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Be careful what you wish for…

August 31, 2010
by Alun Severn
0 Comment
Further to this post, there is an excellent piece by Paul Gosling in Co-operative  News online, called Sadly, David Davis got it about right on Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ proposal. In it Gosling analyses the potential risks the co-op and social enterprise movement faces
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‘Pulse’ says NHS bosses will reinvent themselves as social enterprise directors

August 27, 2010
by Alun Severn
1 Comment
Following the government’s recent announcement that PCTs will be abolished by 2013, I had heard from a number of people working in the health sector that key workers — including as highly placed staff as PCT chief execs — are looking at how they can reinvent themselv
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‘Running for social justice’

August 20, 2010
by Alun Severn
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Many of you will know Pete Lowen. He is currently the chief exec of the Birmingham Law Centre, a voluntary organisation providing legal help to some of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable clients in the city. October 24th 2010 sees the third half-marathon to be run in Birmingham and
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Social Enterprise London will offer guidance to public sector workers considering social enterprise externalisations

August 20, 2010
by Alun Severn
2 Comments
SEL has just announced that it will very shortly publish a guide for public sector workers who are considering whether their service, team or department might be successfully externalised as a social enterprise. The guide should be available online in a week or so.
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Finditinbirmingham offers breakfast with the lenders

August 13, 2010
by Alun Severn
0 Comment
If you can’t get business finance from the banks, then this is the event for you.  — Steve Walker, ART Finditinbirmingham’s September networking breakfast focuses on business finance — and how to get it. Register now for this 2nd September event by going to the
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Have our sector representative bodies painted themselves into a corner?

August 12, 2010
by Alun Severn
5 Comments
In the past few days the government has announced that it will scrap a £3.3m scheme headed up by the Plunkett Foundation which was offering support to communities seeking to turn local pubs threatened with closure into community-owned co-ops. And now the Cabinet Office has announced t
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‘Big Society’ — is this a child that co-operators, social enterprises and VCOs should be claiming paternity of?

August 11, 2010
by Alun Severn
2 Comments
Two excellent recent articles in the Guardian have taken dramatically opposing positions on the coalition’s ‘big society’ idea. Here, Jonathan Freedland argues that Cameron and the coalition are the wrong bearers of the right message, and that those of progressive po
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Enta hosts week-long visit by Ernesto Sirolli

August 06, 2010
by Alun Severn
0 Comment
Ernesto Sirolli, the world famous community enterprise guru and founder and head of the Sirolli Institute has spent the past week in Brum, a guest of Enta CIC, no less. You can read the full story here and here. Sirolli has spent time mentoring Jason Fry, Enta’s ‘enterpris
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Stirchley Community Market makes national press

August 04, 2010
by Alun Severn
2 Comments
Just spotted this very interesting item in the Guardian Society pages — ‘Pride of Place’, an excellent short piece about co-ops, social enterprises and community activists in Stirchley getting together to found an alternative, ethical market on a car park. The commun
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LEPs — ‘loose associations’ or ‘formal legal entities’?

August 04, 2010
by Alun Severn
4 Comments
Further to this post, Steve Walker at ART has drawn my attention to this informative account in the Local Government Chronicle online of how the battle for LEPs — the Local Enterprise Partnerships which will take over many of the functions of the closing RDAs — is shaping
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“No one wants to be the horse’s backside”

August 03, 2010
by Alun Severn
0 Comment
Just moments ago I received an email from the chief exec at BVSC, Brian Carr, in which he said, “No one wants to be the horse’s backside.” At first I thought this referred to a telephone conversation we had had just a few minutes earlier. In which, I hasten to add, I
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