Big Society Bull Shit

Cameron's Big Soc

Snake Oil Salesmen

Snake Oil Salesmen selling Ingsoc AKA Big Brother AKA Big Government

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Date: Friday 18th February

Time: 7pm

Venue: Duke Street Church, Richmond upon Thames, TW9 1DH

Topic: 'The Big Society'

Join us for drinks and discussion with a panel including Syed Kamall (MEP for London), Ben Howlett (National CF chairman), Nick Clark (London CF chairman), Gus Magalhaes (Kingston University Conservatives president) and Alex Ward (Richmond Park CF).

The panel chaired by Martin Beale.

What was most interesting was the way questions were not answered.

What is it for?

What are we supposed to do with it if it is some sort of optional thing that we are urged to take an interest in but also assured we need not do if we don't want to?

What is this one size thing that fits all?

How are we going to roll back the boundaries of the state and roll on the benefits of the Big Society?  (All our questions and suggestions will be submitted to Nick Hurd, Minister for Civil Society (what a crap title for a crap job, eh?) on the 27th, apparently, when it will be presented to him and considered. Woo hoo!  You would have thought that HOW would be the most obvious question that would be asked and they would have an answer ready for us by now, but not a bit of it.  

Why doesn't Cameron just call it Small Government, someone asked.  (Because he doesn't want to scare the ones who like their welfare state big, long and shoved right up them nice and hard.) 

 

What are activists supposed to do with it?  (Prattle about it enthusiastically but incoherently, of course.  Make the meaningless meaningful, make the unbelievable believable, make Tories Socialists but still keep their identity and integrity, eat their cake and still have it etc.)

Regular readers will already know my oft-repeated mantra that Compassionate Conservatism is really Socialism and that Big Society is really Big Government but with Ingsoc and Big Brother overtones.  

The whole idea of Big Society is to buy Cameron time.  

In a few years time when it all goes pear-shaped, we will demand of the government: "What about X, Y and Z that you said you would do for us?"  and the government will say, "Oh, but we thought you were supposed to do it yourselves!  Oh dear.  Oops.  Sorry.  Never mind.  Better luck next time, eh, what?"  

It is for Cameron to buy time while pretending to do something while doing nothing at all and wasting your time, energy and money.   It was so he could pretend to be all things to all men and women in order to get elected, and he couldn't even do that without Clegg agreeing to form a coalition with him, and Clegg could have chosen to form the coalition with Labour.  That was how crap the whole idea was.   


Apart from feeling sorry for the elderly and exasperated I also felt sorry for the young gun snake oil salesmen who must have felt utterly demoralised trying to sell this turd of an idea to a disbelieving and outraged Tory membership.  I bet sometimes they secretly wished they were in the BNP where we can just say stuff that we genuinely feel and which we know other people instinctively and obviously agree with. 

When it finished we went out into the cold night, miserable, unsatisfied and cheated.  It is after all corrupting to be told to tell lies, and demoralising to be regularly expected to believe in lies told by the people you expect to trust, ie your own party that is now in government.




If I were a snake oil salesman I would quit my job or demand a different product to sell.  Double glazing would at least be more useful and saleable than this thing that makes others want to tell you to put a Big Sock in it.  

If only there were a government that would have just the competence to give us the impression that we are being well-governed, even if we are not.  Margaret Thatcher was mentioned, and it was pointed out that she would not have disapproved of Cameron's Big Brother Ingsoc.  Since Maggie is now suffering from Alzheimer's and cannot answer for herself, I would take this with a huge pinch of salt.  Whatever you think of Maggie, she would never have tried to pull a fast one like that.   Perhaps a benign dictatorship benignly dictated by me is really the only answer for the long-suffering and misgoverned people of Britain.