A one-to-one meeting at the Pertemps office in Hull as part of a work programme session for the long-term unemployed. Photograph: Christopher Thomond
There was a divergent discussion yesterday between a number of us on Twitter about payment by results (PBR): does it work or doesn't it? we asked. My point was that despite it being a hot topic, PBR has been around in one form or another for 20 years. Having said that, PBR today isn't just PBR, it's PBR plus.
It's supposed to snow later on this week but this weekend, the weather could not have been more perfect, in an eerie sort of way. In stressful times we all need to find our oasis and for me it's the allotment.
This week we launched the Transition Institute (TI) with our partners Nesta. We had a pre-launch dinner at the Hoxton Grill, in partnership with our friend Craig Dearden-Phillips, the night before and then the official launch at the wonderfully snazzy Nesta building 1 Plough Place on Thursday.
The dinner was exceptional. It was one of those where almost everyone who had been asked accepted probably because as Patrick Butler, Editor of Society, Health and Education Policy at the Guardian said, it read like a who's who of social commentators in this field, which is persumably why he agreed to chair. I kicked off by welcoming everyone and explaining a little about the TI, its vision and our journey up to the launch.
The TI is a platform to debate, reflect and produce research, guidelines and best practice in the field of public sector outsourcing. It will not deliver support but act as a commentator among those that do. It will be the place where decision makers such as local and health authorities go to find out how to outsource effectively in a way that will maximise social value. Those that are involved in the TI and subsequently get involved hold one thing to be true: we agree that public services can be delivered more effectively through independent provision but only when providers want to maximise social value above profit.
I know, I know, only spoilt middle class people have cleaners. Sorry to disappoint, but this blog does not address the rights and wrongs of having a cleaner, but the horror of losing one.
Last week a fellow Tweeter posted that he had picked up a comment from a working woman that she was terrified of losing her cleaner, his take on this was "Where do you start?" To most men the idea of being anxious about losing domestic support is hard to imagine, but I don't know a single working woman, mothers specifically, that wouldn't have her day/week/life seriously rocked by their cleaner being a no show.
Magda is our cleaner and I love her, she has worked for us for over 12 years. She's is a mate and I rely on her utterly. This morning my daughter was ill, I had a meeting to go to, so I went and, Ta Da, Magda held the fort.
Similarly only yesterday, Sabina, our breathtakingly smart and lovely Director of Policy and Research who is currently on maternity leave, was able to join us at a vital staff meeting because her cleaner stepped into the breach and looked after the baby.
This working, mothering thing is a complex proposition and frankly, to achieve it, we need all the help we can get.
I would be devastated if Magda moved on, not only because I value her forensic insights into our family life, which are priceless, but over the years she has been a loyal friend and the person that has allowed me to work the long hours I do and come home to a house that is ordered, at least once a week, every week. This in turn lets me think that I am 'getting away with it', having the 'big' fulfilling job and a harmonious family life. I know how lucky I am, and long may it continue.
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.
I am lying in bed, stunned. We have completed the usual festive marathon of friends and family and survived. Following Twitter over the holiday's was fascinating, others tweeting their anticipation, the enjoyment of the 'get together', the fall out, and finally, the regret. Liam Black re-tweeted one of my comments on Christmas, calling it "the most cynical view ever expressed on the subject", I compared the holidays to a wedding that you had to cater yourself and buy all the guests presents. It was, like 99 per cent of my tweets, a joke, but now the dust has settled I am warming to my wedding theme. Why are these events so tricky? Because people, and I include me here, bring their hopes to bare. Christmas is especially rehearsed with ritual and so even more likely to be a top end management prospect that falls short of people's expectations which are to be loved, happy and surprised.
I approach it as I do most things, by planning. I have spreadsheets for the 52 folk requiring gifts and I shop and wrap as early as I can in the month. I then decorate, which is my pleasure, as early as having a house filled with greenery and flowers will allow, and include in my preparations truly mad things like redecorating the spare room which I did 3 weekends beforehand. I love that ad for a cold remedy where the 2 ailing women rattle off the 100 things they are doing in the next 12 hours (including redecorating the bathroom) and don't mention their colds, lovely, and it has to be said, close to the mark. We then have the neighbours in 2 days before, and on Christmas Eve the real party starts with folk coming, staying and going for the next 4 days. It is wonderful, and my children delight in it all, but I don't just need a holiday now, I need a convent where all have taken a vow of silence.
My problem, (OK one of many) is that I try to exceed expectations. This isn't just foolish to do for so many at the same time, but for some, pointing out shortcomings is part of who they are. So as I clamber up the greasy pole I only succeed in showing my Bridget Jonesesque arse. Not a pretty sight. I think next year we might try something different.
As I hinted in previous blogs, I intend to introduce some life changes. Although I love every bit of my life (well most of it), the tension between giving the rapidly expanding world of social enterprise the dedication it needs and being there for my brood (and I can see the irony there) means that something has to give. The first victims of this rationalisation have been our chickens (Seen above). This weekend we said good bye to our feathered friends. Protests have been vocal, particularly from third born, animal lover extraordinaire. However the dear old chooks needed heaps of care, several times a day and a big clean at the weekend which never quite liberated my garden from the inevitable emblems of good luck. So when we were offered a foster farm in Northamptonshire who collects rare breeds (Our ladies were a class act), we jumped at the chance. Frankly I am relieved, they were lovely and the eggs were great but even jobs that only take a few minutes a day, like calories, add up in a bad way.
