The RSA Blog

How can English football’s wilful ignorance be cured?

Blog

21 Jun 2014

Anthony Painter

We need to stop caring about the World Cup. That’s right. We have to learn to treat it as an irrelevance. Every digital and hard copy of a football song that recounts ‘x years of hurt’ needs to be deleted or incinerated. The hurt that really counts is the fact that England have pursued football as an agricultural pursuit for too many decades to count. That is where our focus should be – how does England learn to play good football?

Messy morals

Blog

29 May 2014

Anthony Painter

David Marquand wants a new public philosophy. This philosophy will be based on ethics – a morality of social justice beyond the market. He sees that we are in a ‘moral crisis’. Markets, individualism and greed have taken over. The public good has been in retreat since Margaret Thatcher came to power.

The inside story of a high stakes day at the Police Federation conference

Blog

22 May 2014

Anthony Painter

Well, yesterday didn’t go according to plan. The Independent Review, represented by Sir David Normington and myself, was due to address the Police Federation conference in Bournemouth. A big concern was that the Conference would pick and choose between the 36 recommendations of the Review’s final report and pass one or two amendments that would alter the substance of the recommendations. The script was for the Home Secretary to utter a few tough words to focus minds then the Review would have a better chance of passing intact. Sir David would do his best to persuade then we’d all keep our fingers crossed. But then the Home Secretary didn't quite follow the script. In fact, she didn't follow it at all.

To pay or not to pay

Blog

14 May 2014

Matthew Taylor

Strong and dynamic societies need a plurality of institutional forms to flourish. But that plurality is not best served by preserving those forms in aspic. They need to modernise while maintaining their most important distinguishing features.

A simple idea to end political alienation and voter mistrust.

Blog

18 Mar 2014

I ended my previous post on a downer arguing that the political system would never embrace the deep change required to reduce popular alienation from parliamentary democracy.  But since then an idea[1] has occurred to me which might at least open up a possibility of transformation.

Why we should and why we shouldn't learn Mandarin

Blog

20 Feb 2014

Anthony Painter

In the early 1990s, I began to learn Japanese. At the time, there was a great deal of talk about how Japanese was the gateway to trade with Japan. It made practical sense. I was at school in Worcester and there was a Japanese machine tool factory that had just opened near to my school and we'd had a couple of visits. This hammered the point home (with robots). Japan was the future (then the bubble popped...)

The revolutionary and the incrementalist - a modern fable

Blog

11 Feb 2014

Anthony Painter

Last night, Ed Miliband stepped on the territory of public service reform in his Hugo Young lecture. It was in fact two speeches delivered by two different voices: that of a Fabian incrementalist and a voice of radical creativity. These two voices rarely remain in harmony for long and that is the challenge Miliband now faces: the choice he will inevitably have to make if in office.

Why Buzzfeed is dumbing up

Blog

29 Oct 2013

Anthony Painter

People who write about policy and politics tend to write blogs like this. It is text heavy, takes time to read and stretches its audience. What if there was a way of communicating policy and politics without inducing a bad case of mental strain on the audience?

What on earth should we do about this mess?

Blog

10 Sep 2013

Anthony Painter

There are two ‘big ideas’ around at the moment. One is austerity and the free market. The other is Keynesianism and defence of public provision. They were the same ‘big ideas’ that were around the last time we were facing severe economic stress. And the time before that too.