are a bit like the first of Henry Ford’s motor cars: You can have whatever colour you like—as long as it is black! In an age when we have become used to sitting by a mouse and tailoring our experience as a traveler or purchaser, the public services experience feels Neolithic.

The biggest advances towards something resembling a normal customer experience have come from Conservative councils such as Barnet. Also known as `Easy Council’, following its adoption of the model of customer service showcased by the airline easyJet, the basic council service is free—but can be augmented or made quicker by customers who are willing to pay a bit more. This keeps the council’s own service cheap and enables any `extras’ to be funded by the citizen. While criticised in some quarters, ‘Easy Council’ is highly popular with its citizens and other UK councils are adopting the model.

So what does personalisation mean for charities? One clear change is that they will increasingly need to reach out directly to users, rather than upward towards the public bodies commissioning services on users’ behalf. What users say and think will have to be taken seriously lest they do what they haven’t yet had the opportunity to do—vote with their feet.

This can only be healthy. The problem with charities in the UK so far has been that, in the final analysis, they have only needed to impress the people giving them funding —either the public or public sector commissioners. Tugging on the heartstrings has tended to be just as effective as performance data, even with sophisticated investors.

But as personal budgets take hold, we will get a much better idea of the impact of certain types of charities without the need for complicated impact-assessment tools—you will just need to observe the traffic of users between the various charities. For social care charities, this will be no bad thing.

Are there any drawbacks with personalisation? Undoubtedly, yes. One obvious one is that by individualising budgets, it is very easy to reach a position where popular services are quickly rendered financially unviable by the withdrawal of just a small number of clients. This has reportedly happened in a number of locations across the UK. Finding ways to enable users of personal budgets to `club together’ their funding to maintain or create new collective provision have not yet been found.

Another limitation is around economies of scale. Big services, while often low quality, are affordable and keep people safe and occupied, often with their peers in a setting that they are familiar with. Breaking down the budget for that service often means the individual can afford a lot less out there in the marketplace, leaving them without a service for at least part of the time.

A final limiter concerns the practicalities of personal budgets. A person with complex learning and physical disabilities will often command a personal budget in excess of £150,000 a year (250,000 US dollars). Managing this funding and all the risks incumbent in running what is, in effect, a small business, will challenge even the most capable and committed families. When a family has neither the time, ability nor inclination to do this, personal budgets look like a recipe for trouble.

However I am, after 20 years of my life working in charities alongside disabled people, very positive myself about personalisation. While it isn’t a perfect solution—and there isn’t one—it is preferable to both the waste of money and potential of a system in which the state both controls and consumes the funding intended to improve the lives of our citizens.

60% of seats, 60% of votes - the Tory - Lib Dem Coalition Has to Happen!

The news is full of talk about a `progressive alliance' of Libs, Labs, Nats and Greens. Silly talk. Added together, this rainbow coalition barely gained 50% of votes. And look where they were - all north-west of a line between the Exe and the Humber. Most of England would rightly feel cheated by such an outcome. Plus, of course, we'd have another unelected Prime Minister. Again, totally unacceptable.
Finally, this rainbow would be unstable and incapable of agreeing to tackle the deficit. As David Blunkett said on the radio this morning, this would be a total disaster for all taking part and Labour should accept it lost and go into opposition. It's their own fault. Had Gordon introduced AV before the election, the situation would have opened up for Labour. But for all his talk of constitutional change when coronated in 2007 he did nothing.

As a Liberal Democrat, I believe we have to walk our talk and get involved in a coalition with the Tories. Not confidence and suppy - coalition. AV is now on the table. As is the Pupil Premium, fairer taxes, a fixed-term agreement and Cabinet places for Lib Dems. Nick Clegg has played a blinder. To enter a coalition is to deliver the balanced governemtn people asked for. Us as part of a coalition takes the scarier edge off the Tories. For every IDS or Howard there will be a Cable or Laws. This has to be democracy in action.

