Archive for the 'Prospect affairs' Category

And the Prospect 2008 Think Tank of the Year is…

Published
by
Mary Fitzgerald
on October 7, 2008
in British politics and Prospect affairs
. 2 Comments

…RUSI. (That’s the Royal United Services Institute).

At the awards ceremony held at King’s College London last night, David Walker heaped praise on RUSI, saying: “there are other strong performers in the field of security and international affairs but this think tank combines strong focus with global reputation, deploying expertise, research and a new rigour in an impressive set of publications and policy interventions.”

They are also, as Shadow Chancellor George Osborne noted, the only think tank who genuinely “think about tanks.”

Osborne, who presented the awards, emphasised that lively think tanks are invaluable to politicians, and said that they have never been more needed than now. He recalled the depressing lack of good think tanks during the final years of the last Tory government, but noted that today, by contrast, the British could give the Americans a “good run for their money.”

The Institute for Fiscal Studies, led by Robert Chote, was the runner up; David Walker said the research institute had become a “byword for impartial, authoritative commentary, building bridges between academic and practical knowledge.”

And winner of the think tank publication of the year was “Breakthrough Britain—ending the costs of social breakdown” published by the Centre for Social Justice. The award was accepted by Iain Duncan Smith, who established the think tank in 2004. George Osborne praised his former colleague for the CSJ’s “outstanding work in seeking effective solutions to poverty in the UK.” Osborne was also quick to assure the audience that the award was not a fix.

This year’s judging panel was chaired by David Walker, former editor of Guardian Public, and included Baroness Falkner, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Communities and Local Government in the House of Lords; Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman, King’s College London; David Goodhart, Editor of Prospect; David Halpern, Director of Nexus and lecturer at Cambridge and Rohan Silva, Economic Advisor to the Shadow Chancellor.

Read David Walker’s speech in full here.

Gulen, NPR and me

Published
by
Tom Nuttall
on July 15, 2008
in Media and Prospect affairs
. 1 Comment

Earlier today I was interviewed about the Prospect global public intellectuals poll by Robert Siegel on All Things Considered on the US radio network NPR - to listen, click here and follow the link at the top.

Talking Prospect

Published
by
Tom Nuttall
on April 7, 2008
in Prospect affairs
. 1 Comment

A couple of weeks ago, a Prospect discussion dinner was held in Oxford—the first of what we hope will be a series of similar sessions around the country. The idea is for Prospect readers to get together in an informal and friendly setting to discuss issues arising from the magazine, along with anything else that might come up.

 

If you’d like to take the lead in organising a similar event, please do get in touch—even if you’re unsure about numbers or venue—and we’ll stick a note up here on the blog as well as in our email newsletter, plus the magazine if the timing is right. And we will do our best to rustle up a member of staff to join the discussion, as our publisher John Kelly did in Oxford two weeks ago (please give us as much notice as possible).

The Oxford group will be convening for a second time in just under a month:

Prospect readers are invited to join a friendly and informal dinner discussion in Oxford. The second in a series, the dinner will be hosted by Yorick Wilks. The aim is to facilitate an informal exchange of views on ideas and subjects raised in the magazine. To participate effectively it is best to have read the latest issue. All Prospect readers welcome.

 

£17.50—2 courses and a glass of wine.

7.30 pm, Friday 2 May, The Corner Club, cnr of Ship Street and Turl Street, Oxford.

http://www.thecornerclub.co.uk/

To book in advance (essential)—contact Joe Tel: 01865 261 507

 

The top ten cartoon clichés

Published
by
Susha
on February 1, 2008
in Prospect affairs
. 21 Comments

As Prospect’s cartoon editor, I have the task of sifting through the many cartoons that we receive each month, before the editor makes a final choice of the ten or so we publish in the magazine. (And we always welcome cartoon submissions—email cartoons at prospect-magazine.co.uk). It is, as you’d expect, a fun job, involving a lot of laughing, something which cannot be said about the chore of sorting through the articles that we are sent. I often find that the cartoons en masse capture the Zeitgeist, highlighting the subjects that people are thinking about the most—at the moment, it seems to be carbon emissions, obesity and Facebook.

