The small society

john lloyd

As has already been asked, please stop giving useless links to The Times that has put itself behind an Iron Curtain and is unavailable to most of us.

In fact it would be better if you stopped blogging about anything written in The Times. Murdoch has only contempt for his ex-readership and mentioning anything in his paper is giving him the oxygen of publicity.

Where are those debates between Guido and The Fink? Destroyed.

charles hercock

Who will overseee?
Who will regulate?
Is Dave stoking up vigilantism

Great caution is necessary

lescam

IMHO it is a Big Con.

Agree with Labour, that this is just a new way of cost cutting, dressed up as a brand new "vision". Presumably dreamed up by Steve Hilton, who appears to be responsible for all the daftness of Cameron and co. It put me off voting Tory, for the first time in my life. The very title is embarrassing, it sounds so utterly stupid. Wish we could just bury the whole concept and put it out of its misery.

bohodotcom

Big Society sounds like a bit of a fudge.
Only time will tell.
You have to define 'society' first though

yank

"Voluntarism and collective action are highly beneficial, but they are generally small scale and rarely if ever permanent."

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Well as they say, this ain't a bug, it's a feature.

But to your point, Mr. Blackburn, it's obvious that in some cases, taxing authority would have to be devolved, along with administration. If local people want to form the structure they find lacking, they should have the ability to do so. If they don't, they won't.

London isn't the center of all, hard as it might be for some to imagine.

perdix

It's not about taking over the major functions of councils, only those bits that the councils can't or won't do. It all depends on individuals or groups of individuals wanting to do things but perhaps need some seed money to start their operation.

strapworld

I despair. This is written by someone who has obviously not listened to nor studied what David Cameron said! nor have any of the people who have, thus far, commented. Vigilantism!!!! goodness me where did I put my cutlass?

Cameron informed us all that he had been approached by people who wanted to do things which they believed they could do better than government or local government. That is why he has agreed to endorse these trials. If successful they will roll out through the rest of England. That is, surely, the correct way to try this excellent idea out.

'Generally small scale' ----that shows the sum total of the author's knowledge of local and national charitable work. Civic Societies have been going for a long time and have injected much needed local pride into many area's in our excellent country.

What I find quite disturbing is that when anyone puts their head above the parapit with any new idea these days- the likes of the Mr Blackburn and his ilk do their best to knock it. Small Society? More like small minds!!

Cato

Please stop linking to the Times as long as they are a pay-only site.

GeoffH

"Who, Phillip Johnston asks, ‘wants to take over responsibility for libraries or housing estates? Would we not rather our councils continued to manage the service – only better?'"

Just to pick two point out of this. Why wouldn't the tenants take over the management of the estate? Using a Co-Operative structure, perhaps. Why wouldn't this be an alternative?

Indeed, why couldn
't, if they so wished, library card holdeer be able to form a Co-operative or simialr structure to run their Library?

It's depressing that supposedly imaginative conservative columnists are so hide-bound that they see this initiative solely as volunteers taking over the structures of the State where it is inn retreat.

But, I suspect, it's more about removing existing barriers to current volunteering and community efforts.

Rhoda Klapp

Strappers, give us an example, can't quite get it through my thick head. Especially funding, accountability and ability to decide things.

immcintyre

The slogan is crass beyond words, the idea is half-baked, and the concept is far too ideologically loaded for it ever to 'take off'. Is it a ruse to assuage bleak thoughts of recession and deficits?

Victor Southern

Local initiatives have been with us for a very long time [such as the Friendly Societies, the Ragged Schools] and many work very successfully. One does not need a degree in PPE or even in Sports Management to join in the work done by the Lions, Round Table, the W.I., the National Lifeboat Association, a local brass band, the thousands of particular conservation projects, the hospice movement, Meals on Wheels. Nor is it beyond the capacity of the ordinary person to join a book club, a cricket club, a Ramblers club, an environmental clean up group, get an allotment, join Neighbourhood Watch or a thousand other non-Governmental self-funded projects.

It is all very well for the pompous Right and the destructive Left to sneer. In between there are real people living real lives in real communities.

Mr L

Having worked with local councillors, my view is that they are too fond of the sound of their own voices ever to instigate anything positive.

If local communities are to be expected to act, they must be freed from the dreaded health and safety threat, not to mention the theory that unless shown otherwise on the (fallible) police national computer record, all of us are paedophiles.