Of course, electorally it is dangerous. Labour will be able to brand us as cutters and will steal votes from our left-leaning supporters. Vote Lib Dem Get Tory will be their big message in 2014 and yes we will pay. But a possible outcome in 2014, under AV, will still be a reasonable Lib Dem presence that Labour may need - so they may have to temper their fire, given that their position in the South of England is so dire and the path back to government so long. Labour's task is made even harder if we go down to 500 constituencies.

Notwithstanding all of this, the current situation brings into focus the question of what politics and political parties are for. Which is to represent interests and create a political settlement. A Tory-Lib Dem coalition has just under 60% of voters behind it and near-on 60% of seats. Were we on the continent it would be viewed as a viable and natural coalition.

So let's just get on with it.

The Way Forward for the Lib Dems

A bad night for the Lib Dems. After all that hope, a lower seat-count than last time. I believed that the Clegg boost was soft but not quite as soft as it turned out. However, 23% is respectable and we were tanking along on 18% till the debates so Clegg can take small solace from that.

So what now? Mandelson and others are now talking about progressive coalitions and electoral reform. The trouble is that this doesn't produce a majority and, if Clegg accepts, he looks like the ultimate pol. The accusation of a coalition of the defeated would stick and I don't think we should even contemplate it, even with a commitment to PR.

So it's then about the Tories. The truth is that they can govern alone with 310 seats. Given that Cameron will refuse point-blank on voting reform we will probably enter an agreement on deficit reduction and other key stability measures - but something far short of a coalition. Something a bit like the Lib-Lab pact of the late 70s perhaps. While this will keep Nick Clegg out of the Cabinet, it will effectively act as a check on the zanier aspects of the Tory manifesto including their planned gerrymander of the voting system with 500 equal sized seats elected using FPTP.

A Conservative government with some of the rough edges hewn off seems like a fair result to me. They got more votes than Labour did in 2005 and will need to govern with some care to their small majority. Indeed, we might not be their only problem as the influx MPs may be more independent-minded than the people they replaced.

Either way, I believe its Prime Minister Cameron, no seats in the Cabinet for the Lib Dems and a functioning minority government with Lib Dem support on key legislation which we can support (with likely amendment).

Personally I am comfortable with this. From a pure political point of view, I don't think being a very weak coalition partner is sensible as we would end up being blamed for a lot of the future discontent without being the main architect. This government will probably have a hard time at the polls next time and we may be better waiting till 2014 when Labour recover a bit and we can build our position to 80 or more seats. Then go for a deal - probably with Labour - but possibly with a weakened Tory party - in which either will have no option but to give us PR.

But that's going too far ahead. For today, its a Conservative minority government. I am worried, but I also wish them well. We're in a tricky place as a country and we need a year or two of very good steerage.

Missing It

Until this week I have felt nothing but relief from handing over the brass cannonball of responsibility of CEO to somebody else. Then today, I was driving along and, for the first time, felt a bit rueful, disconnected and on my own. Organisations are communities, social systems. As CEO you sit at the apex, shaping and being shaped by the tangle of interactions going on. While it is often dysfunction and beyond control, it is also absorbing and part of you, as you, as CEO, are a pulsing corner of the organism.

Since leaving I have actually been haring around as much as ever. Not earning a great deal of money (just over half of the usual in April) but being busy. In May I have gone down a notch and, as happens with me, my energy has suddenly dipped. This week everything has been an effort. I've still got a lot done and had some fun - but it's felt a bit colder and harsher than it did in April. I lost a couple of meeting which wouldn't have gone if I'd still been a Chief and I am having to get used to working harder to get people to see me.

Overall though, it's working well. I am drumming up an idea for a venture which may or may not fly but I am giving it a good run-out. A job feels like it could happen and if, say, a third child came along, I may have my hand forced. Up till today, a job felt like the last thing I wanted. Tonight, a bit knackered and struggling to manage all of my own paperwork the thought of a salary, a PA and a big organisation to pull to my bosom feels sort of nice.

