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In an interesting article for the Forest and Wye Review, environmentalist  Jonathan Porritt calls for an alternative approach to economic development, a Plan B for the Forest of Dean:

“We know that in the Forest of Dean and Cinderford the need for economic development is critical and local people who stand up and argue passionately for economic development in their community have every right to do so.

Writing for Huffington Post on Where Our Moral Compass Meets the Bottom Line, Unilever CEO Paul Polman said this about the need for business to be contributing to society:

"When people talk about new forms of capitalism, this is what I have in mind: companies that show, in all transparency, that they are contributing to society, now and for many generations to come. Not taking from it.

Well,  in so many words.  What she actually said was this :

"Think it's a good time to have a mass 'friends' on Facebook clear out. I don't see the point in having so called friends whom you never hear from or don't give you support on things that actually matter:D"

Nestle, the world's largest food company, has become the first major manufacturer to say it will pay the living wage to all its staff.

The firm already pays the living wage to its 8,000 employees but Nestle says it will now extend this to its 800 contractors by the end of 2017.

In 2003, it was a fast for economic rights that drew me into the world of social enterprise. It started with an invitation for the homeless activist to join me in the UK to create a business for social benefit.

A whopping $1.5bn investor commitment to ventures creating social value has been announced in the US. It coincides with a string of recent announcements in the UK. But as a fraction of the money flowing around the globe, the space for impact investment is still tiny.

I agree with the point above made by Pioneers Post:

The Crisis in Ukraine

“They hang the man and flog the woman, Who steals the goose from off the common, Yet let the greater villain loose, That steals the common from the goose.”

It would be exaggeration to say that panic spread in our community on hearing the news that a local peasant group were being evicted from a nearby farm. It was nevertheless seen as a threat to local open spaces.

As it turned out the "eviction" was unsuccessful. having been instigated by a local property developer on a farm which has no owner. 

It begins with the matter of social enterprise and the seemingly endless argument about definition.

Four years ago in 2010, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley declared that social enterprise was initerpreted too narrowly. At the time I asked what others defined as social business. For Muhammad Yunus it's this: 

In an amusing presentation to the Commonwealth Club, professor Geoffrey Nunberg answers questions about his book - "The Ascent of the A-Word : Assholism the first sixty years" 

He relates an anecdote about a man in the Hertz car rental office in Manhattan following the WTC attack on 9/11 who asks which is the line for Gold Card customers. It's a "me first" situation where less vulgar expressions just don't cover it.

if there's one thing I've learned in the transition from conventional business to social enterprise it's this. Be prepared to be misunderstood and even maligned for your efforts. We'd be taken for communists in Russia and as fraudsters in Ukraine for being "a business masquerading as a charity".

For the purpose of understanding, we thought , it was essential to have a business plan. So that's how we started in all cases.