The Birmingham Brief - intelligent thought on policy issues.
- Description
- Last week thousands of young people spontaneously rioted in a number of English cities for no apparent reason. In the aftermarth of the riots there have been many calls for the renewal of public and private virtues. We appear to want to change people for the better and so improve the quality of public life.
- Date:
- Thursday 18th August 2011
- Categories:
- Social Sciences
- Description
- George Osborne has doggedly fought back at critics of the government's austerity strategy, repeating the mantra that sustaining the 'policy credibility' of UK plc with financial markets and investors is the paramount challenge facing this parliament. This week the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been able to draw on an apparent endorsement from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for his agenda of public spending cuts and the Coalition's broader economic policy choices. But is the IMF's 'endorsement' all that the Chancellor makes it out to be?
- Date:
- Friday 29th July 2011
- Categories:
- Research, Social Sciences
- Description
- In 2010, the former Prime Minister published a review of adult social care in which the Health Services Management Centre (HSMC) argued that the system was fundamentally broken. A year on and very little has changed to alter our pessimistic assessment. Indeed in recent weeks, this diagnosis has been reconfirmed by a number of inter-related developments, including:
- Date:
- Friday 15th July 2011
- Categories:
- Research, Social Sciences
- Description
- The much-touted phrase 'from nanny to nudge' symbolises the Coalition Government's aspirations to find new ways to shape the habits and attitudes of good citizenship and to spread them more widely. Policy makers hope to change our expectations of what local and national government should provide, our ideas about who might provide them, and our commitment to changing our own and others' behaviours in all areas of our lives.
- Date:
- Friday 15th July 2011
- Categories:
- Research, Social Sciences