Big Society - big deal!

20 Jul 2010 Voices

New blogger Gordon Hunter is dismayed by all the fuss over the Big Society.

New blogger Gordon Hunter is dismayed by all the fuss over the Big Society. 

It’s a harmless concept, nothing new, just a recycling of self-help. Couldn’t all those busy 12-year-olds in the Cabinet Office come up with something crisp and new to pad out the backs of their fag packets?  I've had a few ideas of my own:

 

  • We could sack half the councils' 5,000 'community engagement officers' to pay for tax rebates in return for payroll giving (why is it that just 3.2 per cent of Brits give this way compared to 35 per cent of Americans?).
  • We should impose a maximum wage - nobody should earn more than me!
  • We ought to give unclaimed betting wins to local communities.
  • We might impose an obesity tax whereby you pay more per mars bar based on body mass index – then Mars donate extra revenue to healthy eating campaigns.
  • We must do something sensible with dormant accounts:  local community banks making grassroots grants rather than the clueless 'Big Society Wholesale Bank' with its fan club of retailers and venture capitalists punting loans to the starving.

Let’s hear it for innovation.

Gordon Hunter (pictured) is the founder and director of the Lincolnshire Community Foundation

 

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