On a slightly different note to what I  normally write about…

I had heard about this but yesterday went to see it. The Living Wall in the new Anthropolgie store on Regent Street is amazing. The shop itself is full of slightly odd things, but they have an amazing three-storey high wall of plants growing inside.

These photos don’t really do it justice – it is enormous! Apparently there are fourteen different types of plant in it.

I suppose it’s really not that different to having a load of pot plants, but it’s a great way to decorate and be green. It’s fed with rainwater from the roof, so is completely self-sustaining.

I’m thinking of trying the same thing one day at home. I suspect it’s more complicated than just attaching some pots to a wall. But a study from NASA has found that indoor plants can improve your air quality significantly. So what isn’t to like about a decorative feature that also improves your environment?

In 2006, an email with a very limited distribution list was leaked from inside CCHQ. It wasn’t a very important email and didn’t let out any big secrets so it wasn’t really the end of the world. But quite interesting nonetheless…

At the time, the BBC was showing  ’The Amazing Mrs Pritchard‘ which was about a complete political novice who had somehow ended up as Prime Minister (I seem to remember there was a great degree of disgust at the political classes… sound familiar?!), and she was a sort of common sense, get on with it, localist Prime Minister, who was worn down in office by great disillusionment and despair.

The email which was leaked went something like: ‘We’re looking for ideas to show how individuals, communities, and international actors can take different types of similar actions to make a contribution to the fight against climate change. For example, on Mrs Pritchard last night, she banned all cars for a day.’

I can’t quite remember what we ended up doing for this particular idea – I think it developed into the Climate Change Bill Now campaign (for which I still have a campaign tshirt).  But the important thing was this: there are actions which can be taken in varying degrees of commitment by anyone, no matter how small they are.

I was reminded of this by the huffing and puffing over the prospect of no cars being allowed into London in order to meet emissions regulations – reading about it, there wouldn’t be many days, and actually when I lived in Paris it was really nice not having cars everywhere on Sundays (lots of streets are closed to traffic).  Obviously there would need to be exemptions for some, and clearly it would mean that people would need to plan their time carefully to minimise their need to take the car. But I like the fact that Boris seems keen to investigate the idea.

I know that the person whose email was leaked was absolutely incensed by it (lack of trust, zero public interest, someone trying to make a name for themselves by having ‘insider’ information). But maybe it was a good thing after all – the very fact that people are now talking about the idea as a possibility shows that it wasn’t so crazy after all.

This year’s British American Project (BAP) conference in Edinburgh focused on Sustainability and Development. At a time when the world is facing a crisis in terms of global warming and depleting natural resources, this conference could not have come at a better time. As some of the leaders of tomorrow it is imperative that we instigate debate and pool ideas as to what we as individuals and collectively should and could be doing.

I organised a panel debate for this year’s conference, simply because I didn’t want the conference theme to be solely about the planet (climate change and the green agenda). In my world of Social Firms it is also about people. I’m forever talking about the need to create sustainable, paid jobs for people who are too far removed from the open labour market to compete in the mainstream. These are mainly people with mental health problems, learning disabilities, other disabilities, ex-offenders (90% of whom have one mental health problem and 70% apparently have two), homeless people and ex-drug and substance abusers.

Alan Baker & Paul Miller, Brighter Future Workshop

Mental illness is the common denominator within the latter groups. Add this to their situation and they don’t stand a hope in hell of getting a job with the average employer (according to a recent survey, 60% of employers admitted they wouldn’t consider employing someone who’d had a mental health problem²). The jobs aren’t there for individuals facing such significant barriers to employment – especially now other job seekers have risen in numbers and ability. It is surely wrong to consign more than a million people who grapple with these disadvantages on a daily basis – yet who want to work – to the scrapheap of unemployment for the rest of their lives. It is simply not a sustainable route forward.

This is where the ‘development’ bit comes in – Social Firms are market-led businesses that compete in the open market but which are set up specifically to create paid, sustainable employment for people with severe disadvantages. These are businesses which re-invest their profits back into achieving their social mission of creating jobs for people who would otherwise struggle to get work. A quarter of the workforce needs to be employed from this group if they are going to be regarded as a Social Firm. We have printers, website design companies, guest houses, travel agencies, recycling companies, contract gardeners and caterers….market opportunities are seized for social good.

It works too! We’ve grown the number of Social Firms from 5 in 1996 to more than 170 today and all without any central Government intervention. My message is: imagine what more we could do to help our economy save money and sustain our communities if we managed to co-ordinate some support from Government in order to grow the number of Social Firm businesses.

For someone to be really empowered economically and socially they need to have a paid job. There’s no point creating short term, unsustainable jobs to help people with multiple disadvantages move into employment; the groups we’re talking about need ongoing support to enable them to maximise their own potential within the workplace. But one thing’s clear – this support is still cheaper than that person being unemployed for the rest of their lives. The tangible benefits that this has for both the individual and society far outweigh the investment in this model as a sustainable option.

