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Looking back today on warnings made in the past about the present leads me to question why social enterprise  has failed to make a significant impact on the problem of poverty

It was in 1999 while he was in Siberia, that my late colleague and I had met online. discovering that the Ignorance and Want allegory from Dickens' Christmas Carol was a favourite passage for both of us:

How far would you go to take credit for someone else's work and deny them a voice?

When my late colleague spoke out about organised crime and abuse of disabled children for profit, he was putting his life on the line.

It’s been 10 years now since we launched our business to tackle poverty and made the assertion that Capitalism is an Insufficient Economic Model.

Back in 1996, the US President, Bill Clinton was warned that creation of money out of thin air allows wealth to accumulate in the hands of a minority and that this would increasingly lead to social unrest.  

"We can choose to not reform capitalism, leave human beings to die from deprivation – where we are now – and understand that that puts people in self-defense mode."

Transparency is crucial in Vince Cable's vision of responsible capitalism, as we learned last week  from the Good Deals conference which is loosely related to social enterprise. 

I can't disagree with that, since it has been part of our own practice. We share what we do openly. in the public domain.

In 2004, what we shared with the social enterprise community was a proposal for bottom up people-centred economic development making this key point:

The debacle over whether Nesta was compelled to fund Big Society Network is in some ways reasurring to those who weren't part of the inner circle. It makes it very clear that Nesta is a club that won't have just anyone for a member.

What might have been, given a level playing field, is difficult to overstate

As we learn this week from Liam Black, Nesta's CEO who claims Nesta wasn't coerced, wasn't actually there at the time.

It was in December last year that Geof Mulgan reflected on his disappointment since publishing 'The Locust and the Bee'    

John McArthur is refusing to work with no pay and he's conducting a one-man protest to draw attention to his status, having been sanctioned by DWP for refusing the terms and conditions offered by the Community Work Placement program.

He was working for LAMH, a social enterprise in Motherwell, who go to the trouble of declaring what a social enterprise is, on their website.

The objective of a social economy is to encourage trade with business which contributes additional social value, yet the ethics under which it often operates differs little from the profit maximising economy it aims to displace.

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, no one thinks of changing themselves"  -Leo Tolstoy

According to the Fair Trade Manifesto they were seeking candidates for the European Elections in May this year

Potentional candidates should pledge to:

"Promote a people-centred economy and people-centred businesses where people come first and economic activities support sustainable livelihoods for all."