Time to decide – top down or bottom up
Our Place
The Bellsmyre area of Dumbarton in West Dunbartonshire, Moorpark in Renfrew, Renfrewshire, Newmains near Wishaw in North Lanarkshire, Roystonhill in North Glasgow and Greenock Central and East in Inverclyde are the five areas to benefit as the BIG Lottery Fund unveils a multi-million pound programme to help revive five communities in Scotland.
The Big Lottery Fund has today launched plans for a new targeted funding programme which will invest £9 million of Lottery funding in some of Scotland’s most deprived areas. The Our Place programme has been developed by Scotland’s largest lottery funder in order to make increased investment in five areas which have not seen the expected level of grants over the last three years. Our Place will also pilot a new way of working more closely with communities in Scotland to stimulate demand and ensure that the needs and aspirations of local people are reflected in the lottery funding they receive.
Launching the programme the Chair of the Big Lottery Fund Scotland, Alison Magee, said: “The Big Lottery Fund is committed to ensuring that we help the communities across Scotland which are facing the biggest challenges. We’ve now invested over £130 million pounds through our Investing in Communities programme, and Our Place is our way of ensuring a better spread of our funding while piloting new ways to make sure that it’s invested effectively.
“Our Place will target a number of communities which could particularly benefit from a closer working relationship with BIG. These areas have been identified in partnership with a range of local organisations, including the local authority and local voluntary organisations, in order to ensure that this significant investment can be delivered effectively with the biggest benefit. We’ve worked hard to make sure that we take a new approach which has the potential to shape the way we work in the future.”  

Stronger Communities
SCDC has been awarded over £400,000 from the BIG Lottery Fund to deliver the Achieving Community Empowerment (ACE) capacity building programme in Scotland. 
The programme aims to build the capacity of emerging community groups by providing mentoring support, developing learning materials, facilitating the sharing of knowledge, experience and learning between participating projects and communicating key lessons more widely.  The programme will run until September 2014 and will directly benefit 50 groups across Scotland.
We will work with 12-14 groups per year to support them to assess the motivations and capacities of their own organisation, and those they seek to influence or work with. We will encourage groups to build awareness and support in their community, and to build the evidence to support the case for change. 
Such change may involve establishing community-run services or facilities; working with public agencies through community planning processes, or advocating through other means. This will be done through a series of structured workshops that focuses on the four key considerations in effective community action: assessment, planning, doing and reviewing. 
We will also develop a toolkit which draws on a range of good practice materials and ensure shared learning takes place with and between participants so that lessons learned can be shared across the statutory, voluntary and community sectors.
We are now taking applications for the programme from community groups who require support to help them achieve improvements and changes in their local communities.  If you think you would benefit from this kind of support and would like to apply to the programme, please contact Aileen Skillen or Lee Goundry by telephoning 0141 248 1964 or by e-mailing either aileen@scdc.org.uk or lee@scdc.org.uk. 
Further information about the programme and how to apply is contained within the ACE programme guidance notes.  Click here for a copy
The BIG Lottery Fund is funding two other capacity building programmes with other partner organisations under the Dynamic Inclusive Communities Fund.  All three programmes of community support are brought together within ‘Stronger Communities’ which is a collaborative initiative between Forward Scotland, the Scottish Community Foundation,and the Scottish Community Development Centre. 
Our Community Our Future, delivered by the Scottish Community Foundation, is designed to provide support to a small number of new and emerging groups to develop their capacity to influence change within their community.  For more information, please visit http://www.scottishcf.org/ or register your interest with us and we will send you further details when available.

Forward Scotland will provide support to 150 new and existing groups under the ‘Sus It Out +’ programme to help them develop and become more sustainable.  For more information, please visit http://forward-scotland.org.uk/

Matthew Taylor The RSA June 7, 201

Having failed for years to persuade Labour’s bosses that the traditional hierarchical model of party organisation was bust I wrote positively last year about the attempt by the Conservative Party to turn its grass roots organisation outwards with the development of local social projects. Sadly, I later had to admit that the practice didn’t quite live up to the expectations.

So naturally I was interested in David Miliband’s weekend call for radical party reform. The bookies’ favourite to be the next leader of the opposition said:

‘ We have to rebuild the Labour movement as an organising, campaigning ‘movement for change’ – open, reaching out to local communities, more democratic. And it has to be bottom-up and not top-down.