The guesthouse in Edinburgh, for example, alone saves the NHS approximately £21k per year for every person with a mental health problem that they employ within the business. Collectively, all the Social Firms and emerging Social Firms in the UK save the Government approximately £30m in benefits alone because of who they create employment for. Let’s remember that otherwise, these individuals are more likely to be unemployed than in an open labour market job because of the complexity of their support needs.

Nathan Dobie & Mick Parker, CREATE Liverpool

Social Firms are one type of social enterprise and the simplest definition for social enterprise is ‘any business that trades for a social and/or environmental purpose’. They reinvest their profits back into meeting this purpose and whilst the specific purpose of Social Firms is to create paid jobs for severely disadvantaged people, other types of social enterprises have a very broad variety of missions. So the Eden Project is a social enterprise, for example, as is Café Direct and Coin Street Community Builders on London’s South Bank…all with their own particular mission. What links them, however, is a drive to tackle social or environmental issues through enterprise and beyond a doubt this has got to be the most sustainable route to improving the world in which we all live.

I am passionate about the value of social enterprise (and of course Social Firms in particular) to this country and indeed the world. It was a privilege to be able to bring this passion to the BAP conference in Edinburgh via my panellists talking about the question of sustainability and development – it certainly sparked debate throughout the few days that we were all together.

So find out more about social enterprise – you can’t help but be inspired. Here are just some websites to whet your appetite and help your learning – or you could just pick up the phone and talk to me!

Social Enterprise Coalition: www.socialenterprise.org.uk

Social Firms UK: www.socialfirmsuk.co.uk

National Visit Programme: www.visitsocialenterprise.co.uk

Posted by Administrator on behalf of Sally Reynolds, CEO, Social Firms UK. If you would like to talk to Sally, she is happy for us to share her phone number so please email us at info @ platform10.org

I fundamentally disagree with the premise behind this post on CentreRight.  Actually it’s so short I’ll just reproduce it:

… I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you”: Nietzsche

Googling for ‘honest politician’ throws up some funny answers. Uncyclopedia has a great page, stating, “This article is about the mythical creature”. While I don’t think it’s quite that bad, there are many many examples of politicians failing to be honest with voters.

Alistair Darling’s ’shock’ admission last week that Air Passenger Duty is only a revenue-raising instrument, not a green behaviour-changing one, is surprising only because it is an honest statement from this government about their priorities.

APD was introduced by the Conservatives in 1993 (see – we’ve always been green…) and has been increased sporadically ever since.

I think there’s an argument to be had over whether the rate is set at a suitable level to change behaviour. But that’s not the issue here – the issue is that, as usual, our government is pretending to take the moral high ground and, as usual, failing.

If we want to change the way people live their lives, we need to understand their motivations. If we want to encourage green growth, green behaviour and green living, we need to make sure that the full cost of pollution is paid by the polluter. I’ve argued before (several times) about why the only way that we can realistically change behaviour in sufficient volume is to change the way we charge for pollution.

At the moment, I think we have a huge opportunity to radically alter the way our tax system works. There need to be enormous changes to the amount we raise, the way we spend it, and how we account to the people we raise it from for it. I know this is unlikely to happen but I think that George Osborne’s emergency budget if a Conservative government is elected next year could completely shift the balance from the good (ie jobs, employment, clean technologies) to the bad (pollution, over-consumption, waste).

But the only way that that change would be accepted is if politicians are honest about what they are trying to do. Social engineering by stealth is wrong, and will backfire – either because the policy itself implodes or because the politicians concerned are later found to have misled voters. Whether or not you believe what Andrew Neather wrote about the government’s immigration policies, you can see how his revelations play into the loss of trust in governments (of all colours).

So this is – once again – a call for politicians to be honest with voters. We’re not stupid; we all make choices for ourselves in almost every area of our lives without needing the state to make the choice for us. Part of making choices is having access to clear and unbiased information, and to honest assessments of possible outcomes. Politicians should be honest with us about what they’re trying to achieve – part of the reason I am so supportive of the way that the Conservatives’ implementation plans are coming along is that so much of their thinking focuses on what the desired outcome is.

Politicians should have the courage of their convictions – if, for example, they really believe that they deserve a payrise, or if they really want us to have no say at all in how our children are educated, or if they really think that the state should record everyone’s DNA to combat crime, let them make the argument, and let us vote on it.

I am as loathe as the next person to pay more for my holidays. But if that’s what it takes – and if in return I am rewarded with, for example,  a cleaner environment, better, quieter planes overhead and even incentives to buy locally produced food the rest of the year – and if that’s what I’ve voted for, that’s fine by me.