Cameron resuscitates the Big Society

Paul Ross

A little unfair Fraser. I thought he spoke well, avoided hubristic rhetoric which would have been inappropriate in advance of a spending squeeze, and was gratious to his coalition partners. It was a difficult balancing act, well executed, and germanely pitched to the realpolitik

Woody

I thought it was an excellent speech.

Tanuki

The "Big society" is dead and the rotting corpse should be buried once and for all - with a stake through its heart.

People don't want a 'big society' or a 'big government'. They don't want to be 'nudged' and cajoled by the Man in Whitehall.

Honestly - we just want to be left alone. Taxed less; talked-down-to-less; hassled less; regulated and governed less.

SUSAN HILL

I am not so sure his actions are doing that. There is a lot of sudden rage out there against the cuts, even though people were warned, and no one has yet seen anything positive, nor are they told enough about the reasons for the cuts. Not in chapter and verse stark terms. I speak as a Conservative by the way. And most people I talk to have not a clue what he means by 'the Big Society'. Nor have I. It was focusing on this vague concept that made them fail to get the majority they certainly ought to have got.
But someone summed up a yesterday what a lot of people I know think. 'This Big Society is just a name for getting volunteers to do the government's job for them.'
I only half disagree.
Come on Cameron, spell out why things are so bad - in terms people can understand and don`t just blame Labour (though it's their fault), explain how much the debt is and how much interest we are paying and what would happen if there were no cuts.Terrify people into understanding the need for the economies.
And then come up with something a bit more positive and a bit less wet than 'the Big Society.'
Gove can do it. IDS can do it.
Now you've got to do it.

Jane

I thought it was an excellent speech. I got from it that we should not just look to the State to provide - we should get up and do something ourselves. Wonderful as I am so tired of people expecting too much.

An example, a few years ago one would see community volunteers cleaning up river banks and dykes in my area. This is no longer undertaken by the community but undertaken by the local council. People will now ring the council because of weeds in footpaths outside their home. A few years ago, the householder would have removed the weeds. (I now remove weeds from my road). A few years ago unemployment was low in my area as unskilled people were happy to work picking vegetables or in the food processing industry. Now they will not and we rely on migrant labour. they do not have to as the State will provide.

David Cameron's speech told me that this was going to stop and that we all have a responsibility within our communities. I feel totally inspired...........

Pot Head

I have a mate who works for a Tory minister, we are going to lunch soon, so they can explain the Big Society to me, and so I can explain Christopher Nolan's 'Inception' to them.

I have hunch that my task is a lot easier

TGF UKIP

The Big Society is all part of who Disconnect Dave really is.

One of the many unflattering differences between the Original and the Heir is that if the Original had tried to pursue anything as daft, Campbell and Mandelson would have slapped him round the head and told him not to be so bloody daft.

The Heir on the other hand has Hilton.

Yosemite Sam

I am very disappointed - not in the speech - in the churlish reactions of Fraser Nelson and Peter Hoskins. Have the years of Labour spin immunised you to a new style (but also a hark back to an old style of sincerity). Come on, think again, revisit the speech, you will see something statesmamlike and uplifting in it which speaks to a new, difficult but transforming, era. Give the man some credit.

Paddy

Why do you always have to pick 'holes' in everything.

The tories have had to 'play down' the
conference etc. since coming into power.

Not like Blair - who for years 'milked' the adulation.

Victor Southern

Made a refreshing change from the grizzled old Rottweiler who was recently the Prime Minister.

Cameron spoke energetically and pleasantly with conviction. This is not a time for tub-thumping rhetoric nor for the snake-oil charm of Blair. These are serious times and it needs serious plain speaking.

I am sorry for all of those who did not hear their pet peeve or hobbyhorse addressed. If you want that then make your own speeches.

Pete Collins

I really don't get the antipathy or faux-misunderstanding about the Big Society - it's simple and powerful, and David Cameron summed it up neatly near the end of his speech. Not really sure which bits people would disagree with.
http://petejamescollins.wordpress.com/2010/10/06/conservative-conference-david-camerons-speech-and-the-big-society/

Tiberius

I accept, Fraser, that you are at least consistent in applying a handicap to Cameron whenever he speaks. And as you have often correctly remarked, he comes cross much better when speaking without notes.

But this speech was not about selling himself - the lectern was essential to ensure no points were missed. And in absolute terms, it was a vey good speech in how it communicated those points. Much of what you often accuse him of failing to emphasize was there today (the attacks on Labour's spending, for example)

So I have to agree with Yosemite Sam. You and Pete are nit-picking.

Noa Zrk

Tanuki

Absolutely right, less government not more.
Rather than resuscitate the Big Society it needs the kiss of death.

SUSAN HILL

Jane. I beg to differ with some of what you say. Where I live generations of local families still work on the land veg picking etc. There is a voluntary team which meets three times a year to clean drains where they flood and gullies leading to the spring and river, others do clearing litter before the Best Kept Village Competition. BUT apart from the people working, the volunteers are all 60 plus active retired. What will happen as they die out is anybody's guess. Scouts and Guides have a hard time recruiting leaders. But this is a community where masses gets done by volunteers, always has. They don`t need Cameron to talk to them about the Big Society.