This is in the best traditions of the Labour Party. It is where our movement started – trade unions, the co-op. Before working people had the vote they organised for change, to campaign against things like child labour and for things like decent working conditions. And it persists in some areas to this day – it is this tradition we saw in those seats that were held against the swing in the general election’.

I agree entirely with the sentiment. Society would be stronger and politics better if parties had deeper community roots. Sadly, it’s a lot easier said than done.

The biggest problem is reconciling local freedom and community organisation with party discipline. David Miliband quotes the success of Gisela Stuart’s campaign in Edgebaston as evidence of the power of strong community based organisation. But local activists have said that their ability to mobilise behind the MP was also related to her record of voting against the Government whip on controversial questions. This issue is even more difficult at council level. If a party runs the local authority but local branches then campaign against its unpopular decisions (and let’s face it there’s going to be plenty of them in the years to come) it undermines party unity and can confuse voters. Stewart campaigned against the decisions of the Tory Lib Dem coalition running Birmingham City Council but she will find it much more problematic if the council goes Labour again.

This is less of an issue if the local party is focusing on community self-help but the examples Miliband quotes – like London Citizens – tend to be campaigning organisations. The Conservative experience shows how hard it is to develop a social enterprise model. This takes us to the second issue – resources. Here at the RSA we have for several years been in the process of reforming Fellowship from the traditional membership model to one that focuses on collaboration and civic innovation. Most recently, for example, we have launched the Catalyst Fund which gives groups of Fellows small grants to develop social initiatives.  The far-from-complete process of Fellowship reform has up to now involved multiplying the budget spent on outreach and support many times over. Although David Miliband is to be commended for digging into his own campaign funds to fund training for community organisers, it is unclear whether the national Labour Party has the money to invest in community development or that  – when push comes to shove – this investment would be prioritised over more traditional campaign spending.

The third and possibly hardest challenge concerns organisational culture. Creative, committed people (the kinds you need for community self help) have a million and one options and distractions. It is hard to attract them and hard to retain them. Few community groups provide a good enough offer for such people. There is, in my opinion, one overriding reason. The grim reality of voluntary organisation is that bad behaviour drives out good more effectively than vice versa. It only takes one or two difficult people to make meetings unbearable and decision making impossible. The creative people quickly stop coming, leaving the wreckers free to complain that they are now the only activists. As part of a project we co-sponsored with the NCVO, I have discussed this dynamic with people from a whole range of membership organisations. After some initial flannelling, they all admit it is a huge problem. Indeed I once heard it described as ‘the inverse law of activism’ – the people you least want to be active are the ones most likely to become so.

Apart from election campaigning for friends I haven’t been active in the Labour Party for many years, so maybe it has already started to change. If not David Miliband faces a task of cultural transformation which – he needs to acknowledge more fully – will take many battles and many years to bear fruit.

