Emma Taggart Consulting

Last month I attended the excellent People Power conference organised by SMK (the Sheila McKechnie Foundation) in association with the Good Agency. Throughout the day I was struck by a recurring theme: what is the appropriate balance for charities to strike between working for or on behalf of the people they represent, as opposed to working . . . → Read More: Do charities need an injection of people power?

Today the Daily Mail and the Sun claimed their respective campaigns against ‘secret trials’ and the ‘pasty tax’ forced Government to abandon both policies. Can newspapers really exert that much influence over policymaking?

Although I don’t doubt politicians pay attention to what’s in the popular press, I don’t believe securing a policy u-turn is as simple as . . . → Read More: Pasty tax and secret trials: was it really the Mail and the Sun ‘wot won it’?

When the UK Parliament started its summer recess recently, campaigners breathed a collective sigh of relief and dared to hope for a few quiet weeks in which to progress neglected projects, catch up on reading or go on holiday.

And then they remembered the political party conference season is only weeks away.

Tempting as it is to disappear . . . → Read More: How to Make the Most of Party Conferences

Campaigners in the business of influencing public services will soon find the world turned upside down. One of the defining features of the Coalition– its intention to shift power from central government to local government and communities – is prompting big changes. Campaigners need to understand those changes and how to respond to them. Tried and . . . → Read More: Go Local or Risk Losing Influence

A visit to David Cameron’s constituency got me thinking about the Big Society. Residents had set up a stall on the village green to give away apples, harvested from local gardens, which would otherwise go to waste. It struck me that this type of voluntarism taking place in the affluent, rural community where Cameron forms much . . . → Read More: Big Society