Seeing red: Do you think Ms Brooks would benefit from an allotment?

Seeing red

No matter how stressed you are and how badly things are going wrong, spend some time on an allotment and you can't fail to put the world to rights.

Knowing when to bail: This isn't politics, it's bigger than that – just ask Hugh Grant

Hugh Grant: Not just a pretty face

Like everyone in the country, I am agog at what's going on. The tabloid press seem to have sunk to new lows below even those assumed of them. The police seem to be guilty of taking a discretionary approach to what is or is not illegal, based on self-interest. And it would seem that politicians have entered a Faustian pact with the Murdoch empire that has prevented anyone from getting to the bottom of how information is bought, sold and publicised in some parts of the British media. Just ask Hugh Grant, he knows all about it.

It now seems clear that Murdoch may not be allowed to buy the rest of the BSkyB but that his current holdings need to be reviewed and reduced. Even without further revelations only a nitwit would try to defend the assertion that News International will do a thorough job cleaning up its act through self-regulation or, for that matter, the Metropolitan Police should be left to its own devices. It is political suicide to trivialise the implications of this, because the public have got beyond the 'smoke without fire' stage to organising its own evacuation. The public isn't waiting for politicians to tell them what to do: Mumsnet and the Church of England are looking at a Murdoch boycott and are sufficiently well informed not to be distracted by the closure of the News of the World. The good old Guardian has become our very own Washington Post, now looked to across the world for the only unbiased coverage of this whole business.

I have a close friend who is the international editor of a well-known celebrity magazine and she has often told me of the fear the famous have of the British tabloid press, some choose never to come to the UK or leave hastily because of it. No great loss, you may think, but an interesting indicator of how the British tabloid press is in a class of its own when it comes to being out of control. Further it has always fascinated me that the worst practices of some of the media in this country are managed and exploited by non-residents who would not welcome or tolerate such intrusion in the countries they choose to live in. Having said that, my friend has often argued for the continuance of an unregulated press. So what's to do?

Ed Miliband has been accused of playing politics with this issue, I don't think that is possible. Like Watergate and the Profumo Affair, it's got beyond that now. We do need to stop the Murdoch takeover sharpish. We do need someone to stop the deleting as it is now, shredding as it was in Ollie North's day. And as David Cameron agreed, old Rebekah Brooks needs to go whether she is a 'lightning rod' or not, if only to say that if it all goes tits up on your watch, it's your responsibility.

I am amazed and, I have to say, delighted at the role Hugh Grant has played in all this. It seems following his relentless experience of being 'papped', he fought back by taking ex-News of the World journalist Paul McMullan out for a drink with a microphone pen in his pocket to record and expose the hacking, police bribery allegations and the culpability of politicians and newspaper editors and bosses as McMullan bragged that 'he [Grant] was powerless to do anything about it.' Given his extraordinary tenacity I think he should definitely play himself in the inevitable film.

It may yet turn out that Andy Coulson becomes #newsgate's Oliver North, but even going for his scalp won't keep the information, outrage and disgust coming wave upon wave now. Talking of waves, if you want to avoid a painful wipeout, the knowledgeable surfer knows when it's best to bail – a surfing term meaning jumping in the water before you lose your balance. Let's hope the PM remembers in time, that to ride the next wave, bailing is better than heading for a wipeout.

No time for time-wasters

The clock is ticking, choose wisely what to do with your precious time

There are two great dangers for small third-sector organisations at the moment: the first is lack of money and the second is time-wasting. I don't mean that folk are sitting around playing Fruit Ninja and catching up on their on-line shopping, in fact I have never seen the sector work so hard.

Will Welfare to Work?

Getty Images

Today is Day 1 of the Welfare to Work Programme. This is the Government's strategy to halve long-term unemployment and as far as I can judge from the coverage, as launches go, it's on track.

Putting out the bunting

Patriotic planting

To celebrate the royal wedding, I have put together some red, white and blue tubs and organised the mobile parts of my garden into shades of red to compliment my established blue Agapanthus and white rose bedding around the patio.

On sticking together to work out which way to go

Adversity can bring out the best in people and having spent today in Birmingham with my fellow directors of England's social enterprise regions, I am glad to say some of the best people are in social enterprise. Having not found a good time to mention this, I was keeping quiet about my growing feeling that social enterprise has started to sing a little off key.