Full report  can be accessed from here
There is a growing political consensus that the traditional model of public service delivery, predicated on people passively consuming services whenever they need them, is neither sustainable nor desirable (see HM Treasury 2009
and Conservative Party 2007). This is firstly because this approach puts the entire burden on the service provider, wasting the potential expertise and resources of the service user. For example, a teacher is less likely to improve literacy rates if children do not read with their parents at home. Secondly, it ignores the potential of resources that are not easily visible or measurable: a care service, for example, cannot help an older person overcome isolation without the use of informal friendships and networks. Thirdly, the approach fuels demand for services as they are only used when needs arise. For instance, doctors only help people once they become ill, rather than helping them to live a healthy lifestyle and prevent illness occurring in the first place. It is clear that on their own neither the Government nor citizens have access to all the  resources necessary to deliver public goods. As the everyday examples above  demonstrate, services work best when citizens are involved in producing them. The next wave of public service reform will therefore need to ensure that citizens are engaged as active partners in the process. There are many different forms of citizen participation in service design and delivery. For example, individuals can be empowered directly through being allocated personal budgets to choose between service providers. This is now beginning to happen in social care. Alternatively,  communities as a whole could be empowered to get more involved in delivering services: for example the Conservative Party has outlined its plans for a ‘post bureaucratic state’ in which communities can come together to run local services such as schools (Conservative Party 2007). Another option is to  change models of ownership,so citizens and communities actually have a stake in the way a service is run. Tessa Jowell recently launched a Commission on Ownership to see how business models such as the John Lewis Partnership and The Co-operative can be applied to schools, hospitals, housing and other services (Jowell 2009). These approaches have been developed into a philosophy of ‘co-production’, which aims to collapse the divide between service provider and service user even further: Co-production means delivering public services in an equal and reciprocal relationship between professionals, people using services, their families and their neighbourhoods. (Boyle and Harris 2009: 11) When citizens work in partnership with service providers there are a number of benefits, including:
Improved service outcomes for the citizen: co-production allows the resources that citizens can contribute (time, energy, social  networks, knowledge and skills) to be brought together with those resources that the Government can  provide (money, regulation, technical expertise, leadership and service professionals). This leads to better results for users. (Cabinet Office 2009a)
Empowered and more satisfied citizens: when citizens are involved in producing a service they are usually more satisfied with it. It also helps them to feel more confident, connected and able to influence decisions.
Better value for money: by mobilizing resources that do not cost the state, better outcomes can be produced for no extra cost.
Empowered Communities
Despite the small scale and informal nature of many experiments with ‘co-production’, there is a growing body of empirical evidence that shows the benefits of these programmes. The case studies below provide evidence of the benefits of co-production in two areas: health and justice. As well as delivering significant improvements in outcomes and cost reductions, engaging citizens and communities in producing services can help build social capital and a sense of empowerment. A recent review found strong evidence that it can ‘improve satisfaction with services, the degree to which residents feel they can influence decisions and their confidence and capacity’ (Young Foundation 2009:) Citizens and communities could therefore be considered the ‘missing link’ in public service reform
over recent decades. As a recent discussion paper urged the Government:… [C]o-production should be central to the government’s agenda for improving public services because of emerging evidence of its impact on outcomes and value for money, its potential economic and social value and its popularity. (Cabinet Office 2009)
Examples :
Self-care (Health) By training patients with chronic conditions to provide themselves with a certain level of care, the NHS can both save considerable resources and enable patients to fit in their care at more convenient times. For the cost of a handful of classes and a booklet, one self-care skills training course for adults with asthma saw significant improvements in lung function, inhaler technique, asthma knowledge, and patients’ self-rating of their asthma. It also led to a 69 per cent decline in GP visits (Department of Health 2007).
Youth courts (Justice) Youth courts are a way for communities to become more directly involved in justice. Instead of being tried in formal courts, young people committing non-violent offences for the first time appear before a panel of other young people who have a range of non-custodial sanctions at their disposal. In Washington DC, where the courts were first introduced, the recidivism rate of those ‘tried’ in a youth court is now 9 per cent, compared with 30 per cent for young people processed in the mainstream juvenile system (see www.tdyc.org). Similar schemes have recently been introduced in parts of the UK  (Rogers 2006).

Community Woodlands Association : Jon Hollingdale

As you might have heard, 2 more Community Woodland Groups have been turned down by the Big Lottery Fund’s Growing Community Assets – our commiserations go to both the Craignish and Nith Valley groups. Most if not all of the projects which do get funded by the Lottery are admirable examples of community asset acquisition or development, and we’re not going to criticise them, though we do question whether it’s the Lottery’s job to support projects which are demonstrably profitable without Lottery support, or might normally be seen as within the remit of Government core funding…however, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the Lottery turned its back on land buyouts a long time ago; unfortunately they never had the guts to tell anybody, and they’ve been leading groups up the garden path ever since.
GCA is long-closed to new applicants, and the successor programmes are due to be launched at the end of June, with as yet, scant details of their coverage. Will they fund land acquisition? We really don’t know, probably the best we can hope for is that this time round the Lottery incorporate some honesty and transparency in their dealings with community land groups. Likewise, it’s always possible that the Scottish Government might do a U-turn and match rhetoric on community empowerment with some action – maybe they could divert some of those millions paid to farmers who don’t farm?

