2012 Victory Parade: A celebration of faith, commitment and funding`

Today, I was at a meeting at the RSA just as Team GB's Victory Parade went by. I didn't want to miss out on the opportunity and so waited for the floats with Jaume Martorell, Network and Communications Manager at the Transition Institute, which is now based at the RSA and is right on the route of the parade. Jaume is from Spain where parades are a common occurrence, I told him that on the whole, we were not a big parading nation and this spectacle was unusual for us reserved Brits.

The atmosphere was very jolly with people smiling, cheering and waving flags. I fell into conversation with an delightful older lady jammed next to me by the crowd. After apologising for getting me in the eye with her flag, she told me how much she had enjoyed every moment of the Olympics and Paralympics, that she had gone to see both and thought they were 'wonderful'. It seems that few have missed out on the spirit of 2012 and, for those of us lucky enough to go to the Games, it has been magical.

My role right from the very beginning of winning the bid had been to work with the Third Sector in the Cabinet Office, then headed up by Ed Miliband, to ensure as many social enterprises as possible were able to contribute to the building, running and legacy of the Games. For social enterprise advocates, our starting point back in 2009 was the vision of the Social Enterprise Square Mile and for us this has turned out to have been a successful Games, with social enterprises like HCT providing transport on the site, Catering to Order supplying food to the construction workers and Clarity the soaps and detergents, both of which provide employment to the visually impaired. At the time, Ed had been really fired up by the Olympics and was extraordinarily supportive, using his influence to persuade key folk like the then mayor, Ken Livingstone, to give me the time to explain why social enterprise was so on message for 2012.

My gold medalist, John Charles, a great social entrepreneur

I thought today, as I watched the Paralympians, about inspiring social entrepreneurs like John Charles the extraordinary CEO of Catering to Order who set up the company after losing his sight at 18. For him, their success would perhaps be less surprising as he knows only too well what those challenged by disability – with the right support, guts and determination – can achieve. Not content with being a profoundly visually impaired, most of John's employees have similar difficulties and yet Catering to Order is commercial all the way. Now that deserves a gold medal.

Truly the greatest show on earth

Our family trip to the Olympic Village was in August when we went to see the men's hockey, something the kids will never forget. Joe, our 16-year-old, was particular thrilled as he is captain of his hockey team and was voted player of the year at the end of last season. It was an extraordinary atmosphere, hard to quite pick up on the TV and the Olympic Park was every bit as impressive and inspiring as you dared hope it might be. During a break in one of the matches, we even bumped into one of Joe's schoolmates, a fellow hockey team player and his family, so incredibly the Games left us feeling connected to our community even though they were evidently global.

As we left the Olympic Village we walked past the Aquatic Centre, which is now being managed by GLL, a great social enterprise that beat all other bidders in a highly competitive process to win this most prestigious 2012 legacy management contract. SEL, in our role as social enterprise ambassadors to the Games, supported its bid and I personally made representation to the legacy committee on its behalf, explaining the advantage of social enterprise in terms of its sustained commitment to local employment, community engagement rather than shareholders. So many victories made possible by vision and commitment.

Today, as the athletes went by, those of us on the pavement shouted our salutations and in turn many of them mouthed thank you to the crowd, including Victoria Pendlelton, Mighty Mo and Lee Pearson, which I thought was touching. They too seemed a little caught off guard by events. It's not in our nature, we Brits, to go over the top about things, but their achievement has given us all something to shout about. It is heartening to witness what can be done when faith and hard work are met with investment, something for us all to take away with and ponder.

Finally, I get down to the allotment to find the horrors that await

Thirty Streamline runner beans waiting for more rain

It has been a long time since I last went to the allotment, which is disappointing as one of the main reasons we bought our new house was to be close to it.

I bumped the RSA's Chief Executive Matthew Taylor on Wednesday as I attended a roundtable discussion on their 202 Public Service Hub's recent publication, the fascinating Business, society and public services: A social productivity framework, and he asked me how my allotment was; he was no doubt confused by the look of horror on my face. Because instead of contemplating luscious crops, my mind turned to guilt and scenes of neglect. The problem has been the time taken by our move followed by my pneumonia, so it has been weeks since I went, unprecedented in 15 years of keeping an allotment. It was therefore with heavy anticipation that I headed down yesterday, still feeling uncharacteristically weary but looking forward to a good day tending my little patch of heaven.
I picked lovely weather, the sun was shining and many of my fellow allotmenters had their families in tow enjoying the warmth and helping out.

