Two aspects of the Big Society

I managed to watch the 10 o'Clock Show from Thursday which highlighted some interesting points about the Big Society and provided a fair balance of views, completely undermined by the next piece to camera about how dumb the Big Society is. As they said on the adverts "The good thing is we're not the BBC so we don't have to be unbiased". Regardless of that it did highlight what appears to be two different aspects of this whole idea.

Aspect 1 is we the people having more say and influence over governmental effects. At first glance this seems a good idea, democracy at its finest. Sadly I see two problems with this. Firstly we the people are ignorant. Note that's not the same as stupid - it's not that we can't understand or apply knowledge just that we don't have the knowledge to make sound ideas.

At a local level the Single Site provides a good example of this. Those who question it are repeatedly told that it will save £500k a year and who can be against that? How do we know it will save that? Because the report says so. Which report, what report?

I've always said we tend to take things to extremes and the answer to this provided is no different. We're either left to track down the information we seek for ourselves with the 'professionals' telling us to just trust them; or we're drowned in information and have to try and pick out the relevant parts with the professionals still asking us to trust them.

The second problem I see relates directly to this and which I'll call "The Irish Referendum Problem". If you allow the people a say in the form of a referendum and these can be called by either a percentage of the population or the government then we will continue to have a referendum until the government gets the result they want.

Incidentally this ability to keep holding referendums until the turnout dwindles as everyone gets fed-up and the 'correct' result is provided is subject to a motion by the Labour Party that such won't be valid unless a certain percentage vote. At the moment this is being tied to the forest situation, but it should apply to all such. Amusingly this motion is being attacked as undemocratic by some parties.

The second aspect is the ability to directly run your own services. This is the one that's drawing the flak - closing down the library? Well if you really want it why not run it yourself; for free? Because I need to earn a living unlike pretty much the entire bloody cabinet - I don't have time. People who do have either the time or inclination to volunteer for things already are. The only thing this changes is that they can now have more things to volunteer for. Whoo-hoo spread that butter extra thin.

Now it can work in specialised circumstances and I can foresee the government cherry-picking those success stories and weaving a story around what I call "Flat Roof syndrome". 'Hey look at countries near the Equator their residences tend to have flat roofs. Think how much space we could save by doing that; we could have a garden on top or patio style rather than more space on the side. If it works in this predominately hot and dry country why shouldn't it work in our cold and wet one?' In other words 'Look it worked here, if it doesn't work for you it must be your fault'. Yeah the volunteer library in some leafy suburb of London is exactly the same situation as some burnt-out car wreckage of a council estate. You're obviously not working hard enough if it fails.


Looking at both of these aspects I see one common thread - petulance.

'Oh so you're complaining that you don't have access to information well here's your information. Here you go sort it out yourself. Don't like the way I'm running things well do it yourself I'm just the person you pay to do this. I'm just the one who understands all this, but no if you think you can do better here you go. Don't come crying to me when it all fails'

It needs a middle ground or it needs someone on the government to explain it better beyond the wishy-washy "Wouldn't it be nice if everyone was nice?" that seems to be the basis at the moment. Remember we're paying these people. If we question something it's up to them to point us at the information to form the basis for some valid points; if we don't like the way they do things they should explain why they have to do it this way or why it shouldn't be changed to what we want.

What they shouldn't do is throw their rattles out of the pram.