Bigot Society

A PR stunt to make the public think that they have a voice in local and national government policy.

Big Society = Pay Day for Serco

It has the same meaning as Ronald McDonald and the Pilsbury Doughboy.

It means: buy what I'm selling.

We were told what it means earlier this year by Cameron.

All our public services being forcibly put out for tender should private companies want to take them over.
I was surprised to see that he had finally admitted it.

It's nothing but a soundbite.

It's the government wanting to seem like they're encouraging localism and community projects while they simultaneously strip away any funding for them.

A kind of Orwellian newspeak, almost.

It means taking responsibility for yourself, your family and your community. Which is why the Guardian hates it.

It's not "confusing" - they're just annoyed that we can see though their spin.

Isn't it a combination of Grace Slick's first band and anthemic Dunfermline rockers ?
Every time I read the expression "Big Society", Somebody to Love starts playing in my head. I'm just glad that it's not Fields of Fire.

Hello, Mr Cameron. Nice of you to join us. ;)

It means getting ordinary people do to things the government can't afford anymore, as they're too busy helping the bankers and rich in general.

The idea that it's building a community spirit is laughable. The rioters rioted due to neo-liberal consumerism that's shoved down their throats. They wanted stuff. When an opportunity presents itself to have it, they took it. Cameron, who's government loves neoliberalism, of course blames moral turpitude. So we ostracize the rioters. So much for big society.

Neoliberalism doesn't work, it makes things worse. Until Cameron realises that, rebuilding community spirit is a long way off.

It means taking responsibility for yourself, your family and your community. Which is why the Guardian hates it.

Absolutely - those lazy disabled people should get on their bike.

And if they happen to be unable to use a bike, why the hell haven't they built a suitable alternative for themselves? Lazy scum, evidently.

See also: why don't depressed people just cheer up? Why don't people with children travel back in time and not get pregnant? Why don't those 2.5 million unemployed people get into the 500,000 available jobs?

I guess it's doing things for your community for free.

Regrettably I have neither the time nor energy to get involved.

Means? How very last century! We're well past the primitive days when politicians slogans actually meant anything. Its the same as 'hard working families', 'the squeezed middle' and (my personal favourite) 'alarm clock Britain', a content free sound bite, which can be deployed to cover whatever you like.

In the words of Alan Partridge - 'Its just a noise'.

Putting a cosy, purposely vague, communitarian sounding spin on cuts in public services and people doing, and sometimes being forced to do, work for free which was previously done by paid employees.

An apologetic for the small state?

Bootstraps for all and help for none! What do you mean, "privilege"?

A means of giving public sector responsibilities to the private sector, in order to cut the costs of public expenditure: ultimately placing responsibility for society in the hands of individuals rather than the government. That is the vaunted aim at least:

“Today is the start of a deep and serious reform agenda to take power away from politicians and give it to people.

“That’s because we know instinctively that the state is often too inhuman, monolithic and clumsy to tackle our deepest social problems. We know that the best ideas come from the ground up, not the top down. We know that when you give people and communities more power over their lives, more power to come together and work together to make life better – great things happen.”

Unfortunately, it appears to be disingenuous given the massive financial cuts to charities and mentoring programmes, who provide cut-price social services whilst performing vital work in local communities - support for the mentally or terminally ill, for instance. And there is no way that volunteers can alleviate poverty better than fair taxation and redistribution.

I think empowering and strengthening local communities is a great idea - but personally, I don't think you can have a big society without public expenditure and services: if you divorce the two, you end up with two distinct societies - one in which some people are very prosperous; another in which people struggle increasingly desperately.

It means fuck all. It's something invented by tory spin doctors to deploy in elections, much like "education, education, education" was by the labour party.

Labour has its near-equivalent, known as the cooperative council. http://cooperativecounciltoolkit.wordpress.com/ and http://www.facebook.com/groups/119849084718544/

Big Society is just a massive mistake from Tory HQ that they don't want to admit to. They were up late one night and had a 'Who can come up with the supidest political soundbite' competion and accidentally left the winning entry on top of the 'actual policy ideas' pile. You'd thought they'd have learned to be more careful after the same thing happened with 'Hug a hoodie'.

When I use a phrase,' David Cameron said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said everybody, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said David, 'which is to be master — that's all.'

I feel it means nothing. Another phrase created by politicians with little meaning!

The Big Society is the kind of thing the govt would shut down ASAP if it actually worked and people cut govt out of the loop

A community minded populace, rather than a formal organisation, volunteering their skills, money and time to provide local services, such as nurseries or housing repair, that they choose to provide. Membership, discussion, participation and management is ad-hoc with no formal rules. Funding comes from local members and whatever can be begged from local companies and local government.

That's the impression I got from the Conservative's manifesto.

The best thing about this is the Tories defending it, because you're pretty sure that they also know that 'Big Society' is meaningless PR horseshit but tribal loyalty demands that they have to pretend that it doesn't sound totally lame.

"It means whatever you want it to mean sweetie. Mouwah"

Love Dave

"Be excellent to each other"

Nobody knows what the big society is, not even Cameron himself. Rumor has it that the eminent professor Stephen Hawking got frustrated trying to work it out and decided Quantum physics theorem was far simpler.

