If you read a newspaper, watch the news on television, listen to the radio or in fact have any kind of contact with every day life, chances are you have heard about Prime Minister David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’. It was one of the focal points of his successful election campaign, and has remained a big part of his first term in office so far. But what is this ‘Big Society’ that Cameron so aggressively promotes at every given opportunity?
It is a “coral reef” and we are the fishes.
Brian Wheeler – BBC Political Reporter
The general gist of the scheme is that communities have more control of what happens in their local area. Be it through local government having more powers, through voluntary schemes within the local communities or through charities and local enterprises. The more a community is willing to put into the scheme, the more the community will prosper and grow. This is a very good idea, on paper, but what does it ACTUALLY mean?
That is the million pound question, so to speak. Many people have labelled the idea as a ‘soundbite’ and a ‘cover-up for spending cuts’. These people could very well be correct, however Cameron strongly denies this and has stated that the ‘Big Society’ should go ahead whether spending is up or down. Convenient. The fact is that spending is down, way down, and local communities are being looked upon to pick up the slack where the government has taken away funding.
The scheme has already lead to disappointment in Liverpool, where the council has withdrawn itself from the Big Society initiative. In a letter to the PM, the head of Liverpool Council stated “When we agreed to become a Vanguard, your government promised to work with us to remove some of the problems and blockages that were preventing us from successfully delivering our Big Society programme. I have to say, the government has failed to deliver a single change that we have requested, which has severely hampered many parts of our programme.” Oh dear. If Cameron truly believes in the scheme, and its his ‘Passion’, you’d have to think some heads would roll over such a high profile failure.
Despite the setbacks, all signs appear that the ‘Big Society’ idea is here to stay. David Cameron is actively pushing the campaign around the halls of Whitehall and many departments have re-branded current ideas that fall in with the ideology of ‘Big Society’ so that they fall within the head honchos good books. Will the ‘Big Society’ revolutionise the way we live our lives? Will the scheme fade away into oblivion as many previous government schemes have? Will the Tory/Lib Dem coalition be around for long enough to truly make the impact they desire? Only time will tell. Will the every-day, common voter fully understand what the government is trying to achieve? Probably not, but neither do many politicians.