Apologies to those who agree with BarbaraIQBAL but for myself, I believe
this is exactly where these types of 'information exchanges' should take
place- where everyone can see them and potentially use them. If the
messages don't interest you then simply delete them.
This is a further response to Paul Spicker's reply which I found
stimulating (sorry about the blue corner- I thought about purple and pink
but who wants to be pink!).
I think this debate reflects much on the whole debate about new labour and
their approach- the key question being is it really new. I certainly don't
think JUP has just popped into existence and has surely fed from previous
attempts in this area. However I think we might be in danger of getting
sucked in to dating game on the term.
I think part of the problem is although they talked about these things
decades ago such goals were never realised and were dropped under the new
right's agenda who thought the market could do all the joining so to
speak. While this has not turned out to be reality (one only has to look
what deregulation of the power industry has done to california who have
just declared a state-wide state of emergency over the problem), new
labour's desire to realise the goals and benefits of JUP remain as
rhetorical as the talk was back then.
While I suppose I sort of agree with the blue corner in that JUP is not
new, ie. the concept of a JUP has been encountered before I do think the
context is different and certainly the potential to develop a new policy
model is there for the taking. As a discipline I believe we have learnt
much from the conservative experiements and we can use these lessons to
deepen the concept of JUP beyond just structural joined-upness to add a
political joined-upness as well. Clearly I am not about to try and define
this new JUP, thats what debates like this are for, but I think it begins
by recognising inclusitivity at all levels.
To sum up then I guess what is new about JUP is that if we develop
the 'old' concept using our recent experience then this time we have a
chance to succeed- and that would be new.
PS. why don't we have a spell checker or something- everyone can see my
terrible (I was going to say abismal) spelling and stuff!
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