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Gift aid system costs charities £750m a year, the limits of big society; and award-winning writing

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Today's top Society stories

Gift aid system costs charities £750m a year, study finds

Diabetes drug still available on NHS despite experts' call for withdrawal

Fairer spending could save four million children by 2020, says report

Letters: wrong Pickles scrap site goals for travelers

All today's Society Guardian stories

Other news

• Ministers have attempted to calm business fears that local enterprise partnerships, due to replace regional development agencies in 2012 will be "council-dominated talking shops," reports the Financial Times

• At least two GPs are earning over £500,000 a year from the NHS, according to the Daily Mail

• Sir Bob Kerslake has been appointed permanent secretary at the Department for Communities and Local government

On my radar ...

• The Guardian's Amelia GentlemanWho won the prize from Counsel and Care for her fantastic piece about life in a care home...

• promising looking blog victim of reducing public expenditure, reserve a public servant 's blog ... (Thanks HSJEditor )

• Lord Nat Wei, the government 's Great Society adviser, who now has his own personal blog and has joined Twitter...

• This Colin Talbot piece on the state and the limits of big society...

\\ ", Rather like a fish in the sea has no concept of water, because all around them all the time, anyone who says that the state today in the UK is not a" back to the "most people most of their problems or in any case, most of them live in fantasy. "

• Ryan Shorthouse on Comment is Free, arguing that Big society has to be about the empowerment of people in deprived communities, not "a feelgood exercise"for "soft, compassionate professionals."

• Nick Temple's excellent round of up of the best recent social enterprise links

• The BBC's online archive of its programmes and broadcasts on the birth of the NHS (thanks @patientopinion

• Nick Aldridge on ignorance and "kneejerk indignation" behind media and public attitudes to chugging

In case you missed them ... Society Guardian weekend highlights

UK officials looking at Portuguese "decriminalisation" to drugs

More than 40% of domestic abuse victims are male, says report

All Sunday's Society Guardian stories

All Saturday's Society Guardian stories

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