Matthew Taylor – Please read this – it might just be important and Not too slow, not too fast
Matthew Taylor is an interesting guy. He used to be an advisor to Prime Minister Tony Blair, and now he’s the chief executive of the 250-year-old Royal Society for the Arts. His blog isn’t as high-profile or widely-read as some others in Britain, but I frequently find it worthwhile and thought-provoking. Taylor is currently getting somewhat involved with David Cameron’s Big Society idea, and trying to treat it seriously, rather than as an intellectual smokescreen for cutting public services — both these posts reflect this effort in different ways.
Grant Robertson – Reciprocity and the Left
Anthony Painter – A greater emphasis on reciprocity will be a crucial part of Labour’s response to a Cameronian residual state (chapter in Rutherford and Lockey, eds, Labour’s Future)
Will Hutton – Them and Us: how capitalism without fairness is capitalism without a future
Like Chris Hipkins (who I mentioned last week), Grant Robertson is part of Labour’s large and impressive “Class of ‘08″. His post is an interesting one about the role of the concept of ‘reciprocity’ in progressive thinking. It draws upon work by Anthony Painter, whose work for Open Left on demographic and attitudinal changes and their impact on the UK politics I recommended in the newsletter back in March. Open Left is hosted by the thinktank Demos and was set up by James Purnell, whose ideas I’ve previously discussed in some detail (Purnell has recently become chair of another thinktank the Institute for Public Policy Research — I’m not sure how that will affect his involvement with Open Left.)
Interestingly, one of the heavy-hitters of modern progressivism has recently been stressing a similar theme to Robertson and Painter. Will Hutton’s The State We’re In was one of the founding texts for New Labour in the UK and even though Blair & co pulled back from ‘the stakeholder society’ idea, his Observer columns and work with the Work Foundation thinktank continue to be influential. His next book will be Them and Us: Politics, Greed and Inequality – Why We Need a Fair Society
Matthew Yglesias – Military Spurring Research Into Self-Driving Cars
“One intriguing technological possibility in the transportation domain is the idea of “self-driving” cars—robot cars, basically—that could drive a route without the need for a human being to pilot the car. This kind of technology could potentially revolutionize the urban landscape.”
Intriguing indeed!
Also:
Ben Rogers – Rethinking the role of thinktanks
R0b (The Standard) – For the economic record
Stuart Nash MP – Child support debt – the national shame
Tags: Anthony Painter, Matthew Taylor, Matthew Yglesias, Will Hutton
