Politics News
Wellbeing: a new paradigm or just a fad?
As someone with a long interest in language and how it is used, I am often fascinated by how changes of terminology take place. Suddenly people are using a new term, sometimes to refer to a new concept or approach, but sometimes the new term simply replaces an old one. Well-being is not a new term or even a new concept, but it is certainly being used much more these days, and in different ways too.
I am a great believer in the idea of ‘confluence theory’, the notion that significant changes...
Future of wellbeing: what does this mean for you and your organisation?
From debates on wellbeing as a political goal, to positive psychology 'wellbeing' is being used more and more. But what does this term mean? And more importantly, perhaps, what does it mean to civil society organisations?
Many charities have wellbeing at the heart of what they do, even if they don't realise it. The sector can play a vital role in this directing this issue to shape society into a good society.
Join us on 23 February for the Future of Wellbeing seminar (PM4) at NCVO's annual...
I am what I read?
For a while, my news mainly came from the RSS feeds I chose to come into my netvibes account. This was a form of personalising the news I received grouped into things more likely to interest me (so tabs for politics, culture, the third sector, technology etc) – still in the main from news providers and journals, but divided up by topic not source. Then I started to use my network on delicious to find my way to articles that friends and colleagues had bookmarked as being of interest. ...
Ready for change? Highlights from the Conservative Party conference
After Labour’s conference (see here for my thoughts), last week was the Conservatives’ turn. As the party steams ahead in the polls, all eyes were on them in the hope that the conference would provide us with a better idea of some of the things they would do if their poll ratings translate into success at the ballot box. One of the main criticisms levelled at them has been their lack of concrete policies. Though realistically this is probably to be expected of a party not in government that...
How important is the voluntary sector in public service delivery?
As we approach the chancellor’s autumn statement and a likely general election in Spring 2010 the debate over public spending levels is in full swing. What’s more, the language of cuts is now official government terminology: it’s no longer if, it’s now when, and how much. Everything is under review, which organisations in the voluntary sector – who are both delivering services to users and fighting for their rights – both fear and welcome. The mood is one of both trepidation and...
The Labour party conference, their priorities and the power of the media
Party conference season is often a time of great political plotting, posturing and blunders so will this year’s conferences hammer the last nail into in the coffin of either of the two main parties? Or will they give us a clearer sense of what the parties would do if they were to win the next General Election? A successful conference for Labour or equally a bad performance by the Conservatives could mean the outcome of the General Election is still very much up for grabs.
This week was the...
Hitting the big numbers
Just the other day the FTSE 100 index hit 5,000 for the first time in nearly a year. As mentioned in our driver, stock market levels are mainly driven by confidence. So does this recent bounce mean we are seeing confidence in the UK stockmarket growing? Breaking the 5000 points barrier led to a fair number of news articles proclaiming the start of the end of the recession. An equal amount of media space has been dedicated to the Kraft takeover bid for Cadburys. Some see take overs (mergers...
The future is not what is used to be
This Autumn the latest in NCVO’s Third Sector Foresight pocket guides series, Future Focus 7, will study the future of campaigning. Here Nick Wilson, new Third Sector Foresight Officer and winner of a Sheila McKechnie Foundation Award for campaigning, looks at what the recent Camp for Climate Action tells us about that future.
Over the Bank Holiday weekend Climate Camp staged six days of protest in Blackheath, London, under the banner “The future is not what it used to be”. This was just the ...
Push Student Debt Survey
The Push Student Debt Survey, an annual survey on the financial position of students’, found that student debt levels are rising – students are averaging more than £5000 of debt each year, up nearly a quarter from last year. Push carried out face to face interviews with 2024 students in years one to four of their course, in over 130 universities.
The survey also found that levels of debt vary considerably between regions and institutions. For example students in England have the highest...
Is this the new direction of [party] membership?
GP Sarah Wollaston was yesterday elected as the Conservative candidate for the Totnes seat currently held by Anthony Steen.
But it was not so much her election as the manner in which it took place that is interesting: Wollaston was elected through a postal ballot open to everyone on the electoral register for the constituency.
A back of the envelope (groan) calculation suggests that around 16,500 people voted, in other words just under a quarter of those eligible to do so. Whilst therefore...
