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The Source Editorial -
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What’s Out There? – Week Ending 13th October 2000 – Home and Abroad.
At home it seemed like a week of pause and waiting. The party conference are over and pretty well forgotten beyond the debate on cannabis which the Tories launched, possibly inadvertently, but which is now with us. Without exactly holding our breaths, we wait for the next steps in a number of familiar and on-going sagas: which bills will have to be dropped due to pressure of time in the House of Lords (will Mr Straw get his secret wish and find an excuse to drop the Freedom Of Information?), what are we likely to see in the next QueenÂ’s speech and how will it give us hints as to when the government might be thinking of the next election, what happens next in those twin disasters the Dome and the Lottery Commission, the embarrassment likely to come out of the BSE enquiry and above all where specifically is the government going to go when it comes to the pre-budget report on pensions and petrol? Elsewhere and for the longer term and in many ways more interesting there is the debate launched by the report on the future of multi-ethnic Britain, focusing round what is meant by "Britishness"; another example perhaps of a lot of clever people with some possibly good ideas finding them snarled up on one particular discussion which they hadnÂ’t thought through.
Abroad of course itÂ’s all very different. There is much forward to affect us to a lesser or greater extent, sooner or later. There is the countdown to the American presidential elections. There is the dangerously fragile position in the Middle East, with appalling risks not just locally but world wide. Also still with risk there is the position of the former Yugoslavia where whilst Milosevic may have gone, it seems possible that his successor will lead to as much difficulty for the West, though on a different and perhaps less worrying scores than he did. Incidentally, for students of the detail of public administration the study of the exact process of change over in practice and detail from the old regime to the new one will be fascinating. While Milosevic may have gone, not all of his people have.
And coming back to home and still on the question of changes in regime we have had the sad death of Donald Dewar the first minister for Scotland. This is clearly a tragedy in itself, but must also bring worries about the future of the Scottish parliament and Scottish devolution, and whether these young institutions can cope with the loss of a leader at such an early stage. No doubt they can, but a good deal of political skill is going to have to be exercised.
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This Week On The Source
The Conference season has drawn to a close and we take our final look at the happenings with Richard Sarson's 'Conservatives @ Bournemouth' with the Conservative view of e-Government and Eric Caines preview of the fight of the century between Michael Portillo and Gordon Brown in 'Reverting to Type'
Looking ahead to the new parliamentary session Sir Peter Kemp looks at the Civil Sevice 'movers and shakers' in 'Some Personalia' and Imtiaz Farookhi begins our tracking of the phlanx of new White and Green Papers with 'Modernising Local Government Finance' , after the recent publication of the Local Government Finance Green Paper.
Elsewhere Sir Peter Kemp and Anne
Roberts 'discuss' the contents of his Guardian Manifesto on women in 'Oh Dear' and Professor Trevor Kerry re-visits the then, controversial Plowden report of 1967 following the death of it's author Lady Plowden.
In the coming week we will be posting our interview with Professor Amman of CMPS and looking forward to the battle for the Speaker's chair. In addition we will soon be announcing some exciting new partnerships which we hope will enhance the content of The Source Public Management Journal.
Fianlly , we have been encouraged by the response to our new forum 'The Source Forum' (see above) and hope you will join in comment and discussion on issues facing the public sector.
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