Time to see what's happening in the election...

Why we must stop the Gerrymander

Whatever happens today it is fairly clear that this is the last day of Labour government for some time. In it's place will be a Tory-dominated one - either alone or with Lib Dem support.

This could also be the last election in this country in which it is possible to actually elect anything otherthan a Conservative govern
ent. Why? Not because we are going to get PR but because the Tories plan to equalise constituencies in size and move to 500 MPs from he current 650. While nobody has done the mapping of this yet, what this actually produces is a huge weighting in the system to the Tories. City constituencies include more suburbs and countryside. England - where the Tories are strongest - gains versus Scotland and Wales. And the south gains massively over the north. Add First Past the Post and you have created a Tory state that will make us look more like Japan -where the ruling party has been in power virtually unbroken since 1945 - than a multi party pluralistic democracy.

Cameron's credentials as a progressive, reforming leader are, for me, utterly shallow. His willingness to entrench and render voiceless even more people than is the case today show him for what he really is. If you are serious about empowermnent, locAlism and the good, fair society you have to start by giving people a voice that counts and fair votes. Cameron's proposed reforms take us back in terms of the franchise and I da only hope that he hasn't got the numbers to push this through. My prediction for today is 37, 29, 26 with the Tories scraping a tiny majority due to the marginals. Let's see.

One Nil to the People

Occasionally, as a Councillor, you score a quick, emphatic and satisfying result. Amid all the slow-burners, there is the odd firecracker. One such was last week. On the Monday I had a call from a distressed woman from my patch with a terminal illness saying she'd just been told she was losing a small but significant chunk of care. What's more she told me the council were holding out the possibility of a care-home if she didn't go along. I went round to check her story and managed to corroborate this with her advocate, her GP and a third party from a charity.

I got the wheels in motion that day with a polite email to the director of social care suggesting that this maybe wasn't such a good idea, particularly given that this lady's needs were, if anything, going to get worse very soon. Within 24 hours, the lady was called at home and informed that there was never a plan to cut her hours and that these were merely ideas, not solidy proposals. A call to her advocate put this right. Things were moving swiftly along and thank-you Councillor, it clearly made a big difference that you put in that call.

Now I know that Suffolk, like all places, has some ugly cuts to make. But crafty, nasty cuts meted out to people who they believe aren't going to bite back are not really on. While Councillor's are the pond-life of Britain's political scene, we are probably its most powerful Advocates.

On the Stump

Three hours today knocking doors for the Lib Dems on my Patch. This work is always best done in twos and I am accompanied by an energetic pensioner Martin who is still knocking out half marathons in his late 60 s. It's the day after the final debate and as I expected our immigration policy isn't playing well. A few say it has put them off. Although Bury has few immigrants people tend to worry about the issue almost as much as the economy. It comes up at every other door. The policy itself electorally speaking, while honest and imaginative is like cyanide on the doorstep. Personally I would prefer a much safer line if we are serious about winning middle England.

The good news today was that there is little real enthusiasm for the Tories. Although Cameron won the final debate, comfortably I felt, they don't appear to have the necessary traction to win outright. It's feeling like 36 30 28 with us just ahead of Labour, who appear to have lost respect. Locally they risk fourth place behind the Greens.

Also encouraging were the numbers who said they were definitely with us thus time. Although Cleggs early impact has waned the debates have irreversably changed the election into a three way race. Locally the Tory MP David Ruffley has a ten thousand majority so it is a relatively dead election as the result is foregone. The best hope is taking him down to four or five. Hardly a motivator to vote let alone campaign. But we do and we must.

Today was a lot friendlier than last year when expenses was breaking. It was all we heard and people didn't want to know. That seems to have softened a year on. Out all day Tuesday and Thursday when at last we will know. Cameron will I believe start to pull ahead this week. It's really about whether or not he gets just up to the line or remains well short. I predict a slightly-hung Parliament with the Tories 20 short and needing the Unionists but not us to govern. We shall see.

