Welcome to this weeks round-up. Lest anyone think I’m resting on my laurels with this feature, I’m currently reviewing the feeds I use and building a definitive links page for my own blog with all the think-tanks I can identify.

I’ve also been in direct contact with a few people from some of the leading ones to see how I can better support them in terms of publicising their output. As before please flag in the comments anything worthy you think I might have missed…

Left \ Liberal Think Tanks

• Two things worth flagging from the IPPR this week. The first is the latest contribution to their ‘Commission on National Security in the 21st Century’, chaired by Paddy Ashdown and George Robertson. Misha Glenny discusses his most recent book – McMafia: Crime Without Frontiers – explains why ‘unprecedented levels of consumer demand for drugs, trafficked women, illegal labour and arms challenge conventional policing methods and have roots that lie in global poverty and the ever widening divisions between rich and poor’.
• The other interesting piece from the IPPR is Thursday’s Child – the report Civitas take issue with above. Sonia Sodha and Julia Margo investigate the educational issues which still face children from disadvantaged backgrounds and what more schools can do to support addressing these.
• The Kings Fund have a good report addressing the health issue at the moment – Polyclinics. ‘Under One Roof’ asks will they deliver and identifies and explores both opportunities and risks in relation to quality of care, accessibility of services and cost.
• At Compass Steve McCabe defends his handling of Labour’s controversial Crewe and Nantwich by-election campaign and Howard Reed talks about the need to rebalance the tax system – “The eventual goal of the project is to design a package of tax reforms which can make the tax system more progressive overall, while at the same time enabling the UK to pursue environmental goals more effectively”
• The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) says it’s time for Europe to do more to help in Iraq and warns of the danger that outgoing Bush administration won’t pursue this opportunity to the full – “To avoid wasting the current opportunity, the presidential candidates should agree to set up an entirely independent team to canvass European views and share ideas for what do next in Iraq. It should be charged to report this winter, once the elections are done.”

Right \ Libertarian Think Tanks

• Have to open this week’s roundup with the Adam Smith Institute since Monday 2 June was this year’s Tax Freedom Day. The ASI have been publicising ‘TFD’ for 17 years and have figures going back to the early 60’s. They also have some wonderfully provocative statistics such as: “If public spending had only grown in line with inflation since 1997, we could have abolished income tax, corporation tax, capital gains tax and inheritance tax, leaving the taxpayer £200 billion better off.”
• The Centre for Policy Studies had a seminar on Thursday night entitled “Who do they think we are? Privacy, the state and the corporation” (listen here). On their blog Sam flags one of the most important points to arise from the discussion – “this is not a debate about technophiles versus luddites. Technological development is a good thing for society. It is clear, though, that the real innovation is not going to be about collecting more and more personal data, storing it in ever-larger central databases, and serving up supposedly ‘personalised’ services from Whitehall. It will be about using technology to minimise the amount of data held centrally and handing power and responsibility to the individual.”
• The Henry Jackson Society calls for ‘democratic governments, charities and other NGOs should push for education reform in Palestine as a pre-requisite to achieving a two state solution’. HJS reckons the indoctrination of children into an extremist mindset at a young age creates a block on negotiating our way out of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
• On the Civitas blog Anastasia de Waal takes issue with the IPPR’s ‘Thursday’s Child’ report. More details on the report below but in Anastasia’s view “The striking thing about [it] is the way in which it seeks to institutionalise home-life disadvantage by organising schooling around it. Quite the reverse of the New Labour mantra of not accepting disadvantage as a reason for underachievement. Whilst it is vital to devise strategies which alleviate disadvantage in the short term, it seems alarmingly defeatist to incorporate ‘damage control’ into long-term planning, whilst failing to address the causes of damage.”
• Reform this week picks on up the importance of mathematics and has research suggesting ” since the late 1970s public examinations for 16-year-olds have become shallower, easier and less demanding. The unintended consequence has been demotivation of teachers, less enjoyment on the part of students and the distancing of employers and universities from education policy” and as far as reform are concerned a lost generation of mathematicians. Read the full report here.