Right royal hypocrisy

Poor old Prince William. He obviously cares about the conservation of wildlife but his views have been shaped by his own uniquely privileged, hunting-tradition background and this makes him vulnerable to accusations of hypocrisy. His latest well-intentioned but mistaken intervention was to suggest that trophy hunting of animals could be condoned in certain circumstances: “when
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Political scheming

A short post this time – just to flag up a very good article from Owen Jones in The Guardian about the  various ways that the Tories have successfully manipulated the truth in various issues over recent years. My favourite quote from the article is below: “Illusions are what the Tories excel at. They back Labour’s spending – down
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Where’s the fight?

The General Election result in May 2015 was a shock for anyone of a vaguely progressive bent.  It was more than just a shock though – it brought about a sense of profound dread as to what this group of Conservatives would do to our country and society once they had disentangled themselves from the
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Where next for progressive politics?

I’ve just caught up with a very interesting post by Neal Lawson on OpenDemocracy today. The article asks how the Labour Party should  move forward in the light of it’s devastating defeat in the 2015 General Election – not simply as a votewinning machine but as a true political force that can deliver a progressive,
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Change is hard

Change can be difficult to achieve.  Change on a global scale can be very difficult to achieve – perhaps even impossible.  And, despite what we may want to think as campaigners, we may not be in control of all the levers that need to be pulled to achieve the change we want – in fact,
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Listen, don’t change

I was at the Compass Change:How? conference today and was struck by a few things in a discussion we had about ‘why it’s so hard getting people to change’.  By this it meant getting members of the public to take action for a more progressive, sustainable (etc.) world. The first thing that struck me was
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No means no

At ChangeStar, we’ve recently been doing a bit of ‘secret shopping’ with some charities – making donations to them and seeing how they communicate with us as a result.  It’s a real eye-opener and shows that lots of organisations have work to do on their communication plans – one charity has already sent us 3
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The moral footballer

A report in The Guardian today notes that a Newcastle United footballer has got into hot water with his club for refusing to wear the club shirt bearing the name of the club sponsor Wonga. He’s apparently “refusing to promote the money-lending company on religious grounds and has offered to wear an unbranded shirt or
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