At the same time, there are the perennial topics for cartoons—or clichés, if you prefer. But, while clichés and good writing do not mix, a hackneyed setting is no bar to a funny cartoon. In fact, the cliché often adds to the humour, with the joke lying in the updating of the familiar setting to recent events. Mostly for my own amusement, I’ve compiled a list of the top cartoon clichés, illustrated by some of the best clichéd cartoons Prospect has published over the years. (Thanks to all the cartoonists involved for letting me use their work.)

The runners-up are: 20. Confessionals. 19. Medieval sieges. 18. “Back in 5 minutes” signs. 17. Adam and Eve. 16. Cavemen. 15. Fairy tales (especially the three bears, the three little pigs and Rapunzel). 14. Business meetings. 13. Ordering in a restaurant. 12. Witch hunts. 11. Hell.

And so, without further ado, here are Prospect’s top 10 cartoon clichés.

10. The Grim Reaper
by Benita Epstein

Grim Reaper

Continue reading ‘The top ten cartoon clichés’

Think Tank of the Year Awards 2007

Published
by
David Goodhart
on October 11, 2007
in British politics and Prospect affairs
. 2 Comments

Last night was the seventh Prospect Think Tank of the Year awards ceremony. About 150 people filled the Great Hall at King’s College in the Strand, London, for the occasion. We’ve come a long way from the small room in Blackpool where the prize was first awarded in 2001—but by chance the winner was the same, the Institute for Public Policy Research—the big centre-left think tank.

ed-balls-prospect-awards9.jpgThe think tank “Oscars” try to combine a hard-headed, appraisal of the year in the tanks with a celebration of the sector—not always successfully, as many think-tankers tell us every year. The truth is that it hasn’t been a vintage year in the British think tank world—as Lisa Harker, one of the new joint directors of the IPPR, admitted when collecting her prize from Ed Balls (see left—Harker in the think tank of the year tank top [credit: David Tett]). In the absence of any groundbreaking work this year, we awarded both prizes—the main award plus the international think tank of the year award—to two previous winners, the IPPR for the main award and the Centre for European Reform for the international prize. Both were in the nature of long-service awards for consistently strong and important work.

But if the running has been made anywhere this year, it has probably been on the centre right—as David Walker, chair of the judges, said in his summation of the “year in the tanks” (read the full text here). Policy Exchange, the heavyweight rival to IPPR on the right, and last year’s winner, had another strong year in 2007.

Think tanks have seldom been an important source of “headline” political ideas—naturally enough, these usually come from politicians themselves. Think of inheritance tax (George Osborne), social housing (Jon Cruddas) or the private equity loophole (the GMB union plus the right-wing press). But their ideas and research do still matter, and sometimes catch on long after they first emerge—think of the sudden interest in citizens’ juries, a Demos idea dating from the early 1990s.

The next 18 months offer a big opportunity for the main political tanks of centre-left and centre-right. As the last few weeks have shown, it is not at all clear what the Brownite “progressive consensus” is. For years Ed Miliband, Douglas Alexander and others have been chiding the Blairites for their conservatism—but then the first major economic acts of the Brown administration are to reduce inheritance and capital gains tax. The centre-left tanks should be helping to fill the policy vacuum. Similarly, on the centre-right, the Tories now need distinctive policy detail to capitalise on their Cameron-led revival.

One area that none of the mainstream think tanks have paid much attention to is finance and the City of London. One third of all corporation tax is now paid by the financial services sector, which is forecast to become even more dominant in the next few decades. There are big long-term questions here, especially for the centre-left think tanks—is it, for example, possible to pursue social democratic political goals in a finance-dominated economy?

(Runner-up in the main section was the Liberal Democrat-connected CentreForum, and in the international section Chatham House.)