Downtime with the Fortunate-Retired

I don't usually blog too much about family life but will make this one exception. We are now proud owners of a camper-van (or motor-home, as they are actually called). Or half-owners with my in-laws. Its a Fiat and it looks a like a giant beige billboard with wheels.

We tried it out this weekend with a gentle run up to Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast. Rather than park without permission we dutifully booked into the Church Farm Holiday Park, a vast city of static caravan with names such as `Solitaire', `The Viking' and `Excelsior'.

We had, unwittingly, stumbled across around a thousand of the Fortunate-Retired (or F-R's). These are not the stinking-rich, obviously, but people sufficiently well-off to own a very large caravan next to the sea, drive a nearly-new car (normally an Audi A6 or a Skoda Octavia) and bake in the sun as they flick through Dick Francis novels.

Unusually, there were no children at all on site. Our two were looked at like exotic birds, or, and I find this strangely common in the younger F-R's, totally ignored. "Been there, done that", I see written on their always-downturned faces.

Anyway, except for Church Farm Holiday Park, Aldeburgh is cool and you must go there if you can. It's stayed small, despite becoming a bit famous and the charm is everywhere. You can get good coffee, even very early on Sunday morning and you can buy fresh fish from numerous tin-shacks on the beach. OK, it's a bit Boden in parts and quite pricey but Aldeburgh is very much my kind of place.

After a long morning walk, we drove down to Orford and Orford Ness. Another of Suffolk's high-spots. Bobbing boats, a working quay and a sense of being away from your cares. Except for an MG Rally arriving during our lunch (those F-R's again), we had a splendid time.

This camper-van is sort of my present to myself for leaving Speaking Up and doing something else. I am trying to say to the family `Let's do more together - and I'll try not be be that distracted, miserable old twat I have been for the last couple of years'.

Whether it'll work, I don't know. Depends on what I get stuck into next I suppose. One side of of me wants to just get a nice job and chill a bit. While the other side is plotting the next big thing. One thing I do know. When I go to Orford-Ness, I stop caring about which side will prevail.

From the Front-Line of the Big Society

A Tuesday evening in April.. Arrive at the local school on an estate I represent to find 50 people from the community have given up Eastenders to come and talk together about how to improve their area. I am late so skulk in and slide silently into my seat. The format is the one you’ve seen a thousand times with a desk at the front with councillors, the local copper and a minute-taker from the council then row after row of seats.

Fifteen minutes in, it doesn’t feel great. We are still on the constitution and elections to the new committee. Most people don’t understand what is going on. There’s a silence impatience and a few of the older folk are starting to drop-off. Then the questions. “Why isn’t the Council/police/authorities doing that or that?” “Why haven’t we got a community centre?” “Who is going to clear the leaves this year?”.

The format lends itself to this perfectly. The passive citizens in the audience, those “responsible” at the front. Like 95% of the audience, I am getting both bored and impatient. A question comes up about the county council. I am invited to speak in “response”. I then take a small risk. I tell the audience that whatever they believe about we at the front could do for them was, by and large, an illusion. We can’t do that much, and that the best thing they could do was to set up not a residents association to harangue the system but a residents action group that just decided what to do then do it. I then offer an initial £2.5k to the best ideas and ask them to split into groups for 20 minutes to share their ambitions for the estate and asked the assorted heads at the front to each join a group.

Things warm up very quickly and, for a while, I could hardly hear above the buzz from the groups. People were enjoying the task. Sure the moaning was still there, but given the invitation to do stuff rather than to complain, most wanted the former.

This was evidenced during feedback when a spokesman for each of the six groups came to the mic and spoke. These contributions were all of a really high quality. Eloquent, measured, considered and brief. The meeting had found its voice. People had all, on some level, had a chance to speak. The line between the responsible and the community had been blurred as person after person volunteered not only good ideas but also a public commitment to help make them happen.

