After spending an hour with Nick Hurd, Robert Ashton is certain the Big Society will take root, though not before the next election.
We’re all familiar with the moment you feel that sudden squelch under your foot. It usually marks the turning point in your day. You know that however smartly-attired and however much in a rush, you now need to take time off to remove some dog shit from your shoe. Like the worst social disease, it’s easy to catch and often surprisingly difficult to eradicate. Just when you think you’re in the clear, that familiar whiff creeps out of a so far un-purged seam or tread.
My now grown-up children were good at finding the stuff. It would appear on their shoes in the street and their fingers and clothes on the beach. Pushchair wheels could spread it to the furthest recesses of a car boot, from where it would permeate the whole car for weeks, lingering under my nose long after the physical evidence had been removed with forensic accuracy.
Today though, dog poo on your shoe is a fairly rare occurrence. That’s because all but the most Neanderthal of dog owners scoops their pooch poop into a little bag and pops it in the nearest bin.
And so it is with Big Society. Just as it’s taken a decade for cleaning up after your dog to become the norm, so too will many of the currently unpalatable tasks we’re all being expected to take on, take time to become habit. Social responsibility, taking pride in your neighbourhood and yes, volunteering are for many folk alien concepts. The transition from selfish to selfless cannot take place in 12 months. It’ll take longer than the government has got before the next general election. But happen I’m sure it will.
Last week I spent an hour with Nick Hurd, the man in the driving seat of all this social change. He was keen to hear first-hand some of my stories from the coalface of Big Society. The successful partnerships I have brokered; the ways I’ve helped councils to see things differently and the way some folk are just digging in their heels and waiting for it all to blow over.
But what we’re seeing is not a passing storm. Whichever way you look at it, the blend of massive national and consumer debt, an ageing population and a weak economy mean we’re at the end of an era on excess. I’m old enough to remember the time before everyone had a car, TV and central heating. This was also a time when winter jumpers were lovingly hand-knitted, socks were darned and winter chilblains as common as dog turds on the pavement.
Those days will never return and poverty today is comparatively luxurious unless you find yourself on the street. But the fact is that expectations and behaviours have to change. Indeed they already are, but not fast enough to give comfort to the government. In truth, all they have to do is wait and stop worrying. Big Society, which I now prefer to call the Big Reality, is emerging. My message to you is simple. It’s now time to stop looking where you’re walking and start walking where you’re looking!
