Gazing at the present through the past.

[jobob_80]

Before the general election, the Independent published this article. The journalist who wrote it is on my twitter feed, and re-tweeted a link to it today. I did read it at the time, but reading it today has had a profound impact on me.

Comments

[hubcap_reloaded]

Cameron's theory seems to be "big society, small state". But to me that's not just nonsense, it's terrifying nonsense. If something is important, than it should be provided centrally, funded by all and available to all equally (where equal need is identified).

While I am personally big on the ol' government-protecting-the-populace concept and the attached left-wing accoutrement (contrary to the strange world of student politics where people wealthier than I tell me I'm not down with the kids in the ghetto, or something) what you have to understand here is a central ideological point that divides the left and right.

To Cameron & Co, the government simply does not do as good a job as private enterprise or independant charities. The government getting involved is a sign of failure which wastes money on bureaucracy, forces civil servants & MPs to be the ultimate can-carriers for service provision rather than trained professionals and produces an inferior product than what other people would do. The mantra of "Big Society, Not Big Government" isn't just about spending less on services(but of course that's a big part of it) to these people, it's about a process which they think acheives the same end goal you want but ultimately better than letting Whitehall get involved/

Now, the history of privatisation implies this doesn't always work out as their ideological dream suggests; and the Big Society has so far been a pretty big flop in Britain, with Cameron pushing it hard before the election and after but the universal responce being, like you, "When the hell am I supposed to do any of this?". This policy seems somewhat doomed to failure at this stage, and the smiley/frowny face logo for it possibly goes into "deserves a kick in the crotch" territory; but it's not necesarilly based on "evil", or even on "doesn't think the poor exist", so much as "thinks the problem isn't best fixed by throwing Sir Humphreys at it".

George Q

[jobob_80]

There are grand ideas behind most policies. But that still doesn't make them right. In this case, I think I'm right -- private or voluntary sectors don't have the reach to be able to offer fairness or equality. So the answer to me isn't to take the government out, but to employ fewer Sir Humphreys and more Mary Poppins, so to speak, in the public sector.

[hubcap_reloaded]

Hey, I ain't gonna be heard to say it isn't a bollocks theory! :-) Like I said, I'm substantially too left wing (and too alert when I grew up in the era of the shitty privatisations) to think much else.

I just wanted to be clear that the policy in question doesn't only arise from wanting to kick the poor in the mean bean machine: because it's easy in this sort of discussion to paint the Tories as "the nasty party" when that's isn't always fair.

Of course, "isn't always" is another way of saying "sometimes"...

George Q