I only half-joke that the Big Society should be called “BS” for short. Fortunately, Andy Westwood provides a more robust analysis of the Tories’ big idea:
[T]here’s the massive challenge that the Tories haven’t yet acknowledged: social capital and the Big Society will always be stronger in better off places… Much more important is whether building social capital and/or the Big Society can help to turn more deprived or just less well off communities around. Places that have been increasingly dislocated from the prosperity experienced elsewhere. owns and neighbourhoods with poor health, low skills, inadequate housing and transport and high levels of dereliction, deprivation, unemployment and crime. Mining or industrial towns, seaside resorts, inner cities.
And this is where Cameron’s argument falls apart.
Do read the rest.
arbitrary constant 