The ‘Big Society’ debate rumbles on, sometimes even in Scotland. Here are a few contributions:

• The Official Cabinet Office website on the subject.
• The government has announced the selected partner who will deliver and train up to 5,000 Community Organisers in England. Locality – the new nationwide network of community led organisations, formed through the merger of the Development Trusts Association (DTA) and bassac – has been chosen to carry out a range of work including developing a training framework, Code of Conduct for Community Organisers, and an Institute for Community Organising. Up to five hundred senior Community Organisers will be trained and given bursaries of £20,000 for their first year, along with a further 4500 part-time and voluntary organisers who will support them.
• An interesting discussion of the implications of Labour’s nomination for a peerage of academic and activist, Maurice Glasman, one of the leading figures behind the ‘London Citizens’ Community Organisers’ movement. “Labour insiders think Glasman could provide the intellectual basis for an assault on David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’”.
• An article (from the West Highland Free Press, reproduced by Senscot) in which former MP Brian Wilson argues “ So let us be generous of spirit and try to extract the best from Mr Cameron’s crusade, rather than assume the worst.  Apart from anything else, it would do no harm to enshrine the same concept into political thinking for the future, no matter who is in power and perhaps in more favourable economic circumstances.”
• The transcript of a debate on “The future of community: the ‘Big Society’ or the ‘Good Society’” held at the House of Commons, hosted by Respublica and Progress and including Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office and Tessa Jowell, Shadow Minister
• A book from the Keystone Trust, available for free download, in which a collection of leading academics and commentators write about ‘The Big Society Challenge’