Hands up who wants to join Dave's Big Society.

Apologies for not writing sooner - rather a hectic time at work.

I've spent the past few weeks trying to make out what I think of the Con-Dem coalition, and how far they should be rated on the Thatcher Hatred Scale. Today, David Cameron announced his 'Big Society' idea, calling it the 'greatest devolution of power' to the people ever. This largely seems to involve volunteering to run the soup kitchens the soon-to-increase numbers of jobless and homeless will need.

Is it a devolution of power? Of course it isn't. Centralised governments have absolutely no interest in actually giving real, tangible power to Joe Public. Instead, they are far keener on giving people more work for less money. By calling it 'volunteering', they're hoping to appeal to people's better side.

In fact, this sums up the profoundly cosmetic nature of the policies announced by this government so far. On the face of it, they all seem pretty good - seemingly communitarian, seeking to involve people at grass roots level in a variety of activities. However, they all rely on goodwill and require people to assume responsibility without wielding any real authority. The Conservative party is playing a long, careful game, hiding under the face of social concern, while getting on with what it likes doing best - saving the wealthy and not giving a damn for the weak, the poor, the ignorant, the unschooled.

However, it isn't entirely fair to solely blame the Tories. Fault lies also with the Labour party. The problem with the left wing is its desire to totally control and nanny everything. This was shown way back in '97, where every message and every speech by even the lowliest parliamentary activist was ruthlessly controlled. This need to have overarching power backfires spectacularly once things start to go wrong - the party falls apart in recriminations and in-fighting. The current leadership race is somewhat ridiculous, particularly the sight of the Milliband brothers trying to point out idealogical differences between each other, which mainly come down to which comic each one read as a kid (Beano or Dandy?). And once the Labour machine has broken down, it tends to stay broken for quite a while.

The Tories, by contrast, seek to minimise apparent government involvement while focusing power and control on select social groups. As long as they breathe gentle, acceptable polite words, they will stay in control. If you're middle class and slightly, but not too, worried about your income and the future, the siren call of Big Society, and the chance to (forgive the capitals) Control Your Destiny is rather appealing. In fact, it will be a case of I'm alright Jack. People who set up their own schools and schools that becoime academies will divert money away from other schools. This will exacerbate, not alleviate, the problem of failing schools. In other words, whole areas of towns and cities will become more or less educationally arid zones, where any child unfortunate enough to be born in the wring postcode zone will stand little chance of accessing a decent education. And if someone doesn't get an education, how can he or she be expected to understand their choices, rights, powers and responsibilities?

And so on to the Big Society. The main problem is that David Cameron seems to think that the whole of the UK is comprised of genteel villagers all eager to lend a hand at the village fete, erecting marquees, selling jam, running the tombola and whatnot. Running libraries, education services, housing services and so forth requires expertise, no matter how willing and eager the help. It comes down to power, basically. Now, don't get me wrong - volunteering is a good thing, and has a clear and valuable place. Unfortunately, this volunteering looks like it will be at the expense of people who be being paid for it. And what will happen to those areas where no-one wants to volunteer? What will happen to those areas of towns where people who have not had a good education or access to decent services decline to participate in the Big Society? Are we facing a situation where there are islands of happy participation floating in an ocean of no-go zones where people are left to drift helpless, bereft of direction and assistance?

If David Cameron (or the next Labour leader, or Nick Clegg, if he has the courage to break free from what is slowly proving to be a toxic coalition) is sincere about devolving power, then it should be genuinely so, not some cosmetic, patronising handing-down of a few paltry gobbets of central authority control. That would be a genuinely brave and almost unprecedented action in British politics. The problem is that real, local democracy is a long, tortuous and difficult process, but one that ends up yielding genuinely democratic decisions. Central government doesn't like this, simply because it's on a tight five-year timetable. All goverments have a vested interest in keeping people at least slightly anxious, if not downright afraid, in order to control the electorate and pursue their own agendas with little interruption. British democracy is, in reality, probably better described as an elective dictatorship, in that we willingly abrogate our own democratic voices in the cause of the speedy and convenient expidition of political decisions. So, if we do not engage locally in politics, if we do not raise our voices to question, if we do not involve ourselves with our schools, our communities, our councils, our neighbours, how then can we say that we are particularly democratic or even social?

In the end, if we do not seek to create our own Big Society, we will have some mellow-faced man with a shark's hunger impose his Big Society on us.

