The big society seems to have slipped down, if not off, David Cameron's agenda recently.
This could mean of course that this blog may have to be re designated and turn its attention to a wry look at other matters in the news.
It was interesting who picked up on the big society and who didn't.
My only contribution to a recent meeting of the Co-operative Party discussion on the big society was to observe that Mr Cameron would doubtless be delighted to know that we were discussing his spurious notion, if only to oppose and reject its principles, because it meant that he was setting the agenda.
As my biography indicates I have spent most of my adult working life either as a Clergyman in the Church of England or in the Charitable sector.
As such I believe that I am to some degree qualified to discuss the big society because I have worked in and with local communities around a range of ideas and issues from homelessness to unemployment. I was a founder member of Church Action on Poverty and have both established and managed a range of community projects in Yorkshire, Lancashire, the North East before taking on the leadership of a National Charity with community and volunteering activity across the United Kingdom.
Words can lose all meaning if they are used inappropriately or imbued by the person using them with a spurious meaning.
Mrs Thatcher on the steps of Downing Street in that famous film clip rehearsing the words of St Francis Prayer: Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury,pardon; where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy; pretty much rendered the prayer unprayable, which was quite and achievement.
And the big society?
Well if by big you mean inclusive, large, grand, significant, then the idea of a big society is undermined by the diminishing of people by a thousand small cuts.
So in this big society, the big people are those with large bank accounts, big bonuses and big tax cuts and their relative size is created not by making the big people bigger but by making the rest of us smaller.
And society, the concept which was challenged by Mrs Thatcher's claim that it didn't exist, well that too is undermined by the way that Mr Duncan Smith's emphasis on welfare undermines the truly big concept of social security.
The grand vision of Beveridge and Aneurin Bevan, of citizens feeling secure in their homes, their families and their jobs is watered down and becomes simply welfare which, of course is too close to farewell.
Yesterday in PM's questions the Prime Minister stated that the Government regretted the seventeen year high level of unemployment but that it was doing all it could to get people into work.
Cutting public expenditure?
Reducing Investment ?
Transferring jobs from the public to the private sector ?
It seems to this observer that little or nothing is actually being done, somehow we seem to have returned to the Thatcher view that the market rather than Mervyn is king and the economy like the weather cannot be controlled.
This could mean of course that this blog may have to be re designated and turn its attention to a wry look at other matters in the news.
It was interesting who picked up on the big society and who didn't.
My only contribution to a recent meeting of the Co-operative Party discussion on the big society was to observe that Mr Cameron would doubtless be delighted to know that we were discussing his spurious notion, if only to oppose and reject its principles, because it meant that he was setting the agenda.
As my biography indicates I have spent most of my adult working life either as a Clergyman in the Church of England or in the Charitable sector.
As such I believe that I am to some degree qualified to discuss the big society because I have worked in and with local communities around a range of ideas and issues from homelessness to unemployment. I was a founder member of Church Action on Poverty and have both established and managed a range of community projects in Yorkshire, Lancashire, the North East before taking on the leadership of a National Charity with community and volunteering activity across the United Kingdom.
Words can lose all meaning if they are used inappropriately or imbued by the person using them with a spurious meaning.
Mrs Thatcher on the steps of Downing Street in that famous film clip rehearsing the words of St Francis Prayer: Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury,pardon; where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy; pretty much rendered the prayer unprayable, which was quite and achievement.
And the big society?
Well if by big you mean inclusive, large, grand, significant, then the idea of a big society is undermined by the diminishing of people by a thousand small cuts.
So in this big society, the big people are those with large bank accounts, big bonuses and big tax cuts and their relative size is created not by making the big people bigger but by making the rest of us smaller.
And society, the concept which was challenged by Mrs Thatcher's claim that it didn't exist, well that too is undermined by the way that Mr Duncan Smith's emphasis on welfare undermines the truly big concept of social security.
The grand vision of Beveridge and Aneurin Bevan, of citizens feeling secure in their homes, their families and their jobs is watered down and becomes simply welfare which, of course is too close to farewell.
Yesterday in PM's questions the Prime Minister stated that the Government regretted the seventeen year high level of unemployment but that it was doing all it could to get people into work.
Cutting public expenditure?
Reducing Investment ?
Transferring jobs from the public to the private sector ?
It seems to this observer that little or nothing is actually being done, somehow we seem to have returned to the Thatcher view that the market rather than Mervyn is king and the economy like the weather cannot be controlled.
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