During the week I commented on how “Community Politics” is a term becoming worryingly scarce amongst the public utterances of senior Liberal Democrats. One practical example of this is how so much of the running, both intellectual and practical, in political circles on developing social investment is happening in the Conservative Party.
Finding ways to improve the availability of funds to social enterprises is an issue that has got increasing intention in recent years and is an important part of the Conservative vision for a Big Society bank, but Liberal Democrats have been mostly silent as it has become all about the Big Society, with Community Politics rarely getting a mention on the national stage even from Liberal Democrats.
If you are not familiar with the issue, here is an example of a social enterprise taken from the government consultation paper published during the week:
Bikeworks was set up in 2007 with the aim of using bikes to tackle environmental, social and economic challenges in Tower Hamlets, east London. Bikeworks provides employment and training opportunities for marginalised individuals in recycling and refurbishing second-hand bikes. Bikeworks’ approach is to develop and build on the best of small-scale community cycling initiatives but to do so on a greater scale, achieve significant outcomes and build a viable replicable model. They recently opened a second community cycling hub in Kensington and Chelsea, west London, in September 2010, and have aspirations to replicate the service further. Bikeworks’ income is earned through contracts to provide a range of organisational cycling services to local authorities, civil society organisations and corporate clients. It also generates income from the retail sale of recycled bikes and the provision of repairs and maintenance services to the public.
The consultation paper looks at how more investment funding can be made available for such enterprises, particularly through fixing flaws in the current state of the financial markets (section 3.10 lists five major areas where markets are not working properly in this regard). Here it is in full:
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7 Comments
Of all the things the Lib Dems should be shouting about from the rooftops, this ought to be front and centre…
@Prateek
I think the electorate are more concerned about the destruction of the NHS by the Lib Dems and the Tories.
We need to put employee ownership across the whole economy much higher up our priorities. We used to insist that as a minimum all companies with over 50 employees had profit sharing and employees equal with shareholders -remember co -ownership? We used to champion ‘labour hiring capital’ for the mainstream not meagre bits of mutualism at the margin-which however welcome does nothing to tackle the large scale redistribution of wealth we urgently need. Social mobility is not an alternative to redistributing wealth.
I don’t fully know why we have gone almost silent on the issue of ownership. There is a big opportunity coming up with banking reform. Let’s hope we see the re-mutualisation of Northern Rock and more besides so that there is a real alternative to the dominance of ‘share ownership’ with all the short termism that has implied
@james – you mean we are destroying it by increasing spending in real terms each year?
@Simon
Then why the job cuts, why are wards closing and why are services being reduced???
I suppose you think that the decisions made by these health authorities are politically motivated ala Liverpool City Council.
If the Lib Dems were not part of this coalition you would be going ape shit about this.
We’ve got a really clever way of increasing spending. We tell them that they will make efficiency savings of £20bn, so that a cut in funding of £19bn is really an increase of £1bn, so we’ve ring-fenced the NHS, honest injun…
Having been to the Big Society conference on Weds I can say that within the Voluntary sector there is little or no confidence, in fact during the Q&A with Nick Hurd after he addressed the conference the biggest applause was when one delegate said the government should be thoroughly ashamed of what’s happening to voluntary groups/charities.