Stuart Lee put it quite succinctly...

In Libya they dragged their leader out of a sewer, shot him in the face, dragged him round town on the back of a pick-up, then dumped him in a freezer for people to have their picture taken with him. And nobody told them to do it, they did it all on their own initiative.

That's the big society in action.

It means 'Something for nothing government.'

Replacing valuable public services with, er, not a lot

Capital B. Capital S.

(Where's the underline option?)

Big society is the privitisation of public services and the rationing of public services to the local areas so rich areas still stay nice while poor areas plument in standards. An example of big society is breaking up the power of a nationalised NHS to make it small and fractured so big buisnesses have the power rather than the people. Typical Tory selfish nastiness.

I'm big into personal responcibility, I think the left telling people not to get on a bike ofr work, that they are entitled to public services and benefits rather than it;s a social contract with responcibility on both sides has been a complete disaster. We do need to fix society and the left s idea of an army of social workers and calling crap family under priviledged like money is the problem isn't going to fix it.

We do need a big society with people at the bottom driving the change but this is Cameron helping out his mates in the city. He's moving the power from Government to big buisness not only is this not to people on the ground but by moving it out of public sector he's lessoning the control of people. Big society shouldn't mean giving power to each depending on how much money they have to spend.

I have been asked to go on a half day workshop to become a volunteer business mentor a scheme sponsored by Vince Cable's dept (BIS).

It seems to be an utterly shambolic effort just so VC or someone can stand up in parliament and say that they have replaced Business Link advisers with 10,000 volunteers.

No thanks!

The big society is where government tells people in need of assistance that it would be awfully Big of them if they to fucked off and died.

There is also the case in Scotland recently of a poor student who was chucked off a train by a volunteer as his refusal to pay was holding the train up. That's Vigilante Big-man Society for you. And the Daily Mail are all for it. Never mind the cuts and bruises received by the student - he's learned a valuable lesson.

For the last 10 years and more local government has been given central grants for some worthy idea - pet project of a minister
such as more playgrounds, sports, music or facilities with a 60k grant
the council has then employed 2 people who use up that 60k to produce a report into what is needed - but of course have no money left to provide it
We've had years of promises and knack all provision
The Big Society would work if 60k was given direct to the people intending to use those facilities to buy in what they need
The missus set up a centre for disabled adults because the council wouldn't
So it can be done
bloody hard work though

That's of course not how it will work, which is to give Serco or capita 600k to produce that same report and still have no money left to provide the service

It means spin, spin, spin. Until we're all so busy and dizzy that you don't notice what an utter shambles of a government we've got

One huge confidence trick. A mealy mouthed phrase which encompasses every Tory's secret wish to destroy all vestige of the gains won by the working class since 1945.
They never forgave us for demanding our rightful place in the sun.

for me it says 2 things.

one is that the tories are no longer satisfied with lots of people working for minumum wage, they now want us to work for free. easy for a bunch of millionaires in government to say and do (of course whether any of them actually do it themselves is another matter) but pretty hard for the rest of us who struggle to make ends meet.

the other - big society is code for "privatise everything"

Big fat tenders for our business and "charity" friends.

The big society is where librarians are made redundant, then they use their now free time to volunteer to run the libraries they were once paid for.

I think the most generous interpretation is that one the one hand, “society” consists of more than autonomous individuals bouncing around off each other in a free market, and on the other hand that “society” is more than a big overweening state governing all human affairs. Probably too vague to be an “ideology” though.

It means making people do important jobs for no pay so the 1% can continue their greedfest

It's just all so Orwellian

Big Society is about the masses having to look after themselves because the rich don't want to part with any of their wealth.

When I watch Children in Need, I cry because there are causes begging for donations to stay open, say to help severely disabled kids have their quality fo life improved 300-400%. They shouldn't have to beg for that in our rich society. It should be funded. Schocking, disgraceful. Shame on every government politician for having no vision / guts over the years to change society for the better in this respect.

The Big Society is a way of undermining the minimum wage and excusing central government of the duty of care for its citizens so that the rich can pay less taxes.

Big Society:

Taking away the services our tax money pays for and telling us we have to pay again for them or provide them ourselves
We still get to pay the same tax mind

Relative to whom? Cameron believes it, no doubt, that's the terrifying thing, he believes Poundstretcher and Tesco can be part of it too; that neoliberal workhouses for the unemployed are all part of the packaging, just how Schumacher envisaged it to be?! To the rest of us? Other than politicians, I haven't heard anybody speak about the term without laughing, crying or ranting hysterically.

As a political term, Mr Cameron's 'Big Society' is not even particularly original, being a rather lame recycling of a term coined by President Lyndon B Johnson in the 'sixties: the 'Great Society'.

The two, however, are diametrically opposed in theory. Whereas Mr Cameron's Big Society seems to be based upon volunteerism (aka: Every Man for Himself!), Johnson's Great Society was an entire system of social and political reforms designed to do away with poverty and racial discrimination. It likewise aimed to foster the betterment of education and medicine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society

The big society is about sacking people from paid jobs, and then trying to get the jobs done instead by people who are dumb enough to do them for nothing, and so unlikely to be remotely competant at actually doing them.