Both Thom Brooks and Clive Barnett comment on the story that the Arts and Humanities Research Council has been pressured into devoting funds to research Cameron and Willetts’s idea of the ‘Big Society’.

While it might be good to have some substance behind what appears to be a nebulous political idea, this is work for party apparatchiks, rather than university researchers. Let’s hope, as Clive suggests, that this call can be diverted and used to fund work on more progressive understandings of this idea. The events in London at the weekend demonstrate that Cameron does not have everyone with him, and that it may quickly get out of control.