However, rather than sit around waiting for hell to freeeze over we think it’s probably best to at least try and explore the alternatives. Kilfinan have already succeded with a Lottery-free acquisition covering at least part of their forest, whilst Aigas are just setting out on their fundraising journey, and we’ll be doing what we can to help and ensure that ideas, lessons & successes are shared through the network. More formally, CWA is about to commission research* into new fundng models, looking for innovative ways to raise some or all of the finance needed for community asset and acquisition. Some of the ideas we’ll be exploring might challenge our fixed notions of community buyouts a bit, and I’m fairly sure none of them will be all that easy, but the silver lining might be that an asset funded by the community will be free of funders’ burdens, conditions and reporting requirements, and that really would mean community ownership and control.
Jon

Local currencies aid resilience

As you know, the way that money works today is one of the great invisible drivers of our rapacious earth- and community-devouring economy.  So much so that Richard Douthwaite has said:

“If people living in an area cannot trade among themselves without using money issued by outsiders, their local economy will always be at the mercy of events elsewhere.  The first step is for any community aiming to become more self-reliant is therefore to establish its own currency system”.

It is with this very much in mind that we have created a 5-day course in community currency design called On The Money that runs from August 14 – 18 here in the Findhorn ecovillage – please visit www.findhorncollege.com/proftraining/moneysoul.php for more details and to download a flyer.  The week will be held by currency designer, John Rogers and Jonathon Dawson and includes teleconference presentations and discussions involving internationally celebrated community currency experts, Richard Douthwaite, Margrit Kennedy and Bernard Lietaer.

Author: Graeme Bletcher

Broughty Ferry Development Trust is set to meet officials from Historic Scotland to discuss ambitious plans for a multi-purpose facility near Castle Green. The group will table proposals for the development of Broughty Castle as a tourist attraction, including a new-build centre to attract visitors — potentially housing a restaurant, cycle hire, shops and a marine research and education base.

Dundee City Council will also be represented at the meeting, on May 17, as the landlord for the site.

Trust chairman Andrew Nicoll said the project has been “moving forward” since the first public meeting was held at the Castle Green public hall earlier this year.

He added, “We have a meeting set up with Historic Scotland and Dundee City Council to discuss the use of the castle.

“We have been in touch with Historic Scotland to let them know about our plans, but this will be the first official meeting.

“A large section of the castle is unused and you can’t get into it.

“We want to see it opened up.

“The idea is to see a better use of the castle and a more joined-up approach to providing facilities there.”

The development is in the early planning stages and members of the trust are still investigating funding options, feasibility and potential sites.

Other items on the group’s agenda have also moved forward, with renovations for local tourist attraction Barometer Cottage set to be taken on by a private architect and the Fisherman’s Graveyard in line for new story boards and signage.

Mr Nicoll said, “The Fisherman’s Graveyard is a forgotten jewel in Broughty Ferry’s crown and a lot of people don’t even realise it is there.”

Author: Received from Third Sector Division, Scottish Government

The Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts (Scotland) Order 2010 is being laid with the Parliament  this week.    

Scotland’s estimated share of the DBA funds is estimated to be around £12 million in the first year, £12 million in the second year and £1.5 million year-on- year thereafter. These sums are much lower than originally envisaged due to the scheme being a voluntary scheme with the banks/building societies and  funds being held back to meet any future claims from the general public who have recently discovered that they have monies in a lost account.  
 
Article 3 provides for a distribution of dormant account money to third sector organisations for meeting expenditure on or connected with services, facilities or opportunities which promote strong, resilient and supportive communities.  This is a direct link to Outcome 11 of the Scottish Government’s 15 National Outcomes – “We have strong, resilient and supportive communities where people take responsibility for their own actions and how they affect others”.  
 
If the Order is passed by the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish Ministers intend to instruct BIG, under Schedule 3 to the Act, to prepare and adopt a strategic plan for Scotland . The strategic plan will be a statement of the BIG’s policies for the distribution of dormant account money for meeting Scottish expenditure. The Scottish Ministers will also use powers under section 22 of the Act to set out policy directions to guide BIG in the development of the plan.   It is expected that BIG will then hold a consultation on the draft Strategic Plan.  Once finalised, the draft Plan has to be agreed with the Scottish Ministers, who also have to lay it before the Scottish Parliament. 

Extract The Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts (Scotland) Order 2010

Distribution of money for meeting Scottish expenditure

1.—(1) A distribution of dormant account money for meeting Scottish expenditure may be made only—

(a) to third sector organisations; and

(b) for meeting expenditure on or connected with the provision of services, facilities or opportunities which promote any strong, resilient and supportive community.