Otherwise I fear it may be the Third Way (remember that?) revisited.

TGF UKIP

What silly buggers you all are, treating this with even the slightest degree of seriousness.

FFS remember just who and what Dave is above all else - "I see myself as the Heir to Blair" and for once he is living up to the Original for this is indeed quite brilliant in its conception.

Of course as a policy idea it's quite inane and stupid so much so that our resident arch-Camerluvvie, old Tiberius, has gone to ground and kept his pom poms sheathed, but just think of the photo ops it's going to generate.

Every playgroup formed, every village hall painted, every dads football coaching session set up, will see Dave oozing his OE charm accompanied by cohorts of photogaphers and TV cameras.

The word will shortly be going forth to all brown-nosing Tory MPs - "I want lots of Big Society eye-catching initiatives."

Just remember who and what Dave is, and as with the Original, remember too that you can never, ever be too cynical.

Cogito Ergosum

The "Big Society" looks awfully like middle class busybodying. It will suit some people but not others.

Wullie

I'm with strapworld. 'Small minds' indeed.

Its a philosophy, not a recipe. It sets the nature of the relationship between government and da peepul. It gives us a stick with which to beat the government if they do anything that conflicts with this philosophy.

It could be the means by which we avoid ever again having to put up with Big-State maniacs like NuLabour.

Maybe, it could even contain the seeds of our eventual escape from Europe.

But, if we keep shouting it down....

Osred

Instead of the PR wank of The Big Society why didnt dave and his chums just say they promoted Democratic Accountability/ Democratic Engagement. Not as slick I grant you (a whole extra word no less) but not as vapid either and much more easily understood.

Todmorton

A key objective for the Tories should be that Local Authorities, QUANGO's and Government funded Charities and "Community groups" are stripped bare of Labours political appointees.

Starving them of cash and/or focussing them upon services, rather than Marxist radicalisation of services through diversity officers, outreach and whatever other names they give to the ranks of the publicly funded lefties should clear them out. Take away their pay and they will fade away, albeit noisily.

Put the power back to the ordinary voters.

Deny the left wing placemen influence and taxpayers money.

Cornish Lifeguard

The councils will certainly need reform *before* anything further is devolved to them. The new 'Unitary Authority' for Cornwall consists of 123 elected self-serving windbags who merely rubber stamp the decisions of a corrupt bureaucracy. The Chief Executive is a waster who is paid more than Cast Iron Dave and the political 'leader' is a sleazy fat Tory Freemason whose 'management experience' consists of having once run a backestreet pub in Helston where he was (allegedy) his own best customer.

strapworld

Victor Southern. Excellent. Sadly the likes of Blackburn and most of the wallies commentating here have never ever contributed to any society/organisation in their lives- else they would have understood the logic and sheer common sense of this idea!

Thank you Wullie. And dear Rhoda I believe Victor Southern will have given you much food for thought. I would also add Credit Unions! and I would seriously urge all to open an account with their local union. That would have a far greater effect if all who are disgusted by the big banks took their custom away. Now that is being both local and making a major difference!

Julius Whacket

BS sounds reminiscent of Labour's community empowerment agenda, which also by-passed locally represented bodies, and had the prob of a probably dwindling pool of good-hearted folk to do the necessary.

The underlying issue is, to use the vile but necessary jargon, lack of social capital, which in turn comes back to issues of trust in authority, a sense of belonging, common sense of vision and other such things which are in such dwindling supply in our society.

The Big Question that has to be addressed before the Big Society can be made to work is, why are they in dwindling supply?

michael

To cynics I say join up with other cynics, be grumpy, steel yourselves in malcontentment, whinge persistently in the direction of autocratic deaf ears, and if your still not chipper : Try and get off your collective backsides and do something about it.....Nothing ventured...

Tim Carpenter LPUK

Until this collective action has plurality and not monopoly, consent and not coercion, then little will change and in places could get worse.

If the State is handing out money and monopolies, beware.

I see nothing in what I have read that makes me comfortable with what is going on in terms of this "Big Society".

Wily Trout

Todmorton's got it right. It'll be a Herculean task, though.

