Tuesday, 20 July 2010

Neighbourly encounters #47

Debbie is a natural blogger, with a dry humour for some tough stuff. Read her story about drunk neighbours helping carry her laundry.

20 Jul 2010 07:55:36 | Vignettes

The comments to this entry are closed.

NEXT POST
Overselling Big Society What Big Society needs at this stage is quiet accumulation. It definitely didn't need over-earnest overselling, but these folk don't do subtlety. Not smart. Thanks to my old friend Martin for drawing my attention to these suggestions for David Cameron as he stomps on the foot-pump at the Flat Tyre of Society, including: 'What with all the wossnames of the modern world and that, and what with me now apparently having to stay on at work until at least six months after I actually die of old age, Time is definately a factor here... '...stop passing the responsibility onto us, and keep it for yourself - after all, a few people all said that you can have it earlier this year. It was May. I know that for an actual fact 'cos I saw it on the telly. Stop pretending it's the blitz at that we should all just jolly well roll our sleeves up an muck in, there's a good chap. I mean - yes, say hullo to the neighbours and don't actually spit at anyone, but - I've got to teach geography or something at a hand-made school now, have I?'
PREVIOUS POST
Little moral pillowfight Last week's BBC R4 Moral Maze programme on Big Society featured a kind of moral pillow fight with Michael Portillo, Melanie Philips, Matthew Taylor, and Claire Fox trying to score points without choking on clouds of intellectual feathers. Community activist Silla Carron was given the chance to set the scene and did so with a welcome unpretentiousness. But Big Soc is an unwieldy cluster of concepts and the conversation was bounced from all directions with issues like welfare dependency and the crowding out hypothesis, the perceived failure of redistributive policies, class-differences in volunteering, and so on. Claire Fox's concern that the state might be micro-managing us made it seem like she was lashing out with the left while coshing herself with the right. Her interpretation of Big Society is that it means the state setting up baby-sitting networks and telling us to organise street parties - 'somebody else organising us to be neighbourly'. One of the witnesses, Mark Littlewood, was concerned that BS does not go far enough in 'getting away from the idea that the state bestows on us;' but Nick Pearce was 'sceptical of the claim that if the state is strong, communities are weak.' You'd expect Phillip Blond to be a formidable opponent in this arena. He noted that the state as provider is a bankrupt model and argued for economic decentralisation and 'budgetary capturing for the poor'; but the soft furnishing was mostly thrashed about elsewhere. All good clean fun though you can be sure. Mathew Taylor pointed out that we are not all equally able to contribute to this new moral culture, and argued gently that 'voluntary efforts work best when you have an effective state'. He too dodged most of the buffeting. Portillo meanwhile appeared to try and clobber everyone with some kind of intellectual mattress whose weight he seemed unable to lift until, at the end, he brought the house down by referring to Margaret Thatcher as a guru. This was even more unworthy than hearing Melanie Phillips matronise us thus: 'there are people who are not religious who are good people.' Why that's so wise and reassuring ma'am. Thanks to Ben Lee for the headsup.

Kevin Harris

Search

My Other Accounts

Recent Comments