Just to follow on from my take on Voice 07, Society Guardian has a video of Tim Smit doing his stuff, and an edited transcript of his speech. Worth watching the video for a sense of the energy and charisma he has as a speaker….and for being infinitely more characterful than my summary of it.

There is also Patrick Butler’s take on the conference, ‘All aboard the enterprise starship‘, which opens with the memorable line that "If the third sector is political flavour of the month then social enterprise is the plat du jour, the tastiest morsel on the menu". He describes Tim Smit as "rightly scathing" about conventional business, and thinks that Ed Miliband, for want of a better phrase, ‘gets it’. The implication in the piece seems to be that this is because Ed is young(er) and therefore more in tune with the times….there may be something in that, and certainly the majority of the sector think he ‘gets it’ too, (which is why he is viewed as a good champion for the movement) but I think it has more to do with the inspiring people he has met having appeared at so many events around the country: it’s clearly had a genuine impact.

Just in passing, there was also a column from the late Luke Fitzherbert in the supplement as well (you’d think I was on commission) about how lottery funding has become increasingly prescriptive, and that it should  focus on  "investment in sustainability" in a revived overall programme, rather than one increasingly divided up into specific areas.