Society daily: 09.09.10

Charity collection tin — Charities are facing cuts which will have a huge impact. Photograph: Image Source/Rex Features

Follow Society Guardian on Twitter

Follow Patrick Butler on Twitter

Today's top Society stories

Government climbdown over detention of immigrant children

Osborne's cuts will hit the north hardest

"Superhead" defends academy plans

Failed social housing firm in "goodwill" plea to councils

Cath Elliott: could Norwich be the first green-run council?

Datablog: how are charities being affected by the cuts?

Seamus Milne: cuts will see unions return to the centre of public life

All today's Society Guardian stories

Other news

• The Daily Mail reports unamed "Whitehall sources" to support a story which claims the Coalition plans a "bonfire of the quangocrats," with the jobs of four agency bosses appointed under the previous government under threat

• Islington and Camden councils in London are proposing to share a chief executive. If the plan goes ahead they will be the first metropolitan councils to take this step (see also this explanatory blog by Camden councillor Theo Blackwell).

• The murder of two girls by their mother in 2007 could not have been prevented by social workers, according to a Cambridgeshire serious case review, reports Community Care.

On my radar ...

• A report which reveals that NHS trusts spend £700 a year on buying porn magazines and videos for their fertility clinics ...

• This extraordinary story of a Green party councillor in Brighton who was reported to the local government standards board for posting clips of publicly-available footage of himself making speeches at council meetings on YouTube (thanks @GrantShapps)

• This, er, idiosyncratic Tweet from newbie Tweeter @natwei - the man nominally in charge of the Big society - to his rapidly growing band of followers...

"Am picking my first 5 people to follow on twitter this wkend. Want to follow people who most get/articulate/live Big Society. Any recs?"

• Stephen Bubb's recent blog post on the gap between big society romanticism and brute reality:

"It is probably to early to send flowers to the funeral of this idea. But the patient is ailing."

• Community Care magazine's survey of children's social workers, which finds that one in six has over 40 cases involving at risk youngsters on the go at any one time

• Blogger Rich Watts's perceptive take on local government and Big society:

"The narrative and intent of the Big Society means that those who can support things happening in their local area (i.e. local government) (a) may not sufficiently understand the agenda to be able to "invest" in it, and (b) can take refuge that they're not supposed to have been responsible for it anyway."

• "Wonderful service, petrifying time". Fascinating and valuable feedback on the Patient Opinion site from a patient who had just experienced an NHS psychiatric ward for the first time

• Inequality and the web: how open data may make the rich richer and the poor poorer (thanks @karlwilding)

• Dominic Campbell on the "politics of buying stuff" (or "procurement", if you work in the public sector)

"In many ways the government's procurement process encapsulates everything that must change in the age of New Politics. Slow, burdensome, anti-innovative and risk averse, it rewards anyone who can parrot the language of the procurer. It rarely takes account of the wider policy objectives that underlie the whole exercise. It scores against lateral thinkers (often smaller, creative suppliers)."

• Allison Ogden-Newton on why persuading public sector staff to float the services they provide into a employee-run social enterprise should be regarded as "in-sourcing," not "outsourcing"

• The Taxpayer's Alliance, which surpasses its own high standards of humourlessness by criticising West Midlands police for setting up a Twitter page for Smithy, their CSI sniffer dog (@WMPcsidogsmith). Smithy subsequently Tweeted:

"Certain papers won't get me in the doghouse, Twitter is free and is an encouraged & accepted way to communicate with the public I serve....."

(thanks @sarahcordey

Events

Driving efficiencies in public sector ICT, 30 September, London: a one-day conference for senior IT professionals to re-examine the way they work, cut costs and deliver vital efficiency savings.

Public sector online, 4 October, London: a one-day conference examining how public sector professionals can engage with their audience to deliver services more effectively and strategically online.