(2) For the purposes of this Order, a “strong, resilient and supportive community” is a community—

(a) whose members—

(i) are safe, healthy and able to contribute to the social, environmental and economic well-being of the community; and

(ii) have access to high quality services and economic opportunities; and

(b) which is able to withstand or recover from difficult social, environmental or economic conditions.

Plans have been finalised for the establishment this year of an independent support body intended to represent the needs of local bodies across England that own or manage land or assets for the benefit of the community.

The Department for Communities and Local Government recently awarded social policy charity the Carnegie UK  and research unit Community Finance Solutions a £100,000 over two years to set up the CLT National Facilitation Body to support community land trusts.

It is set to be delivered through an existing body due to be announced in June and will aim to assist CLTs’ growth by forging links with stakeholders including social lenders development trusts, Councils and housing and regeneration quango the Homes & Communities Agency. It is also intended to provide training and legal advice, and lobby government.

Andrew Williamson, a consultant specializing in CLTs and a supervisory board member of the new body, said: “CLTs are moving from the experimental phase to the replication stage. This initiative is a further welcome step in their development.’

Big Society – but only in England

Click here to see What Big Society means for England

At the launch of the Scottish Government and COSLA’s Community Empowerment Action Plan, LPL welcomed it as an important step on the road to greater levels of community empowerment in Scotland.  However 15 months on from the launch, our view is that there has been insufficient progress and in itself, the Plan is not sufficiently radical or ambitious to achieve significant change. There are six key areas where LPL considers further action by national and local government is required :

1. formally recognise the community sector as a distinct part of the Third Sector by publishing a national strategy designed to nurture its continued development

2. embark on a genuine process of community empowerment marked by a commitment to devolve resources and decision making away from government and down to the most appropriate local level.
 
3. invest in a programme designed to increase the flow of assets into community ownership

4. recognise that community empowerment requires a process of capacity building for communities and that this cannot be delivered effectively if delivered by government.

5. recognise that revitalising the relationships between local communities and local government is fundamental to community empowerment and that the one needs to be seen as integral to the other

6. the community led response to climate change is widely recognised as being the crucial ‘first step’. Much more needs to be done to harness current levels of activity and link to the wider community empowerment agenda.                                            

All the email said was, “The meeting will discuss how to build a ‘big society’ where families and communities are supported and strengthened; and how to make a reality of this vision by making sure that the big society is matched by big citizens.” That was it. Although I did discover on the way home that the Lib/Con coalition had released a three page outline of their Big Society plans on the same day to the press.

When you get to Downing Street, you have to pass through some airport style security, at the gate, but then I found myself pretty much left alone in the street, bar the odd press hack on the other side of the road. What to do? On TV that famous number 10 door just opens anytime someone important looks at it. Well, it didn’t do that for me. I had to ask a policeman, whilst simultaneously praying my slightly comical dithering wasn’t going to end up on ‘Have I Got News For You’. Needless to say the policeman quietly advised me to use the door knocker. Of course, I thought, you just knock on the door.

Once inside, there were staff everywhere – presumably to make sure people didn’t inadvertently stumble into Samantha and the family choosing the new wall paper. I was efficiently ushered into the “Rose Garden” which you’d recognise, as it was the site of that first Dave and Nick double act when they announced their Liberal Conservative Coalition. There were nibbles and soft drinks, and a man cutting a tiny privet hedge into a perfect box with nail scissors in the corner.

It was to be a small gathering, just 22 of us in fact, including politicians and civil servants. And many of the attendees were as bemused as I was about how they’d ended up there. Indeed, it was Nick Hurd’s first time in the Rose Garden too – despite just being appointed as Minister for Civil Society.

The only person there who I’d had the pleasure of meeting before was Will Perrin at Talk About Local – who kindly got me invited to Downing Street in the first place. There was the Mayor of Middlesborough, Ray Mallon, who seems famed for a zero tolerance approach to policing and winding up the local Old Labour establishment. There was Martha Lane Fox, a digital inclusion campaigner. There was Camila Batmangheldidjh, social entrepeneur and founder of well respected Youth Charity Kids Compan and there were also representatives from a range of other third sector organisations. And there was me.

Both David and Nick (we’re on first name terms now you see?) said that they really saw the “Big Society” idea as one of the key areas where the Tories and the LibDems shared common ground – even if they’d been using different words to describe it. Apparently they both have a “love of this area” and “hope for a beautiful friendship” between the third sector and the government.