Had we not chopped things around – and I thanked the Chairman afterwards for permitting the change-tp-plan – I am not sure how things would have ended. We would have heard less and what we did hear would have been a lot less positive. As things are, we are moving forward with optimism and a feeling that it is up to us what do do next.

Two observations here in relation to the Big Society. The first is that there is, within people, a desire to contribute to the well-being of their community if there is an easy and co-ordinated way of doing so. We simply struggle to get simple mechanisms formd properly in most communities. So it is right of Cameron to press on this. But whatever one does, it has to be them driving it, not people like me.

Second is about formats. Whoever came up with the row-of –chairs approach to meetings and slipped it into the national DNA did us no favours. It kills any potential stone dead. I was surprised, if I m honest, that Council `community development’ officers who do this sort of thing for a living don’t have the insight to know this and are happy to sit at the front having turds thrown at them. It clearly doesn’t work.

As it is, we are in a better place. In a month’s time we are meeting to talk about how some of the ideas generated this evening can be made happen. Sure I will continue to try to get holes in the road fixed but my main role here, I hope, will be to support what folks want to do, not do it for them.

Don't Listen To Me

When it comes to politics I tend to get things wrong. Nick Clegg? Wrong leader, I said after being love-bombed about Vince on the doorsteps this last year. Twice I had seen the man, once at an ACEVO event, once in person to talk about the third sector. At the ACEVO event he was dull and verbose. One to one, he was likeable, intelligent and I wondered why he couldn't come across like that on telly.

Which is why I for one was surprised by what happened on Thursday. Although I am sure the Lib Dems are in a mini-bubble, it is stunning to see the polls respond to one event as they have. For a few days it has been possible to dream of a mould-breaking election. The reason Clegg succeeded was that he made even Cameron look like business-as-usual. After all his effort this last five years, Cameron will be deflated this weekend. Good politics, Nick.

Being a pessimist, I suspect the polls will level out as quickly as they surged forward for the Lib Dems. Weaknesses on Europe, crime and defence will be played up and the Tories in particular will paint the Lib Dems as flaky. Most won't stick but enough Middle-Englanders will take the bait. And those in Tory-Lab marginals will still, sensible, vote tactically anyway.

But it has been fun and interesting. Clearly there is appetite for something quite different, a clean break, something honest and straight. Clegg is representing that in the way Blair once did and watch how people respond. Cameron, for a while, did this too but it feels like he's been around forever and his lightness of touch appears to have deserted him. A lost Mojo at the last fence.

So, all to play for. This morning in my weigh-the-Tory vote constituency I banged in my garden sign in defiance as much as hope. Our hope is a good second against a popular local Green who defected from the Labour Party last year. Bury St Edmunds has been Tory since 1911 so we know history is not on our side. We have to take the long-view!

Who We Think We Are

Had an enjoyable meeting yesterday with Allison Odgen Newton from Social Enterprise London. We got onto the election and the class system in this country. Upper-class, she was remarking, is really about your relationship to the Doomsday Book.

Although I didn't ask, I sensed Allison's own relationship to the Doomsday Book might be a bit closer than my own! But, like millions of people who, until very recently knew next-to-nothing about their ancestry, my family have done some interesting recent digging.

The main discovery is that my lot aren't quite as straightforwardly working class as I thought. Because my grandparents all worked in the Lancs cotton mills I kind of assumed that at some stage in the 18th century we came off the land. Not quite so.

On my materal grandfather's side, the journey to Lancashire was via Scarborough. My great, great Grandfather, we discoved, was an architect, a Liberal Councillor and once stood for Parliament for the Liberals. He had several sons, one of whom, my Great Grandfather, married `below' himself, was cut out and moved to the thriving mills of Lancashire to start-over. He then had 12 sons, including my Grandfather, all of whom played a part in the Second World War and all of whom survived. A photo of them all back home in 1945 survives in the the local library.