Panda says LOVE

We all love a panda



Working with creative people can be a gamble but when you can pull it off, it really does work. To complete our award-winning project "Winning with Social Enterprise" with the support of the OCS - a piece of work designed to promote social enterprise in the context of the 2012 Games - we have produced a video to give voice to the idea that social enterprise and, in particular, its ability to engage and inspire young people, has intrinsic value for the Games.

R.I.P. Nibbles (bloody foxes)

Katie and her beloved Nibbles R.I.P.

Can someone tell me why we are not allowed to shoot bloody foxes when they enter our gardens to maim and kill?

Can social impact really be measured? Really?

Can social impact really be measured?

I've been thinking about Rob Edwards' comment on my last blog and have decided it deserves a blog of its own. In his response Rob, reflecting on Magic Breakfast's call for investment of £13 million in a social impact bond that offers £28 million in savings from the additional Government expenditure needed to address the social problems of children too hungry to learn, Rob said, "This is the whole problem with social enterprise. The returns can be somewhat ephemeral, and an awful lot of time and money goes into setting up organisations rather than actually delivering services that people want."


Is this the case? Is measuring social impact ephemeral and therefore too academic to bring into a discussion about investment? Can social enterprises miss the point and make an offer that is not really what people want?


Clearly some people think so and if we are to make any real progress, we have to address these criticisms, and not just by refuting them from the vantage point of the moral high ground, but by generating the data that proves our services are needed and our social return has been critically assessed and properly measured.  


Just after the election I had a meeting with the man put in charge of regeneration in a major Government department, he asked me, "How do we create regeneration and cut spending?"

I advised introducing social impact assessment across the whole department and insisting that the impact of cuts were assessed for their wider social impact and concomitant cost before decisions are made about what stays and what goes. Needless to say he didn't, or couldn't, follow my advice, but I am sticking to my guns, because despite a slow start, members of the Government namely, Nick, Hurd, Francis Maude, Ken Clarke, George Osborne and the Prime Minister himself have shown growing enthusiasm for social impact bonds making this an ideal time to take out the tape measure.


I do appreciate this is not easy. When I started looking into impact measurement I too was baffled and because I found it tough, I made sure SEL had the brains to work it out with people on the team like Ali Somers who devised the first social value balance score card and went on to head up the social impact unit at Goldsmiths. Also, Sabina Khan came to us from the impact assessment team in Lehman Brothers in New York and has since founded the world's leading Social Enterprise Journal, developed  SEL's SIMPLE programme – our how-to guide to assessing which tool is right for you – and launched our fantastically popular Introduction to social impact assessment training. Because SEL has been developing tools with real social enterprises working on the ground, often in the most difficult circumstances, we have come up with solutions that work for busy social entrepreneurs not just academic exercises. The goal has been to move social enterprise from being characterised as warm, fuzzy charity to one where hard evidence shows how it really works.


As times get tougher, the clamour for evidence will get louder. Occupying the moral high ground with its stunning views no longer guarantees any of us a future. Being able to produce data about the exact cost of your product or service and measure its impact will give you future contracts, boost your bottom line and ensure you offer services that, as Rob recommends, "people want". I know because we have done it at SEL and it really, really works, honest Rob.

Are the kids alright?

Magic Breakfast feeds kids too hungry to learn

I have just had a chat with  SEL board member, Carmel McConnell from Magic Breakfast, who has told me what they are going to do to address the fact that only 1 in 100 children in receipt of free school meals ends up going to university

Happy Mother's Day David Willetts!

I have always been acutely aware of how political motherhood is. As a feminist with a strong maternal urge, my conflicting feelings about motherhood are

Public sector spin-outs need heroic leaders

Allison Ogden-Newton says public sector spin-outs will need heroic leaders to succeed

As seen in the Guardian's Public Leaders Network on Thursday:

If you're a public sector worker, the government thinks you should consider setting up a social enterprise to deliver public services, and I do too. 

Snogging Ed Miliband

Today was a fun one.

Congratulations to a Good Friend!

