Peter Wilby writes:
On the same day as David Cameron made his "big society" speech in Liverpool, the Times reported that an American company, Rent A Friend, is launching here. For an hourly fee, it will arrange for somebody to go to the cinema with you, act as best man at your wedding, or simply converse in a coffee shop. This should remind us that capitalists, far more than public authorities, have robbed us of the capacity to do things for ourselves. We look to manufacturers of instant meals and high street takeaways to provide food we once cooked for ourselves. Once, if we needed exercise, we joined a few (unrented) friends to play football or went for a brisk walk. Now we buy membership of a gym club. To sympathise with the bereaved, we once wrote a letter. Now we buy commercially produced cards with standardised sentiments.
Cameron's speech refers to the "big society" ensuring we "don't always turn to officials, local authorities or central government". He doesn't want to stop us turning to business. On the contrary, Cameron wants to connect "private capital to investment in social projects". That, I suspect, is what the "big society" is really all about. Parents may decide to start a school, but they will soon find it's best to bring in private money and hire private management if it is to get off the ground and survive as a ¬going concern. Several private companies, most earning millions from outsourced public projects, are already offering their services. Some openly admit that they aim to create branded chains of schools which they will largely control even if they do not legally own them.
Remember what happened to those classic 19th-century self-help institutions, the building societies. Thanks to Tory legislation in the 1980s, their owners - the customers - were bribed to "demutualise" and sell out to commercial banks. For "big society", read big bonanza for big business.
As Neil Clark adds:
Not so long ago, Britain did have a 'Big Society'. Where there were thriving communities and people were kind to one another. But that was before big business and 'market forces' took over every aspect of our lives.
Remember, if David Miliband becomes Labour Leader, then Rent A Friend, which sounds like something from his days at the Downing Street Policy Unit and which may even be such a thing, will be the ethos and policy of all three parties, just as it was under Tony Blair.
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Thank goodness that we are getting AV and can vote for you against an MP who nominated David Miliband and got her CLP to do the same.
ReplyDeleteThe thing about an AV election is that, unless there are only two candidates, standing in it is not standing "against" anyone.
ReplyDeletePat was a new MP who had thought that David Miliband was going to win what then looked like a two-horse race between him and Ed Balls, and her only previous political experience was three years on a Parish Council. So no one is going to hold this against her.
However, there is no reason to assume that she will be a parliamentary candidate next time. All the seats will be new, and there will be fewer of them. Labour holds every seat in County Durham, and of the three that border this one, all have MPs who have been there longer than Pat, all three of those MPs are younger than Pat (even if only very slightly in one case), and one of them has been a Minister.
Not that it matters to me: that's called politics, and in any case standing in an AV election is not standing against anyone.
The CLP has no excuse. They are not all first term parish councillors.
ReplyDeleteBut how many people still turn up to it?
ReplyDelete