Maintaining the feathered theme I want to speak out in support of Twitter. I am no dab hand at technology, as anyone who knows me will confirm, usually with a snort, but I think Twitter it great. It is fresh, uncensored, informative and absolutely genuine dialogue. Through Twitter I have a sense of what is going on in the social enterprise world Globally, and it’s all done without taking itself too seriously. Those who use it well do so with tongue in cheek, you can spot those who do it as duty because it’s all information with no attitude.
I know it’s not for everyone but I think Twitter and social networking is a very important part of the future of our movement. Association and the freedom to form collective opinions and share views has always been our rock bed, but now you don’t need to be part of the in-crowd to get in. All that I find out I share and there are plenty of others like me. Between us all momentum grows very quickly and we can not only generate interest but also distribute information and create actual non virtual interaction. People log on and then turn up. As example would be our Transition’s document that is going to be launched tonight. Through Twitter people have found out about both the launch and the piece itself. They have been able to express their views, unedited and join in a conversation about the opportunities and threats of social enterprises entering the public sector outsourcing debate en mass. Our venue tonight for the launch is the wonderful social enterprise, the London Early Years Foundation in Westminster which, like all venues, has limited space. The event itself is hopelessly oversubscribed which is not surprising as we have Sir Steve Bullock, Mayor of Lewisham and Derek Myers, CEO at Kensington and Chelsea giving us a cross party launch. Social enterprise has the unique ability to operate across party politics. Twitter has the unique ability to allow anyone, be they in Wapping or Waikiki to join in. Needless to say Matt will be Twittering for SEL (SocEntLdn) and Dom (DomPotter) and I (aogdennewton) will be Twittering up a storm on our own accounts, so one way or the other see you all there!
So today’s question is how many social enterprises are there in the UK? According to Hidden Social Enterprises, a report by Delta Economics and IFF launched last Thursday at an event at London’s Goodenough College, where I spoke, there are loads more than we thought. Delta surveyed some 2,121 companies from which they concluded that 21% of them could be classified as social enterprises. From this they concluded that there could be as many as 232,000 social enterprises operating in the UK. Their approach was to allow the company questioned to decide for themselves whether their primary motivation is to achieve a social and/or environmental impact. If they did, they met the broad criteria of social enterprise.
So, with those eligible for the Social Enterprise Mark at one end of the spectrum and the Delta Economics work at the other, on which number do we pin the donkey’s tail? What this means of course is that we don’t actually know (because of course, we can't agree). But we do know that our movement is growing. The number of social enterprises coming into being is rising, as is the extent to which we are influencing main stream business. So that’s good. Agreeing on what a social enterprise is may take a little longer. Maybe we should leave it to the academics, who by the way are still wrangling over what defines the term English, whether international investment helps or hinders, and whether or not we have passed the environmental tipping point. So maybe we shouldn’t hold our breath?
I had a lovely Mother’s Day. The kids gave me some top gifts, a poem from Sam, the last of the Larrsson trilogy, “The Girl who kicked the hornets’ nest”, from Joe and a lovely clay alien wearing a top hat from Katie. Chris quickly identified the alien as a bangle holder, to which Katie brightly said, no, it was in fact a pencil holder, but the arm had come off. As it was my day I dragged everyone round RHS Wisley to look at the Helleborus (there’s a joke there). Then we went to the pub in Wisley village on the canal and the kids threw crisps at the ducks (below). The boys had sat three music exams between them last week so deserved some fun too. I think the Grades went well. The important thing was to give it their best shot, which I know they do every time.
By Sunday it had already been a busy weekend. With the help of our fab au pair Sarah (pictured in the 'after' shot, below) we repainted the corridor between the hall and kitchen that we rather grandly call the Gallery, because we hang our family photos there. As I love before and after shots, I thought I’d show you the results of our hard work. As you can see I’ve gone for light and bright. I don’t know if it’s the long winter, or just because I’ve taken an age to really move on from losing my lovely Dad, but I really feel like a new start, lightening everything up. It gladdens the soul.
As promised I also attacked the strawberry patch this weekend. My approach was so brutal that fellow allotment holders came over to look. Basically I dug out the old half of the patch composting the strawberry plants and setting aside the bind weed roots for the brazier. I then filtered the new half, tidying up last year’s runners and planting them on the now empty half which had of course been manured and fed. Katie was a trooper cleaning up over 60 new plants for me to put in and watering them in as you can see. I’m not expert but last year I yileded up to 18lbs of strawberries a day, so fingers crossed the formulae works again. Again, more before and after shots, all very satisfying and leading to a much enjoyed quiet Sunday.
Finally have a look at this lovely piece of work I just picked up on Twitter. It's by a social enterprise network in South America for young social entrepreneurs launched back in 2007. Isn’t it great to be part of a Global movement? I might make international info updates a regular part of my blog. Watch this space. I do love knowing what is going on in the world, especially if it’s stunning like this piece of work. I wonder what they're up to now? Anyone know of them?