Comedy parsnips

The first thing that hit me was the grass – with the rain that has fallen recently, it had got to over a foot tall on my paths and needed immediate attention. Then there were the pests. Much of what I have in the ground, like my asparagus, had been got at either by the asparagus beetle or slugs and on closer inspection I found hundreds of slugs and snails curled up around the weeds and vegetables like the cavalo nero. I destroy snails and slugs by standing on them. Fellow gardeners have more genteel ways of dealing with the gardener's nemesis, like plopping them in a bucket of water but as they can climb out of water I find the quickest way is to stamp on them or if they are smaller squish them between thumb and forefinger as I go about my business. I took out the cavolo nero saving the best for our rabbits at home and also dug up the last of the parsnips, which were rather large and probably past their best, though I will try to make them into soup today with chicken stock from last night's roast.

Serpentine asparagus

My asparagus shoots are coming out of the ground bent because as they grow incredibly quickly, they are contorting around the damaged side of the spears. They look like mythological serpents rising out of the sea but, I have to report, still taste delicious.



I make it a rule to try to add something when I go so I had the fun job of putting in my runners. This year I have gone for Streamline which is a new variety for me but grows very straight, hence the name, and as I have invested in a 'new' vintage bean cutter, thanks to good old Ebay, I am keen to get slicing with straighter beans and so reducing waste.

Who dun it?

I then weeded and re-netted my broad beans that have once again been well and truly got at by pests. It could be pea weevil but given some of them had been knocked over, more likely to be slug damage. It's time to order the nematodes!

I gave my apple trees a spray as signs of apple aphid and scab are already there and made a mental note to get some codling moth lures and arm my traps.

Finally I earthed up my potatoes, Pink Fir Apple, which are our favourite and still hard to buy unless you shop on the fifth floor of Harvey Nichols.
With things looking a little tidier, though by no means up to scratch, I said goodbye to our scarecrow, Bob, and wandered home in the evening sun to sort my screaming back out with an ibuprofen, washed down with a clinking gin and tonic. I find that most English of sundowners and a hot bath to be the cure for most things that ail a body.


I have a busy week ahead, but like Arnie, I will be back and armed for war. Don't be fooled by gentle breezes and sweet fragrance, gardening is a constant battle and not for the feint hearted.

PS Please sponsor my Sammie who did a 60-mile training cycle yesterday in preparation for his ride to Paris for Street Child Sierra Leone on 2 June. He's only 14 and is constantly monitoring his Just Giving site so go on give him something to cheer at!
Sam Ogden-Newton/Just Giving

Suzanne Moore calling all Angry Birds

Today Suzanne Moore published an excellent piece entitled 'It's time to get angry, all this polite and smiley feminism is getting us nowhere' in the Guardian telling us there is a need for women to start getting angry about inequality. Moore, like me, has long since been irritated by the term 'post feminism'. All the women I know who have been active within the feminist movement struggle to recognise any development that would allow us to consider that job done and the emergence of a subsequent, distinct reconstructed era. Moore's piece takes a deliberately controversial stab at unpicking what has happened there and as such is really worth a read, but its the comments that followed that were really heart stopping.

As soon as I had sunk my first cup of tea at around 9am, watched the fab Campbell Robb, ceo at Shelter tell us on BBC Breakfast to be concerned about the crisis in housing shortages, the stream of bile was well under way. From mostly men but some women as well, the feed tells you everything you need to know about the current status of feminism in the UK. Read it and weep. It is quite clear from the comments that the truth is feminism isn't unnecessary because we have achieved equal pay, have equal access to senior jobs or are anything other than a risible minority of FTSE 100 board members or MPs. No we have not 'arrived' and not for the want of trying, but because some men really, really don't want us to have those positions and aren't going to 'give' them to us or indeed tolerate any position that describes the current state of inequality as even unfair.

