Cameron launches "Big Society"

[tar1984]

I've found this thread really interesting, one of the few p&p threads I've been actually coming back repeatedly to to read the arguments.

My local paper does a piece where they ask random people on the street about an issue of the day. Yesterday it was about this. About 50% were against it or dubious, wondering where the funding would come from, and the other 50% seemed to be buying the 'empower local people' spin and in favour of it.

This is in dundee, a city that has been ravaged by thatcherite de-industrialisation and should really know better than trusting tory policy on anything, ever. Christ, we have a dozen areas that were by all accounts lovely places to live 40 years ago, and have become crime-ridden hell-holes since all the manufacturing work dried up. The cause and effect is pretty obvious. Fuck the tories, and everything they stand for.

 

[ericjarvis]

Many of them are ideologues, but they're ideologues who'd sell their infant children to paedophiles if the price was right.

Surely the whole point of public schools is that they actually pay the paedophiles to take their infant children.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Surely the whole point of public schools is that they actually pay the paedophiles to take their infant children.

Bastard! I laughed so hard I snotted down the front of my shirt!!

 

[ViolentPanda]

I've found this thread really interesting, one of the few p&p threads I've been actually coming back repeatedly to to read the arguments.

My local paper does a piece where they ask random people on the street about an issue of the day. Yesterday it was about this. About 50% were against it or dubious, wondering where the funding would come from, and the other 50% seemed to be buying the 'empower local people' spin and in favour of it.

This is in dundee, a city that has been ravaged by thatcherite de-industrialisation and should really know better than trusting tory policy on anything, ever. Christ, we have a dozen areas that were by all accounts lovely places to live 40 years ago, and have become crime-ridden hell-holes since all the manufacturing work dried up. The cause and effect is pretty obvious. Fuck the tories, and everything they stand for.

People tend to forget just how many of the current social problems have their root in Thatcherism. Sure they remember the way industry was given a fatal kicking, but they forget that it's her fault that social housing provision went down the toilet, and also her fault that local authorities couldn't raise money for housing maintenance in the ways they'd done for 100 years previously (borrowing at favourable rates or issuing bonds) and had to rely entirely on reserves. They also forget the truly massive centralisation of power away from local government during the Thatcher and Major governments, and the effects that this had on adding layers of unnecessary bureaucracy on fairly simple functions, and the way that local authorities were forced to submit their services, until then staffed through direct labour, to CCT (compulsory competitive tendering).

 

[The39thStep]

There are some public meetings on Big Society, one in Sheffield next week 27th July at 1700hrs at the Electric Lab:

5pm Welcome – John Popham

5.10pm The Big Society in the North – opportunities and threats – Julian Dobson

5.20pm The Big Society Network: what’s happening? - Steve Moore, Big Society Network

5.30pm Making it real – Eden, Cumbria

5.40pm Small group discussion – making a Big Society we care about

5.45pm Our ideas: a three minute pitch

6pm Making it happen – initial group discussion

6.15pm Feedback from initial discussions

6.25pm Taking it forward - discussion groups

6.45pm Feedback

Very mixed and confused blogs on Big Society and some quite blatant fishing from isn't Apple marvellous types looking to 'assist' social enterprise. Big state versus small state liberal types , should be perfect for 'anarchists'.

 

[The39thStep]

John Seddons analysis of monetarism and the mistrust of local public services is quite a surprising read. The Tories have basically taken up some of his ideas on target bureaucracy and then taken the money away from the very people they said should concentrate on delivering good public services rather than meet targets.

They'll be meeting financial targets now rather than output ones.

 

[ViolentPanda]

John Seddons analysis of monetarism and the mistrust of local public services is quite a surprising read. The Tories have basically taken up some of his ideas on target bureaucracy and then taken the money away from the very people they said should concentrate on delivering good public services rather than meet targets.

They'll be meeting financial targets now rather than output ones.

The worst of all possible worlds.

 

[tar1984]

People tend to forget just how many of the current social problems have their root in Thatcherism. Sure they remember the way industry was given a fatal kicking, but they forget that it's her fault that social housing provision went down the toilet, and also her fault that local authorities couldn't raise money for housing maintenance in the ways they'd done for 100 years previously (borrowing at favourable rates or issuing bonds) and had to rely entirely on reserves. They also forget the truly massive centralisation of power away from local government during the Thatcher and Major governments, and the effects that this had on adding layers of unnecessary bureaucracy on fairly simple functions, and the way that local authorities were forced to submit their services, until then staffed through direct labour, to CCT (compulsory competitive tendering).

I didn't know about some of that stuff myself tbf.

I didn't vote because I thought labour and the tories are equally bad. I can't forgive labour for iraq in any case. But the tories seem to be going all out against the w/c, shit sucks.

 

[frogwoman]

He fucked a dead pig.

 

[A380]

He fucked a dead pig.

frogwoman I am so glad that you hadn't anything better to do today!

 

[elbows]

 

[Puddy_Tat]

bloody pc gone mad

what about the white pig society, eh?