And a cynic would say they might well. Afterall, with billions of pounds worth of cuts coming, how else will the local services we all depend upon be maintained? Well the Big Society vision could see communities themselves owning and managing assets or providing more local services. The Prime Minister spoke of a ‘Community right to buy’ for public assets, and a “social investment bank” to help them do it. He wants to see a new generation of community organisers, supported by more open and accessible public data, and he mentioned some sort of National Service programme for teenagers. At the mention of that last point, I’m not sure if I was the only one looking at the floor…

The ensuing discussion focussed a lot around the sustainability of neighbourhood organisations, and how good ideas can be replicated elsewhere. Some of the people from larger third sector organisations bemoaned the fixation of funders for ‘new’ ideas and innovation, and a lack of opportunity to scale up proven ideas or replicate them in other areas.

Will Perrin and Martha Lane Fox made the case for new technology as a vital means of empowering both individuals and communities to become more active citizens. A notion that I would heartily support. Afterall, if it wasn’t for Twitter, I wouldn’t have found myself in 10 Downing Street in the first place.

This said, for my part I was acutely aware that, as the only Scottish representative around the table, that most of this policy area was devolved to Holyrood. So with my 3 minutes to advise the prime minister, I made the point that in Scotland some communities have already benefited greatly from a Community Right To Buy, and that it would indeed be a marvelous thing if it could be extended to cover the whole of the UK.

I also highlighted the Climate Challenge Fund as a Scottish example of an approach to funding neighbourhood led organisations that has put resources in the hands of community groups and allowed them to come up with a huge range of very unique, local responses to the global problem of climate change. I managed to get a quick plea in to Dave and Nick to see if they could persuade Alex Salmond to extend these ideas further – and perhaps extend the Libservatives ‘social investment bank’ to cover Scotland too.

Lastly, I also made the point that if Nick and Dave are serious about devolving power to the neighbourhood level, then they must be prepared for variations in public services, and sometimes for local residents groups to make mistakes. Will they baulk at the first media cry of ‘Post code lottery’ when something is perceived to go wrong?

And there I had to stop. But there were things I didn’t have the chance to say. Not least my concerns about accountability and participation. The best critique I’ve seen of the “Big Society” idea is that it’s like those self-service checkouts you get at supermarkets – the supermarkets tell you it’s a good idea, but people still choose to wait in the queues for the staffed checkouts as they feel they’re being hoodwinked. To many, it still seems preferable to have someone else work the complicated machines for you.

Similarly, will people want to participate in the Big Society at all? Some studies seem to suggest that they don’t really want to get too involved – they’d prefer it if public services “just worked”. How many people are desperate to take up the invitation to get involved in managing services, attending meetings & writing minutes? Like Oscar Wilde said, “The trouble with Socialism, is that it takes up too many evenings.” My inclination is that new web tools, used well, can make it easier for more folk to voice an opinion on local matters, as these tools do allow them to participate at a time and place that is convenient. Members of Greener Leith will know that this is something that we’ve always been interested in.

Secondly, whilst it’s assumed that small community organisations taking over the management of public assets or services is a good thing – how will the new management be held accountable over the long term? What happens if the community group can’t deliver? How will the government help communities that might not have the resources, or the skills, or the people willing to take advantage of their new found rights and powers? Will they find themselves excluded from the Big Society?  Will it really be cheaper than simply keeping services in the public sector? Safeguards need to be built in – and the devil is in the detail. And we haven’t seen that yet.

I couldn’t help but think that if we’re to see a new civic revival then we’ll need an investment in old school community development, adult education and a real commitment to making more local government information accessible and understandable. Without this, it will be hard to sustain that army of ‘community organisers.’

It was an interesting trip – and despite the reservations outlined above, it is significant that the coalition have decided to make this area the first ‘joint leadership’ policy announcement since they came to power. And most people there, it seems left in a spirit of optimism – hoping to see the promised civic revival come about in due course – even if it will have to filter through Holyrood to make any difference here. In the meantime, those classic shots you see on TV of the ministers assembled around the cabinet table will never look the same to me again (Yes, it does look bigger on TV.)

On the way out one participant wondered whether we’d be invited back in a few months time to review the governments progress on delivering their Big Society policies. Otherwise he asked, “what was the point?” Indeed, I agreed, and I never even managed to steal a teaspoon…