Please tell me about this "Big Society" thing

This was covered, in general terms, in the Andrew Marr 'Start the Week' on R4 this morning. Worth a listen for those genuinely interested.

The example given was a local park - whose management could be transferred to a 'trust' of local park users, motivated to ensure it's well looked after. Parks being one of the areas local government might not focus on as cuts are made.

The programme had lots of general discussion on civic and local responsibility and interesting information about the Quaker movement / ethics in business.

Are you going to do unpaid work? Are any of your female friends?... I think you'll find that you can't force or coerce anyone into volunteering. As for charities providing some welfare services, why not? Everyone's always going on about 'the rich' not contributing enough to society through taxation - well how about incentives to adopt various worthy causes and contribute that way instead?

Two-thirds of the people being laid off from the public sector are women. ISNT is absolutely right. Big Society is about women going back to unpaid work, and it is also about privatising welfare by relying on charities to provide it.
It's a total con.

I would suggest that you can find just as many Labour men as Conservative women that hold the same outdated views as the one you heard....really wouldn't take it as typical.

chil people who are minded to do voluntary work are already doing it. Millions of people around the country, of all ages and all walks of life, are already giving their spare time to help out with various things. I just don't see where this new army of volunteers, to run many basic services, is going to come from.

On the 1950s nuclear family idea - it is well known that is the ideal for right-wingers. In fact a conservative women was interviewed the other day and didn't mince her words - she said that women should get back into the home and looking after their families, as working mothers do not contribute anything to the economy.

Your interpretation of 'daddy at work and mummy at home in a pinny' ISNT says more about your perception of society than anything in the Tory manifesto. What about the millions of men and women who have retired, for example, and are looking for something constructive to do? Or younger people without family ties and with plenty of spare time? They're traditionally the ones most likely to do voluntary work.

The other problem is that this big society idea has not said who exactly they are expecting to pick up the pieces for free. Tories generally like a very 1950s nuclear family model of society with daddy out at work and mummy at home in a pinny, the majority of job losses will be women, and many think that the conservatoves idea is that they will all suddenly don their pinnies, join the WI and start running everything. Of course no-one has thought to ask women how they feel about this.

200,000+ from the public sector with the cuts that have just been announced, then nobody's sure what will happen with the private sector, there will certainly be a lot of losses initially (again to the tune of tens or maybe hundreds of thousands) the govt are hoping that the private sector will then grow to provide hat number of jobs to make it up (extremely unlikely IMO).

Certain things society relies upon are likely to disappear when councils decide how to spend the reduced amount of money they have. So if the choice is 'no service' or a service run on a voluntary/charitable basis then why not facilitate that?

There's no reason why areas of high unemployment or crime should not contain people willing to do something to improve their community spirit, with help where necessary. Don't know if you saw the BBC programme 'The Choir'? A simple example of how community can be altered for the better by something as relatively simple as getting people singing together

I think the main thrust of 'big society' is not necessarily volunteering, but to get us away from automatically thinking 'big state' - the very interfering way the previous government liked to manage us. 13 years of that has left many feeling that they are incapable of doing anything for themselves... we've been infantilised, if you like. This sets a different tone and should appeal to responsible adults.

You might be interested in this thread. I learned a lot from it.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/politics/1005232-Big-Society/AllOnOnePage#20560001

I don't think it's going to be a good thing, not in this present context.

I think you are right to be about it all.

They haven't really said how it's all supposed to work yet though, so who knows.

I do think it's a bit hopeful to think that thousands of people will suddenly start doing loads of voluntary work. Surely those who are the sort of people who do voluntary work are generally already doing it.

Hold on just thought though, 200,000 + people are about to be put out of their jobs... Maybe they are hoping that they will do it? Make them redundant, then give them the opportunity to carry on doing the jobs they used to do, but for no money