The Future of Community
Speech given at Belfast Salon, Northern Ireland launch of The Future of Community Alastair Donald | 25 November 2008 For obvious reasons British identity has long been a contested subject in Northern Ireland. However, today national identity has become a problematic issue on a much wider scale, with society’s elite no longer able to secure support for, or even articulate an agreed set of collective values. This was confirmed...
Disparity and Diversity in the Contemporary City: social order revisited
Dave Clements | 25 October 2008 This event at the LSE was billed as a ‘look at classic urban themes as they are manifested in the contemporary city, focusing on social reproduction of inequality, the meanings of disorder, and the link between the two’. Such scholarly intercourse between sociological heavyweights might have promised much, but it delivered little in the way of insight. Indeed, the indecipherable verboseness of the...
Young People and Social Exclusion
A review of a Royal Society of Arts event held on 8th October 2008 Dave Clements | 15 October 2008 Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the Royal Society of Arts, on his way to Radio 4’s Moral Maze, found time to leave us with his thoughts on what he clearly felt was one of the hottest of topics, even in the eye of the economic storm. What once seemed impossible now seems possible, he said. Certainly, the world financial crisis had just...
More than Bricks and Mortar
Dave Clements | November 2007 In a speech given at Battle of Ideas 2007, Dave Clements argues that housing has become a vehicle for contemporary prejudices, anxieties and orthodoxies about how we live. The figures … The government’s plan is to build three million homes by 2020 The annual target is to build 200,000 homes a year We are already falling short by around 30,000 a year The target will increase to 240,000 a year from 2016...
The Islamist
‘The Islamist’ by Ed Husain; Penguin, 2007. 288pp Reviewed By Martin Earnshaw | November 2007 Since 7/7 made us aware that Islamist terrorism is as more likely to be produced at home than abroad, there has been a hardening of attitude towards the “extremists” in our midst and calls for “moderate” Muslims to disown them. Ed Husain’s book is a well-timed intervention in these debates, billed as an insider’s account of what...
ESSAY: The political engagement’s off
Austin Williams | October 2007 The e:petitions web page was launched on Number 10’s website in November 2006 ‘enabling anyone to address and deliver a petition directly to the Prime Minister.’ Presumably, someone thought that it would be a good wheeze to minimise the photo opportunities for aggreived members of the public to present a paper petition to the Prime Minister in full view of the waiting media. Oh well, back to the drawing...
Fear of the modern mob
Austin Williams | 26 March 2007 Peter Roberts’ petition on Number 10’s website (‘We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy’) has caused something of a hoo-hah. It closed with 1.8 million people signing up within only a few weeks. Surely the government must have be chuffed about its much-vaunted e:participatory democracy. Back in the days when Blair’s ex-policy...
Taking a shortcut around the digital divide
Martyn Perks | 1 March 2007 Sunderland City Council has just won the Digital Challenge competition and been awarded £3.5m by government. While digital inclusion has become a major focus for funding and social renewal, it is questionable whether IT is actually being used for the right reasons. While this funding package is obviously good news for the local authority’s accountants, what does it really mean to those who have been...
Fear and loathing in Peckham
Jane Sandeman | 28 February 2007 The UNICEF reports that the United Kingdom has the poorest teenagers in the world, indicating that with the so-called epidemic of teen- age gun crime, British teenagers must be the devils incarnate. It’s surprising that the Home Office isn’t rounding up everyone between the ages of 13 and 19 and throwing away the key. However if you look more closely at the UNICEF report, by its own admission, it is...
Estates: An Intimate History
‘Estates: An Intimate History’ by Lynsey Hanley; Granta Books, 2007. 256pp Reviewed by Dave Clements | 26 February 2007 There used to be a sign on an estate I’d walk through in Hackney on my way home that read ‘No mind games’. I don’t know how long it had been there, so subtle and unassuming, but soon enough it was back to ‘No ball games’. Some pre-Banksy surrealist prankster had managed in their own small way to...
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