My own comment on the piece, left a few moments ago was as follows:

If anyone was puzzled about the context of this piece they only have to read the majority of the comments that followed it, spiteful, defensive miopic sexism dressed up as counter balance. To put her thoughts in the context of my own week I got involved in an interesting twitter dialogue earlier on when I tweeted my surprise during Monday's Panorama, that the ceo of the Mother's Union was a man. Several women picked up this point and agreed, the next day the Mother's Union tweeted me back to point out that they have an equal opportunities policy and my comments were sexist. Really? In establishing the selection criteria for the job of representing the Mother's Union, clearly being a mother didn't even make it onto the essential list. Now every point made to emphasise the most important job in society, that of being a mother, is made by a man. Which other special interest groups do that? Would Fathers for Justice have a woman as their figurehead? The Muslim Defence League elect to be run by a non-Muslim, the NAACP select a white spokesperson? When the gauntlet of equality is laid down it seems only women are scrupulous enough to pick it up, everyone else steps over it and carries on shouting. So maybe we should stop being so reasonable, so measured and take a leaf out of Moore's book? In my own world of social enterprise the majority of my members are women led companies and yet the vast majority of our spokespeople are men, white men to boot. Day after day I go to meetings that are dominated by men, attend conferences where all male panels discuss the issues and key note after key note is a white man, often of a certain age, all offered up and passed out without comment. There are exceptions to this silence though, recently I attended a good conference on the future of public services at the RSA where, sadly, the plenary was all male even though the audience contained some of the country's leading female experts on the subject. After the coffee break, and without even discussing it, those women returned early to the auditorium and occupied the entire front row and then the rows immediately behind, causing raised eyebrows from almost every man who entered the room and eventually leading to a comment from the panel. I think we do have to make an effort to avoid invisibility, especially the most senior of us, as economic austerity gives those in authority every excuse not to do what they didn't want to do anyway. We should assert ourselves as women, not just for our sake, not just for our daughter's but our son's too. A peaceful, powerful, careful society is a fair one and women have so much to contribute to that, to call it a job done without them is illusionary.


We shall see if anyone picks that up, but in any case my point is we all need to be vigilant. Girls are getting distracted by media, the cult of celebrity, and terms like 'post feminism' and in the great scramble for the few remaining jobs and the female economic independence a civilised society is predicated on, they are, almost inevitably, missing out. Suzanne wants to recruit an army of 'Angry Birds', she can count me in.    

Maude announces the new Right to Request

I have always agreed with Groucho Marks, that I wouldn't want to join any club that would have me. On that basis I routinely reject all applications to join associations, clubs and business who's who's. I assume their motive is financial and the benefits minimum. On that basis I have turned down two offers to join the RSA, but attending an event there on Tuesday I had cause to rethink.

The event was a debate on the findings of the 2020 Public Service Commission sponsored by the RSA. It was pacy, packed and I think productive. It was one of those where many of the delegates, including me, were speaking, but that turned out to be a good thing because everyone had lots to say. The Director of the 2020 Public Service Commission Trust, Ben Lucas, formerly of LLM Communications, set the agenda by telling us that things have to change in public services, that the challenge was not just to shrink but reform and that despite the constraints, leaders had a duty to recognise their choices, be innovative and aspirational.

This theme was underpinned by Mathew Taylor, Chair of the RSA, member of the 2020 Commision and broadcaster. He said what many were thinking, which is that public services must reform from a starting point of being deeply institutionalised. A theme repeated many times throughout the day including from me, was that people would need leadership and support in making the necessary moves, otherwise we will simply get less, not more or at least different, just less. we heard from Lord Wei who gratifyingly said that the narrative on Big Society had all been about community engagement but there was a need for rationale around public sector reform, a point I made a few moths ago to the Cabinet Office (although I am sure that is unrelated). Unfortunately Nat used one of his lovely but complex charts to illustrate his view on this. What ever Big Society turns out to be, and for me its about giving people the freedom to demand more in exchange for their participation in the change process, it won't be communicated by a chart. Less Mckinsey me thinks, more poetry.

I tweeted up a storm and was thanked alongside fellow tweeters like Ruth Kennedy via twitter by the RSA. I think twitter is such a useful tool, it enabled us to send the key themes and statements out to a wider public and the comments and RT's (ReTweets) from folk during the debates were great. It extrapolated the discussion in real time and allowed comment from a much wider audience. As an aside I think the ruling yesterday against the poor old tweeter, Paul Chambers, who made a crass, infuriated joke about bombing Robin Hood Airport was a disgrace. It was clearly a joke, and incidentally not nearly as crass as a million I have made, and the price the bloke has paid already is to lose his job, his home and I believe, his relationship. The law really is an ass, and for clarification I don't mean donkey but idiot. Stephen Fry was absolutely right to speak out in defence of our right to flippancy, adding that it was important and he would pay the fine for Paul no matter how much it was. Twitter can be brutal, and those of us who have some twitter coverage you sometimes have to read comments that are tough, I have for instance been told I made one person feel sick (!?) But for any of this argy-bargy to end up in the courts is not the British way and should be mocked and shunned for what it is, Big State. Put that in your pipe and Tweet it.