Matthew Lloyd

The 'Big Society' idea should be absolutely fundamental to, not only this government, but any contemporary liberal democratic government in the developed world.

When referred to as the 'post-bureaucratic age' (PBA), in the pre-election think-tanks and more learned journals, it was perhaps more fully defined but too tasking for the mass-media (or the masses) to understand. Reframed as the Big Society I think it will be, in the coming years, accepted by the majority and we will look back on the Cameron years as those of the first major Western government that understood the world had changed and had seized the opportunities presented by an internet-enabled world.

For it is, largely, the Internet that enables the 'Big Society'. (Married to a healthy dose of libertarian-paternalism.) In industry, it is the Internet that allows large organisations to disaggregate their organisational structure like never before (because the cost barriers to 'partnering' are now massively lower). It is the Internet (and cheap computing) that allows data to be converted into information and that information to be democratised in a way that threatens every oligarchy on the planet (including British socialist collective governments). It is the Internet that promotes peer-to-peer relationships that transcend time and distance, (and soon language). The disruptive power of the railroads, the telephone and the television were, perhaps, as nought compared to the positive changes on offer to society that we are living through now.

Even in these early days of the PBA we can see the potential for, for example, crime statistics to be published as raw data that citizens can then slice, dice and publish with their own (competing) commentary. Or school performance figures. Or MPs expenses. Or data streamed from Jodrell Bank or the LHC, or maybe just the local cinema listings.

In the village in which I live, the local community website has done more to engender a sense of community than would be achieved by a thousand 'Parish Plans' (or, indeed, the parish council (on which I sit)).

That is what the Big Society is. And I am pleased that David Cameron (and George Osborne et al) 'get it', and proud it is the UK that is the first government in the world to realise its potential.

Holly ......

I am very glad to see MORE people here are
'getting it'.
My community spirit is once again lifted a little.
Maybe the Cameron generation will at last be free to play and grow,and their parents will KNOW they are kept an eye on or'dobbed in' by their neighbours if they misbehave.
Just like I was as a kid.

biggestaspidistra

'He didn't need to give the speech of his life, for once - so he didn't.'

a week ago you said he did.

London Calling

Cameron Suffocates The Pig Society with…Your Country Bleeds You.

Let us remind ourselves that the Coalition was formed against the backdrop of a hung parliament, against the backdrop of a disastrous expenses scandal, against the backdrop of the Banking crisis, against the backdrop of Government failure to secure the British economy against the backdrop of the selling off of Britain…David Cameron was hardly going to spring onto the conference stage to the tune of ‘The Boys are Back in Town’ and as David didn’t dance to ‘It takes two Baby’, I shall give him 6/10 for his speech & presentation… ;) :( :0

Noa

TGF UKIP 7:17pm

"The Heir on the other hand has Hilton".

Paris Hilton?

EC

At one point I thought that Mr Pickles would need resuscitating. I thought that Mr Cameron was unnecessarily fat-ist. The old Bullingdon boy surfacing there. Another candidate for resus' was Ken Clarke - the lights were on but nobody was at home.

On matters of dress, what on earth was Warsi thinking about! That maternity outfit she was wearing looked like an explosion in a paint factory. Certainly stood out from all the grey and beige. Is she pregnant or is that just the result of good troughing?

Jane

Susan,

I am delighted that practices that were once around here are still going on in your community. It gives me some hope for the future particularly as public finances tighten. Perhaps, I should follow David Cameron's advice and start a group to look at what needs to be done....Anyway, your posting has inspired me just as David Cameron's speech inspired me yesterday.

Ahmed Khan

Sorry but I don't agree with you, Fraser. I thought it was a good speech (held my attention throughout)!!!!

Pot Head

"If my country need me.. Then it's totally f**cked" So said my Black Cab driver this morning..Unsurprisingly he thought the "Big Society" was a " A big load of bollocks"

John Lea

Loved the fact that Cameron was waffling on about 'fairness' and 'The Big Society', whilst Francis Maude and Eric Pickles were nodding their heads in agreement. If those two really want to be fair, why don't they volunteer to pay back the money they pilfered from us in expenses. Cameron, too, for that matter.

Nick Peters

I thought it was a very good speech. Leadership becomes him and he is beginning to speak like a leader of the country, not just his party.

Fraser's commentary misses the mark. The Big Society is an idea that had its roots in something that has been tangible for years - community in action to help each other. My mother described visiting old folk as "storing up points for the hereafter", but she did it with a will because that's how we all get along - or used to. People are still doing this all over the country, but lately there has been a perceptible decline in engagement with others (I plead guilty).

Mr Cameron is not seeking to invent something here...he is seeking to encourage something that already exists and providing tools for it to grow and be more effective. The bit that moved me was not about economic recovery but the moral recovery of a country that has rediscovered its heart.

To say this is the state telling volunteers to pick up the slack is piffle. The whole reason we're in so much trouble is that the state took from us power and responsibility that was ours all along. Mr Cameron is right to ask us to take it back - we should knuckle down and take it with a will.

(Now I have to live up to what I've just written....)