On my Dad's side, my Great Grandfather, Tom MacWilliam was, we knew in domestic service in the late 19th century. He was in fact coachman to the Grant brother, mill owners who were the inspiration for Charles Dickens' `The Cheeryble Brothers'. The coachman in that novel is known as "Tommy" and is, apparently based on Tom MacWilliam. A small literary footnote I know but I felt strangely proud to know this.

I actually don't enjoy `Who Do You Think You Are' very much. All that faux-emotion at events 100 years ago. We often forget that we are all what Morrisey termed `Pale Descendents' of these characters, diluted many times by the generations. But it is good, I think to know where you've come from, even if it isn't the Doomsday book!

Being Mr Benn

I have a varied life. Its a deliberate thing. I like the idea of being different people in a kind of Mr Benn way. I can be on the phone to Liam Black one minute and then in a pensioners' living room the next discussing a dropped kerb.

Which is where I was today at 6pm with the delightful Mrs Roberts, an 85 year old who contacted me to thank her for getting her own kerb dropped. Since my last visit in August she had lost her beloved chiwawaah Fangio. He hadn't been the same since an attack by an Alsation six months before and his poor heart gave out one night as he chased after a ball. She filled up. I knew this wouldn't be a short visit. Tears turned to laughter however when she told me she was considering a micro-pig which are now promoted as alternative house-pets. Good for people with allergies, apparently.

Following this I called on the 80 year old Mr Bradford to tell him I had persuaded the evasive Tree Surgeon from the council to cut some overhanging branches next month. The relief at having his light back caused him to pump my hand with thanks.

I have always liked old people. There is a simple joy in being that I get from easy conversation with people who are glad to see you. It never feels like wasted time. Whatever their foibles, they, more than any other group, make being a Councillor feel worth it. I just hope they all make it to 2013 when I am up for re-election.

Spirit-Levelling

Kevin Gough died last week. He was 58. In 2005 he won £9 million on the Lottery. He died broke, alone and alcoholic. Before the big win, Kevin was happily married, worked in a bakery, couple of kids, plenty of friends. But the jackpot did for all that. He stayed on at work but colleagues grew hostile. He then blew millions on high-living and ill-advised ventures. He lost his marriage, his health and finally, last week, his life.

What does Kevin's story tell us? On one level it says something straightforward about how too much money can screw us up. But it also tells us that if you inject a large dose of inequality into our social relationships, you put them - and thereby yourself - at risk.

This simple idea - that the fact of inequality is the root of many social ills - is the main point of `The Spirit Level' , a major international study by academics Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. Mental ill-health, obesity, imprisonment, violence and social isolation are all mitigated, they argue, by greater equality. In short, more equal countries like Japan and Finland have fewer social problems than the more socially stratified US and the UK. Inequality and broken societies are, the evidence says, incontrovertibly related.

What was personally challenging about `The Spirit Level' was that I had accepted growing UK inequality because I know that top 10% of earners contribute 50% of all income tax. Indeed it seemed to me almost `moral’ to allow top earners to go make hay - incentivized by globally low taxes - because we need them to pay for schools and hospitals.

However, two profound points have, I think, changed my mind. Firstly, the financial benefits of more tax coming from higher earners have probably been dwarfed by the costs of us allowing an unequal society to develop in the first place. The second is that in an unequal society even the better-off are far more anxious, fearful and unhealthy than if they lived in a more equal one. Equality, it seems, helps even high earners, even if like me we hate the extra taxation!

So what do we do? Collectively we in the third sector need to remind the parties at this important time that equality will benefit everyone. Politicians, particularly on the Right, need to know that the Big Society has, by definition, to be One Society, not several grossly unequal camps drifting further apart.

