So this big society thing is launched. Funny how it’s the same old stuff. Gordon Brown wanted to steal dormant bank accounts and damn me if iDave wants to, too. I do have a dormant bank account. Looks like I’ll have to draw out the few quid I have lurking there. It is, after all, my money, not society’s and my need is greater.
Also announcing plans to use dormant bank accounts to fund projects, Mr Cameron said the concept would be a “big advance for people power”.
Whereas I prefer to call it by its real name; theft.
“There are the things you do because it’s your passion,” he said.
“Things that fire you up in the morning, that drive you, that you truly believe will make a real difference to the country you love, and my great passion is building the big society.”
I call that going to work and earning a living. I have no interest in becoming part of iDave’s big society. When I get home of an evening, I’m knackered and want to chill. So that’s what I do.
I have no problem with the concept of localising power and removing it from the centre, but I get the feeling that this is all just for show; flimflam.
Shadow Cabinet Office minister Tessa Jowell called Mr Cameron’s speech “a brass-necked rebranding of programmes already put in place by a Labour government”.
Indeed. Which is worrying, but not unexpected.
The Groan has more:
Cameron also outlined three strands of what he called the “Big Society” agenda:
• Social action: “Government … must foster and support a new culture of voluntarism, philanthropy, social action.”
• Public service reform: “We’ve got to get rid of the centralised bureaucracy that wastes money and undermines morale.”
• Community empowerment: “We need to create communities with oomph – neighbourhoods who are in charge of their own destiny, who feel if they club together and get involved they can shape the world around them.”
The point about philanthropy is that it comes form the individual, independently of government. The government cannot create it, just as it cannot create “oomph” in neighbourhoods. The best thing it can do, is leave people alone to make their own decisions. So, yes, please, do get rid of that centralised bureaucracy, but forget all the other stuff, including sequestering our dormant bank accounts.
The BBC asks how we should help.
Would you join a voluntary group? Would this help you or your community take more control of your life? How can society be made better?
Er, no, no and by keeping politicians out of our lives, thank-you very much.
How long before he revives his slavery national service idea?
I have no problem with the concept of localising power and removing it from the centre, but I get the feeling that this is all just for show; flimflam.
It’s offloading services which don’t pay onto the local community.
You could be right about that.
“my great passion is building the big society”
Is anyone taken in by such meaningless drivel?
“The point about philanthropy is that it comes form the individual, independently of government”
Exactly. Instead the idea seems to be mandatory voluntarism.
XX “Government … must foster and support a new culture of voluntarism, philanthropy, social action.” XX
THAT is the bit that gives me the shivers.
Does he mean that in August, every one will be “invited” by their Unions/Student bodies/Commanding officers to get on a train and go and “voluteer to assist in bringing in the harvest”? Or decend on a poor unsuspecting factory at the end of the five year plan, to “assist” the factory in “meeting it’s production targets”?
Have I not heard that somewhere before?