Rhoda Klapp

I'm trying not to be cynical, but I have to be practical, and I just don't get it. (Credit Unions I do get, good idea). And what seems instinctively clear to some of you just doesn't mean a thing to me. Am I supposed to form a group to take over some function of the council or other public body? What if they won't let go? Am I supposed to do other stuff not currently done which needs to be? Can I be paid, or is it all volunteer unpaid? Won't the gatekeepers be queueing up to stop me? H&S, insurance liability, EU rules, I don't know. What if the rest of the locals don't like it? Can they start their own?

Ignore the questions above, just gimme a worked example.

David Bouvier

After reading this, I am amazed that anything ever happened without a bureaucrat to regulate, fund and guarantee it. And I might believe a town council could support voluntarism, but local government never will.

Though at least some like Julius Whacket engages with the issues rather than just whining.

Lets assume we all want to wean people off the cultural presumption that anything collective must somehow be the preserve of the state. Fine - so how do you do it?

The Libbo's will say smash it all and the market will provide - but the transitional costs and disruption are vast and the politics unsustainable, making it to me neither practical nor desirable. They don't really have an answer. You have to start from where history has left you, not just say like the yokel "I wouldn't start from here".

The socialists will try to talk about democratic control of the state's local outposts, which is not a solution to the cultural problem.

To all those moaners who agree with the goal but don't like the policy - what would you recommend to (a) help push the desired cultural change and (b) manage the transition.

I am looking forward to the positive policy ideas you must all have as alternatives.

Rhoda Klapp

David B, we are not all bound to have alternatives becuase we don't get this policy, but anyhow..

If things need doing which noone does now, nothing is stopping community efforts, or maybe commercial efforts, to do them. If the govt want to finance that with a bank of unconsidered trifles, OK.

Things which are now done by the state in some guise or other have to be released by the state, then they move up into the first category. What is a pre-req here is that the state recognise its own limitations and release the responsibility. And if it must retain oversight, do so with a light touch. I'm not too keen on the state or council handing out monopolies to unaccountable groups no matter how well-intentioned. As you say, if they did it all at once there would be problems, so release the functions over a decent period. Five-a-day co-ordinators today, social work in five years, that sort of thing.

yank

Credit Unions are a fine idea, if structured tightly. Mischief arises when they're not, as when greasy Washington insiders got ahold of the credit union rules in the mid 80's, and turned them loose to lend to your brother in law's combination ant farm and golf resort investment... a sure winner... just ask him.

So we had what we call here the "Savings and Loan" scandal, a preview of the recent Wall Street theft, of which you are all familiar, I'm sure. Same crooks... different locales. They backed up the trucks and looted the treasury, in both cases.

John McCain might have gone to the federal penitentiary over this. Instead, he becomes a presidential candidate. If you ever find yourself cheerleading for politicians from across the pond, check yourself, and be assured that they are just as greasy as those over there.

I'm a reformed do-gooder myself, so I can understand the desire for this BS stuff. But I am reformed, and thus know that the crooks only want profit and power. They will use any means to get it, including your do-goods.

Whig

A better approach to the 'Big Society' would be - instead of merely trying to encourage voluntarism and philanthropy by hopeful words - to cut out goverment spending and return the money to taxpayers so they could chose to be voluntarist and philanthropic (or not) with their own money. At the present time so much money is confiscated people do not have the surplus resources or the motivation to act, and most action is crowded out by government. Secondly, instead of having government provide 'public services' we should recognise that there is, in fact no such thing (except defence and justice) and allow the provision of services by a combination of the market (in areas like insurance) and philanthropy. When taxes and regulation are low, the market and philanthropy will flourish and the idea of things like 'council houses' will simply fade away.

Whig

@DavidBouvier - yes you make a good point, and I suppose rather strikes at my previous point, being a 'libbo'. However, I think that is the end state to which we ought to aspire and yes I'll support anything - Big Society yes - which will help reach that end state. However, I think that the transitional costs of moving to a much smaller state aren't as high as you believe, especially not over a 10-20 year time span and of course such change would have to be gradual and there will be hundreds of many small changes. A much smaller state would create a much more vibrant economy surprisingly rapidly - there is empirical evidence for this. Some problems like state pensions are going to be around for decades, but the sooner we start acting the sooner the state will cease to provide universal benefits, say. Policy proposals and pre-existing policy for such changes do exist, and if you look hard enough and in the right places they can be found.