My nine-year-old came back from school yesterday evening in a cynical mood.  What had piqued his cynicism was the constant repetition, in rhetoric and on noticeboards, that his primary school is a 'Rights-Respecting School'. "They say they listen to us and ask our...

For the past generation, Western Australia has been pioneering a different way of organising social care. It was the brainchild of their new mental health commissioner Eddie Bartnik, and it flew in the face of conventional methods, which assess needs and try to slot...

Being a helpful kind of guy, I have written a number of blog posts elsewhere about what frustrates good decisions by governments. And how easy it is to get sucked into making bad ones.  Sometimes appalling ones that echo down the decades. You can read my top ten here....

A little while ago I joined Unite the Union, community branch.This is a new development, a first for any union I think, and its based on the changing nature of jobs and work. Unions are still mostly workplace based, but if you are moving in and out of jobs, don't have...

Back in the 1940s, the great American theorist of 'total quality, W. Edwards Deming warned that assembly lines, in themselves, were not efficient at all. This is rather an important lesson, given that our public services are being re-designed by people who think that...

Why would anyone start another think-tank? It is a reasonable question.  The centres of the world’s greatest cities are now heaving with think-tanks, full of young men in pressed blue shirts and young women juggling with PowerPoint presentations. The problem is that...