As civil society organisations, we need to continue to walk our talk. Thankfully, unlike the public sector, we never bought the bullshit that supersonic salaries buy success. This fallacy forgets that organisations are, in fact, human communities. And like poor Kevin Gough, our charities need a degree of equality if they are to survive and thrive.

My Secret Habit

I like a flutter. Not a big one. I haven't got a problem (guv) - honest. But I have an account at Betfair and like all gamblers I like to think I am up.

My thing isn't the horses or football but politics. Today I found 16/1 on Ed Balls for the next Labour leader. I'll take that. I also got some pretty reasonable odds on the Conservatives winning most seats and on taking the Rossendale Valley, where I cast my first vote in 87.

Betfair is good too. You're effectively betting against other people and odds are set by the pattern of betting rather than some shyster bookie. Betting doesn't seem shady any more.

While I am just playing at it, a friend of mine gambles big-time and, due to his superb knowledge of the `turf' is able to sell his tip commerically. Last year he made a cool £70k clear profit. Not bad for something he does in the evenings. Interestingly, he's a financial director of a very sober company so its all a big secret.

My life has just been augmented by an Apple Iphone. I am yet to even switch the thing on and part of me is reluctant knowing I will need to spend hours downloading `Apps' etc. If the thing can help me sort my life now I don't have a PA it will be worth a couple of hours of fiddling. I am actually considering asking her to moonlight for me as the thought of flying solo is so terrifying. Invoicing, bookings, making sure I have read stuff. Plus I am involved in so much stuff I can definitely see me dropping a major bollock in the next few weeks as a conference platform stands empty or a community meeting waits for its elected rep to appear.

Speaking of all that, it's not going too badly in life after CEO. Stepping down felt a bit like being an MP who has just lost the election. People suddenly aren't as interested. However, the phone has been ringing and email pinging. In April I will even make a bit of money, which I didn't expect to do (hence the extra flutter today).

Today (Saturday)felt like the first promise of Summer. I walked the kids to the park and, rather than feel bored, cold and agitated, as I usually do, I went with the flow, free of preoccupying thoughts and absorbed the sun. Carrying a tired 2 and 4 yr old a full half-mile back was not such fun, however and I was as grouchy as ever by the time I slumped in front of Football Focus and let it wash over me.

Despite a slightly stressful gingercake-making experience with my daughter, my sort-of relaxed day continued pretty much till bedtime. Going with the flow. Not thinking. I believe that is the secret you know. When I don't think I am a lot damn happier.

One White Line

It was December last year when, on my `Street Surgery', a very nice young mother asked me if I could do anything to discourage cars from blocking her drive. I said I would see what I could do and, with a very wide smile, left feeling pretty confident I could help.

It turned out I could. Without even dipping into my £10k Locality Budget, I was assured that this young lady could have a white line painted outside her property no-problemo. All we needed was a dry day and a lining team in the area.

Then the snow came and we had two months or so of rotten weather. She was fine with that and pleased that I had emailed to tell her. Two more months passed..still no line. Now she isn't so pleased. She's still being nice about it but, if I were her, I am not sure I would be.

I contact the Council. Apparently there hasn't been a team in the area on any of the recent dry days. I tell them that it is now April and this is making both me and the Council look crap, in the ways that the public think we are crap: slow, incapable of doing the simplest things etc. I offer again to pay a contractor to do it privately. No need they insist, it will be done. When I ask? Within the next couple of week. Guaranteed? We can't guarantee anything but Craig, we are your side here.

I like the Council man a lot, possibly too much even. I email the young lady and tell her that if it isn't done by the end of April I will personally pay for it to happen. As nice as ever, she says she doesn't believe me but will hold with me.

And that she's been stuck in her house for two days because somebody has left their car in front of her drive....is there anything I can do to help?

Four Books: One Message

I try to `read around' a bit these days. Pick a range of stuff so I don't just hear the same thing over. So I walked out of Waterstone's in York on Saturday with the following: Phillip Blond's `Red Tory', David Willetts' `The Pinch', `The Spirit Level'by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett and Richard Layard's book on Happiness. Each of this lot sit somewhere between traditional right and firm left with Blond, obviously, astride the two.

