June 7th 2009
Returned from an excellent conference at New Lanark held in the social enterprise hotel and the plenaries in the hall used by Robert Owen. A truly amazing setting. Well done Colin and team. Very interesting developments from Austria and I shall certainly looking at producing bio-extract, a sort of miracle forumula, that is cleaning up the Royal Canal in Thailand. A very international gathering promoting social capital as per Puttnam at Harvard.
Gordon Brown intends to keep in control despite the ‘ups and downs’ of the past few weeks. Did I miss something as I don’t seem to recall the ‘ups’. It does make the news quite gripping as every newscast is different and the stories even change during the programme! More to come with the Euroelections.
Problem to social enterprise (and others) is the constant change in faces at departments, not least for us Cabinet Office. Faces at the Summitt only two weeks ago have dramatically changed with one moved and two gone. The one left in place is the one who did not get the message about social enterprise. So now we start again re-educating, cajoling and winning over new ministers in many of our key departments. Tessa Jowell takes over at Cabinet office but for how long? With possibly another change of the pack, then an election and yet another team in place does make a consistant relationship difficult. Presumably we are yet to hear about the lower level of the ministerial pack being shuffled with possibly the opposition feeling obliged to re-shuffle as well. Yet more relationships to develop. This presumes that events do not overtake us!