The 'Little Heresies' seminars provide an important public platform to debate the future of public services. This book takes its title from the first seminar, 'Kittens are Evil', suggesting that what appear to be well-intentioned policies not only create perverse incentives but also lasting damage to the social fabric.
Public services' management practices, underpinned by neoliberal thinking, were imposed by Margaret Thatcher. 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;...