Next week we say goodbye to our good friend Joyce Francis. It's hard to talk about retirement without it sounding as if a person has died, but certainly not so in this case, as Joyce is not only retiring to spend more time in her native land of Barbados (lucky thing) but she is also getting married in April to her partner, Oliver Griffith!

I don't usually write about SEL staff individually as social enterprise is such a team sport, but Joyce is different. She has worked in our movement for over 25 years and was SEL's very first employee. She interviewed me for my job and my predecessor Jonathan Bland for his, and it is hard to imagine life without her.

As Ye Sow, so shall ye reap

Todays budget was billed by Chancellor, George Osborne as the blueprint for "Start up Britain".

This town is commin like a ghost town

I have just read Suzanne Moore's piece in this morning's Guardian "The scale of youth unemployment scares me. It's like before" and could not agree more.

Social Enterprise Magazine reports hope for Future Jobs Fund

Today's Social Enterprise Magazine reported hope that the Government will look again at Future Jobs Fund in their piece 'Government promises to look again at axed £1billion jobs fund'. As SEL's Michelle Richmond said in the piece, this initiative worked, enabling SEL to place over 500 young people into jobs with employers continuing to contact us every day with more job offers. We know if the Government does introduce Future Jobs Fund 2,  we will be able to hit the ground running and with today's employment figures of a 2.53 million people unemployed, the highest level for 17 years and an all time record of 1 in 5 young people out of work, something has to be done, and quickly. 

What Michelle did not tell you is that of those 500 young people, 72% have been retained in their jobs and so have become social entrepreneurs of the future, as we hoped they would. That demonstrates the ability of social enterprise to inspire and employ, two vital commodities in this recessionary economy.

Taking the highroad to the long drop

Slater Bridge, Little Langdale

It was too, too funny. They said it was ‘basic’ but for that read ‘time warp.’ I speak of our recent week of life in the 19^th century.

Down at the allotment its all Fartichokes!

Its all excitement down on the allotment as today is our first bonfire of the year! Perfect weather conditions and a mountain of weeds and cleared vegetation dried out over the winter mean today’s the day. I’ve put 12 year old Sam and his mate Freddie in charge, foolish you may think, but my view with children and danger is you need to teach them to manage it rather than avoid it. Fingers crossed. Sam has done a great job in getting things going and keeping it stoked and I have really enjoyed the ‘man talk’. High points have been comparing themselves with their forks to the soldiers of Troy and a row over who made the Bayeux tapestry, monks or women!?

Meanwhile 10 year old Katie cleared out the pond, it all looks quite healthy but sad to say no frogspawn, despite having frogs last year.

I got on with the satisfying task of putting my onions in. The couple of hundred sets I bought cost me just over a pound from our co-operatively run allotment trading shed, which is good value which ever way you look at it. I love the neat rows you can make with them, and was pleased with my soil in the onion bed, not quite Christmas pudding consistency as they often report from the Gardeners’ World garden, but pretty close.

I’m not sure if the hard frost we had this week has effected the parsnip and salad seeds I put in last week. I’ll know soon if they are a no show.

I’ve removed the plastic housing over my rhubarb as forcing it this year seems to have really slowed down its growth, and with rhubarb at a £1 a stem in Waitrose I need quantity. We really loved my rhubarb and ginger jam last year and to celebrate my first stalks, I am making a rhubarb tart for Sunday lunch. See above, its a Waitrose recipe. 



I dug up a quantity of Jerusalem Artichokes and have made some delicious soup.  I used the Abel and Cole recipe, although I par boiled them first, a top tip from the vegetable Queen Jane Grigson, to mitigate their powers of wind inducement, hence the epithet, Fartichokes! Their unique nutty flavor are certainly worth the risk, perfect with a little crème fraiche. 

A quick postscript to apologise for any confusion over the changes I am making to my blog. I am trying to sort things out but some of the gadgets might take time to become dynamic as I am learning on the job, please bare with me.

Social enterprise and the 2012 Olympic legacy for London: Guardian Professional, Thursday 10 March 2011 10.49

The games will provide a fantastic opportunity for economic recovery and social enterprise should be a part of the process. Photograph: David Levene

London's vision for the legacy of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games was always ambitious – regenerating neighbourhoods and providing opportunities for communities on a scale greater than anything envisioned or achieved by a previous host city.