The 'Little Heresies' seminars - this is the second published
collection of the talks given at them - provide an important
public platform to debate the future of public services.


Now more than ever it seems vital to challenge the 'received
wisdom', 'zombie thinking' and old, tired and outdated habits
and practices that continue to infest important aspects of our
public services. For, as the authors demonstrate, what appear to
be well-intentioned policies not only create perverse incentives
but frequently cause lasting damage to the social fabric.


Private sector management methods, underpinned by
neoliberal thinking, were introduced into UK public services by
Margaret Thatcher. Many other countries have adopted the same
approach. And successive governments continue to be duped
into believing, against plenty of evidence to the contrary, that
New Public Management, as it is now called, works. It doesn't.


In this second publication from the Little Heresies series,
nine heretics, all leading thinkers and practitioners in their
professional fields, explain the disastrous effects of wrong
thinking and ineffective practice in areas like standardisation,
professionalisation and measurement in public services, socalled
evidence-based policy-making, money creation and,
looking more widely, in the troubled waters of philanthropy and
the third/charitable sector.