Tag: David Cameron

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The Year of Fighting Over What Works

Last year we made a set of predictions for 2010. Some were satisfyingly prescient – the surge in mega-giving we predicted for 2010 became a reality through the Buffett-Gates Giving Pledge (even if we were off the mark in betting on Steve Jobs rather than Larry Ellison to be the Gates business rival who would step up to major philanthropy). […]

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A Nation of Givers

“[T]he call to social action needs to speak to individuals’ motivations and account for the obstacles to giving; to fit with people’s lifestyles and interests.” That this is the big idea in the British Government’s new Green Paper on Giving that was launched in London on Wednesday, shows the influence of so-called behavioural economists like Richard Thaler […]

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Books of the Year, Part 2

2010 has been a good year for books touching on philanthrocapitalism. In no particular order, here is our second batch of favourites (not including our own “The Road From Ruin“). We will select five more of the best, highlight our worst books of the year and remind you of some must-read classics in later posts. […]

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Bill Gates Knows Where You Live Mr Cameron

The aid aristocracy of Britain was out in force on Monday evening for a one-night-only gala performance by Bill and Melinda Gates of a lecture on how aid is making a real difference, called ‘The Living Proof’. Much of the hour and half performance was exactly what you would expect from Gates (well, Bill anyway) – oodles of […]

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What Is Commitment?

Britain’s coalition government will soon announce the results of its Comprehensive Spending Review, which is short-hand for a massive swathe of cuts in public spending. Though the axe will be swung with vigour, it is believed that David Cameron’s government will stick to an election pledge not only to protect the international aid budget but to continue ratcheting […]

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A Blair Giving Pledge?

“A classic PR idea gone bad” was one of the derisory reactions to the news on August 16th that Tony Blair is going to donate the profits (the advance alone is £4.6 million, around $7 million) from his forthcoming memoirs to a charity helping ex-servicemen in Britain. That may well be true, although Mr Blair is adamant that […]

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Take off the tin hat, Polly

When Britain’s leading liberal commentator on social affairs, Polly Toynbee, laid into Prime Minister David Cameron’s Big Society project last week, she was at pains to say that she has nothing against stronger communities and more volunteering – she was bristling at the fact that the public spending axe has fallen on charities. Since “governments are defined […]

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Reading the Big Society Tea Leaves

Tuesday saw the first fruits of Prime Minister David Cameron’s big election idea, the Big Society, with the launch of a rather modest reprise of some of proposals in the Conservative Manifesto, glammed up with a conversation and photo-op with a group of Britain’s top social entrepreneurs. We are sympathetic to the Big Society because it points towards some of the fundamental changes […]

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Better Red Than Dead?

The Big Society was supposed to be the big idea that would sweep the leader of Britain’s Conservative party, David Cameron, into power in little more than a week’s time. Yet Cameron is struggling to sell the Big Society to the voters. The niggling problem he seems to be facing is that while the Big Society sounds OK, no one quite […]

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Big Society, Big Idea?

If government isn’t the answer to all society’s ills, how can citizens take control and find real solutions to problems as diverse as loneliness and youth crime? Well, the Big Society Network that launched in London on Thursday thinks it has the answer – half public awareness campaign, half social networking site, half thinktank, half old-fashioned mutual society, […]