There are 144 item(s) tagged with the keyword "Apse".
Claire Fox succeeded in fulfilling the brief to do her usual thing and ‘stir it up’ when she spoke at our annual conference in Cardiff. She also took the opportunity to make her usual rallying cry for less state nannying.
The underlying tenet that what once constituted the public sphere is being eroded while the state delves further into the private lives of citizens warrants consideration. But is perhaps lost amid her evocation of some sort of municipal Dystopia; complete with spying helicopters and a moratorium on anything remotely resembling fun (Stop monitoring the public, The MJ, 1st October 2009).
Having been criticised previously for writing and expressing my views widely on the on-going investigation by the Office of Fair Trading into Construction Sector Cartels I must admit to a degree of smugness when news broke of the 103 companies having £129m of fines imposed on them having been found guilty of cover pricing.
Just arrived back from our annual seminar and awards at Cardiff and it was a great success.
The event opened with a bit of scene setting from the Welsh Local Government Minister, Dr Brian Gibbons and Emeritus Professor of Local Governance at LSE, George Jones. This could have been a 'we're all doomed session', however the quality of contributions by both speakers enabled delegates to keep the financial pressures faced in perspective.
The recent debate around the role of the Audit Commission, brought into sharp focus by John Seddon’s call to scrap it, has rather overshadowed the more important discussion around how best to improve service delivery. Is this best achieved under central direction? Or by creating a culture locally where members and officers work together to ensure they continuously improve local services by building upwards from citizens’ needs?