Reading Bill Taylor's excellent and though provoking article on the Harvard Business Review Blog, I immediately thought of all those activities that we do in the public sector either because we can or more likely because we always have done.

Local government is fundamentally political and its future should be at the heart of contemporary political debate.

When we speak of the retail sector, most of us easily differentiate between Tesco's and the local corner shop - we don't have to be prompted to draw the distinction. So why is it that Government, some national third sector bodies and spokespeople 'assume' that the third sector is homogeneous and principally made up of large contracting bodies, with the other smaller community groups side-lined as less important, if not irrelevant?