Elysium is a big star sci-fi action movie from 2013, which even its director admitted was pretty mediocre. But in among the one-dimensional characters and gore-filled explosions there is one short scene that stands out. Sent to see his parole officer, the petty criminal played by Matt Damon is confronted by a decrepit ventriloquist’s dummy […]
An evidence review by Public Health England (PHE) hit the headlines last week, after the government agency found that a large chunk of middle aged adults are doing little to no exercise on a regular basis. According to PHE, 41 per cent of middle aged adults in England (defined as those aged 40-60) walk less […]
The pressure on the chancellor to ease austerity is intensifying by the day, with increasingly noisy calls for a more doveish approach from within his own party. This nervousness seems to reflect a growing popular anxiety about the impact real-terms cuts of 20-30% have had on some basic services. The focus for this pressure has […]
In 2013, Eric Pickles accused local government of ‘hypocrisy’ for ‘pleading poverty when they have trebled their cash reserves over the last decade’.1 But last week, DCLG released data on local authority spending and financing in England which reveals a rather different picture. The data release also reveals an interesting trend of increasing self-sufficiency in […]
French government is stereotypically synonymous with strong centralisation and hierarchical structure. This means a comparatively weaker role for local authorities, with France ranked as the 13th least decentralised in the OECD with regards to public spending, and even a slight mistrust of local government. The United Kingdom isn’t far behind, however, ranking as the OECD’s […]
Claire Mansfield, head of research at the New Local Government Network (NLGN), Lucy Terry, senior researcher at the organisation, Barry Pirie, a former PPMA president, and current PPMA president Caroline Nugent, discuss the findings of the recent ‘Outside the Box: The Council Workforce of Tomorrow’ report. The workforce is the lifeblood of any organisation, and […]
Do you remember the heady days of 2009? Back to one year PA (pre-Austerity), when Total Place pilots were busy mapping total spend across their areas, part of a Treasury mandated national efficiency programme led by Lord Bichard? Happy days! In an attempt to recapture the mood before we had had to take nearly £100m […]
OECD’s recent ‘Government at a Glance’, published last month, presented an insightful array of data on and challenges for governments across the world. Most notably, the report declared a record low for citizen trust in central government. British citizens’ faith in their government sank to 41 per cent. This evaporation of trust internationally has also […]