Think Tank of the Year Awards

Published
by
Tom Nuttall
on October 11, 2007
in British politics and Prospect affairs
. 0 Comments

Prospect’s annual Think Tank of the Year award ceremony was held last night, in the Great Hall of King’s College, London. The award for think tank of the year went to the IPPR, with newcomers CentreForum runner-up. The Centre for European Reform took the international think tank of the year award, beating Chatham House into second spot. More to come on First Drafts later today.

Another Shameless plug

Published
by
Susha
on September 4, 2007
in Media and Prospect affairs
. 0 Comments

I saw The Bourne Ultimatum last week. As you may have read, the Guardian newspaper plays an impressively large role in the plot in the first part of the film.

Prospect is unlikely to feature in a Hollywood blockbuster any time soon. (The producers of the James Bond film The World is Not Enough asked us to send them some copies, but nothing ever came of it. Perhaps they just wanted something to read between takes.) But earlier this year, as we mentioned before, Prospect enjoyed 15 seconds of fame on the television series Shameless, when the character Debbie Gallagher was shown reading the magazine. For those of you who missed the programme, here’s the clip [warning: some bad language]:

CAR Hills sentenced

Published
by
William Skidelsky
on August 10, 2007
in Prospect affairs and Psychology
. 3 Comments

As has been widely reported in the papers over the last few days, Prospect contributor Charles (or CAR) Hills–who wrote a column about life in Clapham for us a few years ago, and has more recently started contributing pieces from Belmarsh prison–has been sentenced to six years in prison for conspiracy to murder his mother’s lover. Friends of Charles have been shocked by the severity of the sentence–he pleaded guilty, and it was thought that his mental health problems would provide grounds for leniency–and by the (inevitably) lurid tone of much of the reporting. It is a sad moment. Charles is a gifted writer, whose life has been blighted by depression and other psychological problems. The one bright spot–for readers of Prospect at any rate–is that it is likely to lead to more of his fascinating dispatches from “the other side” appearing in the magazine. Look out for his account of life on Belmarsh’s hospital wing in the next issue.

The back end of blogs

Published
by
Tom Chatfield
on August 1, 2007
in Media, Prospect affairs and Science and technology
. 1 Comment

How did you get here? It’s easy enough for me to find out—I can just browse any one of a number of back-end blogging widgets we have installed to see, for instance, how many unique page views we’re getting each day, how many times individual pieces have been read, where people are being referred to us from, and which countries read us the most (America is top, then the UK, although I’d also like to send a shout out to our 23 intrepid Ukrainian visitors).

Most disturbing, however, is the widget that shows what Google searches have led people here. That “free magazines published in 2007″ points to us is not too surprising, but that “dog is sacred” also did is more intriguing, as is the fact that “you didn’t read my book did you Reinert” ended up at our door. I also spotted a theme that suggests we have at least a few Daily Mail readers among our fans, with “will inflation decrease the value of my house?” and “what effect will inflation have on house prices?” And I have no comment whatever to make on “stupid fucking fallible human beings” pointing to one of my posts.

As you can probably tell and may well already know, tinkering away behind a blog is an addictive activity. It’s also a kind of magical thinking—as if by watching live streams of data I am somehow helping the success of the project. The information feels useful, of course, but only when retrospectively arranged into a narrative; I feel in control of a tiny kingdom of information, but almost none of it is in fact dependent on me. This is perhaps why, as a disillusioned video-game designer recently remarked to me, the most addictive games of all are those over which people have no control.

How can Gordon Brown make peace with Charles?

Published
by
Tom Nuttall
on July 10, 2007
in Prospect affairs
. 0 Comments

Just a quick reminder that our July 2007 competition is still open. Readers who can think up a policy for the new prime minister that would help smooth the allegedly turbulent waters of his relationship with Prince Charles are urged to email in their idea, with the inducement of a mystery Prospect prize for the most imaginative.

We’re also soliciting philosophical queries and dilemmas for AC Grayling to grapple with in the next issue of the magazine. No prizes on offer here, other than the warm glow of intellectual satisfaction that will wash over you on seeing your most troubling metaphysical problems elegantly resolved in 400 words. Send your suggestions in here.