Back to the RSA, Francis Maude's (above) thoughtful speech gave rise to the view that Government was giving some real thought to these issues. I was delighted to hear that he, Eric Pickles and Greg Clark were all working on a follow on from Right to Request. He was very positive about that policy, and saying that although it had its difficulties, the Government felt that something like it would be needed to enable the public sector reforms with Big Society vision that he wanted to see happen. He referred to the new framework as Right to Bid. He spoke of entrepreneurs within the public sector and so in a quick chat later I was delighted to be able to show him our Transitions booklet, distributed by SEL and the National Audit Office, produced for the public sector staff interested in setting up stand alone provision as social enterprise. He was amazed that it had been downloaded many thousands of times already, a hard and fast indicator that what he was saying was true, there is an appetite for this stuff within Government itself.

Other comments that caused a buzz were Stephen Greenhalgh Leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Council saying 'All Hail the postcode lottery', welcoming difference in pursuit of excellence. I have always found the postcode lottery debate a facile one. The truth is there should be a standard set which everyone has the right to expect in every service but beyond that folk need the freedom to innovate. If you aren't moving forward when the world is moving so quickly, you are in fact, in my view, going backwards.

Also Lord Adonis gave a very funny speech critising the Government's reforms along the theme of "Plus ca change (plus c'est la meme chose)" which he would have left thinking was popular, but in speaking to delegates his were the most unwelcome comments. People might laugh but really they don't want to hear that nothing can change and politicians will always remain the same. Given the view of politicians generally, staying the same is a very bad thing. As one delegate told me "Labour keep getting the mood wrong, they won't make progress until they sort that out."

Finally a quick shot from my office window of London Bridge in yesterdays torrential rain. Monumental in every sense.

'Having it all' my arse

I have just had one of those outer body social moments, when I tried to pass myself off as a proper parent and failed. Is this what men feel like all the time I wonder? I live in a perpetual state of guilt about my lack of participation in school events and for that matter my children's term time lives. As a working mother who not only works very long hours (although from home most Friday's), and spends quantities of my life responding to my blackberry, my children my husband and my mother, my garden and my allotment there is very little time left for the school social agenda. Yet it exists and is a very powerful thing. One of the horrors of being a working mother is that you quickly learn that your inability to be there to organise your children's social lives, affects their relationships, social networks and sometimes even confidence. We have had some fantastic childcare providers but they can't substitute for you on this as stay at home mother's tend to prioritise children whose mothers they can chat to whilst the children play, I suppose you would really. The up shot is I don't know who most of the mothers are and I certainly don't know who their children are, which can be tricky.

But I was at home today, and as I feel perpetually shifty I went to my youngest child's parents (read mother's) coffee morning. Even after having children at this particular primary school for eight years I still only know a handful of people which explains why I cheerfully entered the pub in which we were due to meet and sat down with the wrong group of women. It reminded me of the time I arrived late to speak to a conference, went straight up to the panel on the platform, sat down, only to realise I was at the wrong event and the farmers assembled were probably not waiting to hear me on the subject of social enterprise. Loudly I arrived, quietly I left.

Similarly this morning I coughed my excuses, ordered my tea at the bar, and waited for a familiar face. As our class group gathered I overheard one Mum issue a diatribe on women who have never offered to be a class rep (that would be me, oh and FYI a class rep for those not in the know is a sort of activities co-ordinator) so I gingerly joined the group as they became animated in their deliberations on plans for the School Christmas fair. Schools could not function without the volunteering and dedication of parents who put the effort in and I will try to get home to put together some Christmas wreaths, but it is hard for working Mums to find a way in. At least when I'm in a meeting at the Cabinet Office I can keep up with the acronyms and throw away comments but for so much of this morning I was completely at sea. Is it the guilt that gets in the way or the difficulty in changing gears? I spent hours yesterday writing a piece for The Guardian and a speech I'm giving on Tuesday at the RSA both on public service  outsourcing  and the opportunities for social enterprise. To date it is my most comprehensive view on the subject and not without its controversies, so that is where my head is at. I suppose where I am getting to on this is if I was a man, that would be fine, I could do my job and not feel I was letting anyone down by not making table centres and festive ornaments in my spare time.

But I am a working mum, so in time honoured fashion I will try to do everything, but I don't think I will ever make it as class rep, I simply don't have the lingo.