Bloody Elections... and cycling

I've avoided posting anything for the past week simply because so many other would be posting on the subject of the General Election results. By and large, it's been rather depressing - actually, seeing David Cameron's posho smug face outside no.10 tonight, very depressing. As an aside, will it be a requirement of all future PMs to have a sprog born in the Prime Ministerial residence from now on? First Blair, then Brown, now Cameron; it's like the British version of porphyrogenita.
 I don't know about you, but there is something utterly maddening about the current batch of Tories. The fact that three of them - Cameron, George Osborne (the newly-incumbent Chancellor), and Boris Johnson (Mayor of London)- were all in the Bullingdon Club at the same time seems suspect, but more irritatingly is their smug belief in their innate, almost god-given, right to govern others. Says bloody who? Cameron had only one or two short-term jobs prior to becoming a politician, selling advertising, and George has never held down a proper job in his whole life. What the hell makes them think they're bloody qualified to do a damn thing?
As for Nick Clegg - well, I think he was given a terrible choice, and he (and the Lib Dem leadership) chose terribly. Once the spending cuts and tax hikes that are inevitable are announced, they are hardly going to be popular. However, trying to be positive, if they are seen as full coalition members of goverment, they may provide a decent check on Tory policies.

Sorry, I thought I just saw a flying pig there.


OK, enough about politics for now. In other news, I cycled from Reading to Oxford via NCN route 5 (approx 40 miles) on sunday, doing it in three and a half hours. Far more enjoyable than trying to strangle a TV because David Cameron's face is on it. I will be atempting a 90-miler to Bath in June - I'll be whacking the link to a justgiving page on here soon.

And they're off!

So we have a month to the General Election. I think you can surmise, from previous entries, which way I'm likely to vote, but I still have my doubts. The problem is the manifestos published by each party - they're not all that inspiring. The BBC's web coverage already looks set to be excellent, and well worth checking out. Looking at the key priorities, Labour seem to be edging it in terms of stats to back up their targets. Both the Tories and the Lib Dems offer the scrapping of the ID card scheme, which is commendable, but hardly a key priority right now.
The trouble with the Tory manifesto is that it looks like it was scraped out of a Daily Mail editorial. It reads more like a wishlist than a set of concrete proposals. The most absurd, coming from my own career background, is the idea of Academy schools run by local communities and independent of local authority control. At first glance, it looks quite appealing - after all, it's the notion of communities helping themselves. Unfortunately, whoever dreamt this one up omitted to ask a very simple question: Why aren't local communities already investing themselves in the schools that already exist? Why not invest in them? In fact, I suspect the proposal is probably thoroughly unworkable. For starters, it would involve the diversion of budgets to establish the schools, whatever the Tories may say about private funding; Second, the chances of these academies ending up being run by private businesses or rich institutions with their own agendas is incredibly high. Public accountability would be limited (an opt-out school would not be subject to OFSTED inspections)- and don't we all want to know what happens to our children at school? Finally, I suspect that the whole scheme would eventually crumble - that, or we go back to a model of education that was discredited a long time ago.
Labour's Cancer notification plan is just an attention-grabber, and I suspect impossible to deliver within the time-frame of the next parliament. The same, probably, goes for the adoption of the Alternative voting system - any governement wishing to put through such a change to electoral procedure would need a solid majority.
The Lib Dems 'Identify £15bn of lower-priority spending and cut' is highly suspicious - define 'lower-priority spending'.
And this election is set to be the most personality-driven ever. So, based on what the potential PMs look and sound like, I'd say:
David Cameron: Posho Fake. Tony Blair Lite. Just does that sincere semi-frown thing like he's about to fart out a mini-turd of a policy
Nick Clegg: A man in search of someone who's got a mate who bought a dog off a bloke down the pub who knows where he can lay his hands on a nice bit of gravitas.
Gordon Brown: He's the bear, these are his woods, and damn if he isn't going to crap just where he likes.
And of course, all these politicos have to convince the electorate that they aren't bent, not like those expenses-fiddling lot last ti....oh, sorry, it was them, wasn't it?
If I were doing a campaign, I would start by this:
Each constituency candidate, in their publicity, states what their aims are,  both on a local level and on a party level. They limit this to just a few key items - whatever local issues there may be, and stuff like economy, defence etc.
Next, they state, explicitly, the steps required in order to achieve these aims, and the time frame required. next to this, they state as accurately as possible the amount of money required to complete these aims and each stage. That way, candidates can demonstrate a) value for money, and b) whether they're being fiscally realistic.
After all, good government comes out of good finances.