Latest thinking

Foreign workers, miserable children and the state we're in

Blog

02 Feb 2009

Matthew Taylor

The Children's Society assault on modernity, and public sympathy for the idea behind the Lindsey and Sellafield protests that we put 'our own' workers ahead of the principles of free market capitalism, show that we are moving into a period of social and cultural transition.  Voices that had been considered unrealistic or extreme will be given a hearing.

Civic goods and civic good

Blog

30 Jan 2009

In her New Statesman preview of the coming Tate Modern exhibition Rodchenko and Popova, Rachel Aspen recounts how the October Revolution brought art into everyday life in complete and programmatic way which is bracing for a designer to imagine today: “Their work was no longer to be confined to the elite realm of galleries and studios. The entire fabric of everyday existence – from mass transportation and housing projects to teacups and book jackets – was to be redesigned to serve a new vision of Russian life”.

Has President Obama already made black Americans 'more intelligent'?

Blog

30 Jan 2009

Matthew Taylor

I am spending the day at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Imaging Neuroscience.  The all day seminar will explore what implications the insights of neuroscience and the newly emerging discipline of neuro-economics will have for policy.  (By the way, there was a discussion of neuro-economics on the Today Programme this morning.)

A Mekon's response

Blog

29 Jan 2009

Matthew Taylor

Matthew TaylorI don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted – my old friend, John Prescott, has launched an attack on me on his website which has been picked up in several other places.

A truly radical approach to civil service reform

Blog

29 Jan 2009

Matthew Taylor

I spent an hour or so yesterday at the think tank Reform discussing a draft paper on civil service reform. The paper is a perfectly decent canter over the usual terrain. The argument is that the civil service is not fit for purpose, something that has been exposed by various policy and commissioning disasters but also by the dissatisfaction of ministers I and the many flaws exposed by the Cabinet Office capability reviews.

The Obama Future: in the light of the past

Video

28 Jan 2009

David Reynolds is an author and historian.

Can 2012 be an inclusive Olympics - or will they be scuppered by political inertia and squabbling?

Blog

28 Jan 2009

Matthew Taylor

Can 2012 be an inclusive Olympics, or will political inertia and squabbling mean we renege on the pledge we made when we won the bid?

Reporting back on the Teachers' TV debate

Blog

27 Jan 2009

Matthew Taylor

I said I would report back on the Teachers’ TV debate last night. The gig was worth it even if only to see the magnificent Capital City Academy building and facilities in Willesden. Call me a liberal old softie, but I find it inspiring to see wonderful facilities like this serving a diverse working class community.

Just two more posts left in my series: 'cultural theory for dummies'

Blog

27 Jan 2009

Matthew Taylor

Last week I described fourteen types of sub-optimal solutions, each excluding one or more of CT’s four ways of seeing the world (egalitarian, hierarchical, individualist and fatalist). The best circumstance for what cultural theorists call ‘clumsy solutions’ is not just when each is in play (in a sense, they are all always be in play at some level) but when the exponents of each view are able to engage creatively with the others. This helps to address one often made criticism of CT’s paradigms: that within each way of viewing the world there are both reasonable and unreasonable ways of thinking and behaving.