5 april 2012, patient capital

I've just returned from a short break in budapest, mainly to see my other half's family, but also because I love the place I've twice lived in and will at some point make a hat trick. This time, we left the kids with their grandfather and stayed at the flat of a friend that now lives in strasbourg (12 february 2011). Her flat though has been transformed into an aladdin's cave, with thousands of books lining every surface and piled to the ceiling. She started her small firm - csimota - about a decade ago and it has blossomed amazingly both into a hugely diverse and original cultural force, and also, it would seem, a social and entrepreneurial success. I could not be happier that someone I like so very much, doing something I think of as so important, has done so very well. While we were away (as well as my old mp, george galloway rather sensationally winning a by-election), big society capital was launched, to help a thousand flowers exactly like csimota bloom. It is riddled with people I half know, like stephen bubb (4 october 2011) and ronald cohen, and who ought to be able to make a great go of it. I'm immensely enthusiastic about social investment as an efficient use of capital and have been an eager advocate for some time of using it more systematically in my part of the world, something which this week has only made me even more determined to pull together.