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The Launch of Big Society Capital


The Government has recently launched Big Society Capital to help finance social action in the UK. It will start with a fund of up to £600m that includes £400m from dormant bank accounts (about which I have reservations but that’s past) and up to £200m from the four main UK high street banks. If you run a charity or social enterprise in the Wycombe constituency, if you are interested in attracting long term finance for your organisation and if you […]

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Wycombe Youth Action awarded £93,000


I am delighted that Wycombe Youth Action was successful in its application to the Transition Fund, which acts as a Big Society funding mechanism. The project received £93,000 to help young people from the ages of 13 to 25 in more positive activities that they may not otherwise have the opportunity to do. The Transition Fund was announced last year as part of the Spending Review. So far it has committed £17 million for 201 charities; however there is £90million still […]

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Rousseau’s Form of Socialism – Alexander Gray – Mises Daily


A fascinating article on Rousseau’s Form of Socialism, discovered today, which reproduces this quote: The first man who, having enclosed a piece of land, took it into his head to say: “This belongs to me,” and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would have been spared the human race by him who, snatching out the stakes or filling in the ditch, should have cried to his […]

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The hopeful path between denial and despair is the reinvention of Britain


Via BT ruling could open pension claim floodgates – Telegraph: Taxpayers could be on the hook for tens of billions of pounds to cover a string of privatised companies’ pension schemes after the precedent set by BT’s landmark “crown guarantee” victory. What next, I wonder? Between the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Adam Smith Institute, The TaxPayers’ Alliance and The Cobden Centre, it is pretty clear that the British State owes trillions of pounds. Yes, trillions of pounds. Somewhere between £4,800,000,000,000 […]

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The Conservative Party | Helping local people save and run community facilities


Good news: Radical new powers will be given to local residents to protect community assets from closure and allow local people to take over the running of public buildings and community assets, Conservatives announced today. In a Party Political Broadcast to coincide with the Queen’s Speech, new policies are unveiled to create a ‘Community Right to Buy’ and allow not-for-profit community groups to take over the running of struggling local facilities, from post offices to pubs to parks. via The […]

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Brian Micklethwait on Toby Baxendale


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Brian Micklethwait on my colleague, Cobden Centre Chairman, Toby Baxendale: …You don’t get from seventy grand in debt at the age of twenty one to running a company that turns over a hundred million quid a year before you are even properly middle aged without having something about you. … The thing I find particularly intriguing about Toby is how his thinking in the academic sense and his business and social thinking are so deeply intertwined, which is sadly not […]

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Top tips and the clear choice in British politics


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Today, I rode to church on my KTM 950 Supermoto, which revealed a couple of top tips I would like to share. On the ride home, I assembled these into an illustration of the clear choice in British politics. Here we go. Top tips for motorists and motorcyclists When in the rightmost of three lanes at a roundabout, indicating right, you should turn right.  If, at the last moment, you decide to turn left into the services, go around the […]

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Holidays 4 Heroes


Via Holidays 4 Heroes, the armed forces show how to deliver “quick reaction welfare”: Holidays 4 Heroes is an informal group of people, including serving and retired personnel from all the UK Armed Forces and civilian supporters. We try to assist serving and former military personnel and their families, in a variety of ways that might otherwise fall outside the remit of the better-known Forces Charities. We work together through an Internet web-site used, mainly but certainly not exclusively, by […]

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Indulge your selfishness. Go and help someone | Janice Turner – Times Online


Good news via Indulge your selfishness. Go and help someone | Janice Turner – Times Online : Even hard-nosed City types are discovering the benefits of volunteering. So how can we harness the itch to be altruistic? … [T]he most louche and ambitious people are falling into voluntary work. Something has shifted. A decade of high consumerism has made them queasy about shopping — besides who’s spending wildly now no job is safe? — and even the biggest careerists are […]

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The Guardian on society: It’s broken. So let’s fix it


A Guardian journalist supports David Cameron: A few months ago I might have disagreed with [Cameron]; I might have argued that he was quite simply scaremongering, that the country is at heart, just as Gordon Brown has said, basically “decent and compassionate”. But that was before this week. A week when three separate events showed the depths to which this society has finally sunk. Again, I find I ask if it is time for a change of heart. Again, I […]

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