And you know what? They are all saying very similar things. That materialism has hit definite upper limits in terms of what it can do for us. That happiness seems to be linked to levels of inequality in society. That striving for personal enrichment rather than the well-being of others is, quite literally, making us mentally ill.

The core message of all of these authors is that we have lost our way. That we have become so dissociative, so self-absorbed, so status-preoccupied that our quality of life is now actually in decline.

The solution, say all of our authors, is to eschew these values. That to be happy, paradoxically, involves thinking about ourselves less and others more. Forgetting ourselves seems somehow important for mental and physical well-being. There's lots of evidence here, its not just opinion.

Just how hostage we all are to the prevailing norms of our society, even those of us who consider ourselves on the less avaricious side, is clear to me when I look at myself. I am one of Thatcher's children. I compare myself with others all the time both in money and status terms. I obsess endlessly about my own life. Not so much how I am seen, but planning in quite calculated detail, how to be, in my own terms, successful. I like to think I inject this with balance and consideration for others, but I am, in the way my mind works, not all that different from the typical self-centred westerner these books roundly criticise.

How does one actually change? Not without difficulty I suggest. Despite the evidence that a more equal society will mean that Britain would probably be better for even those of us on higher incomes, I really struggle with the idea of 50% tax. To me, the idea of individuals reaping the rewards of their labour trumps the social equality argument, though obviously I accept the need to soften the impact of this principle through progressive taxation. Or is this my habituation to a low-tax society in which we tend just to put ourselves first regardless?

Whether I can change is, in a way, neither here or there. The die may or may not be cast. But my kids? The direction of travel, according to research, isn't good. Their upbringing in what has become a more self and body obsessed society than the one I grew up in during the 70s and 80s will, I sense, make a key difference to how they turn out. I want them not only to be decent people but also happy people. Trite to say perhaps, but it is every parents' first concern.

My hope, reading all these books, from left and right, is that we may, just may, be arriving at a consensus as a society that the addition of more material wealth into our lives has a nil or possibly negative effect on our well-being. And that, on a macro-level, by seeking a levelling of opportunity and outcomes, we may ourselves thrive more than we are doing today.

Over the Line

Yesteday I left Speaking Up. Well, not completely as I am still the Chair, but it felt like a departure. Fifteen years of carrying a heavy bronze ball now over. The relief is still palpable and unexpected. A bit like still being drunk a day after two pints of bitter. But I will enjoy this feeling for as long as it lasts.

We immediately decamped for York from where I am writing now. We do house-swops which work on trust and are a fine way to holiday. Rather than a soul-less, high rent flat you move into the comfort and homeliness of other people's space. People you will never probably speak to let alone meet.

This week will see me doing a lot with the kids after a long pre-mergrt absence. Like many Dads I am prone to going AWL mentally for long periods and this is one thing about being a CEO I will not miss. Before the kids that job and organisation was my whole life really. Now that can't really happen again.

The big choice for me I guess will be whether or not I ever a) work again as a CEO or b) develop an organisation to scale. There is much about both that I no longer feel attracted to doing. Maybe this will change after a bit of a break but I suspect it won't. A lot of what drove me to build up an organisation in the first place is no longer there or has been satisfied by doing it once. I also feel that I have changed these last few years. I just don't have the same willingness to put my own and others happiness second to the requirements of a 250 person organisation - however fantastic the cause.

But neither do I wish to just chill out. Challenge is vital to me. I need, almost pathologically, to know I am making a difference. The intensity and hunger won't dissolve. It just won't look the same. I am hoping that my new ventures will, though smaller, be just as influential as any larger thing I might go off and run. There is a new thing gestating which is still not clear to me. But I know it is coming. Now there is space I hope it won't take too long to sweep me off my feet!