6th July 2011

Sometimes I blog about what has happened and try to make a link with the Big Society.

A wry look as I call it.

Sometimes I blog about matters that haven't happened in the belief that they will.

Like dreams I suppose where you imagine what might happen and then when it does you get that shivery feeling of Deja Vu.

Tony Blair was obsessed by novelty.

I once compered an event at Bradford Cathedral we called The Crossed Keys Cafe a reference to the Cathedral's coat of arms and a cafe style service with folk sitting around a circular platform with tables and candles in bottles and performances from various folk with poems and readings and jokes.

One of my jokes was about Tony Blair being greeted by St Peter, 'Welcome to heaven Mr Blair', but asks Tony anxiously, 'It is new heaven isn't it?'

Yesterday I read an article in the FT about Mr Cameron. It reflected on the fact that he had settled comfortably into his role of Prime Minister. That he looked like a Prime Minister, sounded like a Prime Minister, ergo to all intents and purposes he is Prime Minister, which he is anyway.

Acting the part is important.

In fact anybody can be anybody as long as they are a good enough actor.

I still haven't seen the Kings Speech but I bet it makes my case for me, Colin Firth as King, that would work because he looks and acts like one ergo he is, or could be, crowned.

But the thing is Mr Cameron might look and sound like a PM, he may act like a PM, he might even be a PM but unless those tricky policy things start to become clearer, will he always be PM?

That is the question that will only be answered in four years time, thankfully time is flying.

But whether the big society is a cover for cuts or an ill defined idea about a sharing, caring democracy, at the moment most of the big society ideas are in the long grass. Some most people are relieved about, some people would like to have seen given a better chance of succeeding.

Forest sells offs and the NHS on one side, prison reform on the other.

The trouble with the big society idea is that most of it is not new, the charity I worked for was a big society concept in 1915, the Methodist Church and its love child the Labour Party was a big society idea in 1900.

So will Mr Milliband step up to the plate offering novelty and enthusiasm. Can he act like, sound like, become?

Will we be invited to share dreams or imagine what might be in order that it will become so.

It's all in the DNA and the DNA of the big society can be found in the thousands of small charities and even in some of the larger ones where communities are transformed by people imagining that things can be different or better and then making sure that they are.

Yesterday I imagined catching a Salmon on the Eden, so today I went to the river and cast my line out, I returned empty handed but I had a great day.

As I put on my waders and my jacket and donned my hat I thought I look like a fisherman, sound like a fisherman, act like a fisherman, even my casting wasn't too bad, but the Salmon, well  they are clearly yet to be convinced .............