We can look forward to a week of hard selling of PRDave’s pet project. Yes, the Big Society is due for a re-launch (with extra money can you believe) and to start it off Francis Maude appeared on TV’s Politics Show today to explain exactly what it comprises. Sorry, having already suffered from an appearance of Simon Hughes who has the unpaid and unannounced job of chief fence sitter, it was rather difficult to focus on a drizzle of words uttered by an expressionless and humourless successor to Max Headroom (look it up on Google all you unbelievers). I-Player anyone?
At least he didn’t mention the Royal W for which PRDave (acting in his I’ll get us the World Cup mode) found £50m to support “the event to sell Britain as the perfect tourist destination” Of course while Tories are happy to play with money, they have no idea where it comes from or what it means to you and me, or so they say, but a bit of research would have told them that the number of visitors to Britain has had a monotonous tendency to decrease in the years these splendorous events take place. Probably all those would-be tourists stay at home in Cincinnati and Shanghai and this time, will watch the high-lights on television, after a starter DVD of The King's Speech, just to get a handle on that English culture thing.
Concerned about the exact meaning of the Big Society, the editors of the Oxford Dictionary are biding their time, but it hasn’t stopped the House of Commons doing it’s bit by considering “renting itself out for weddings and corporate dos.” Perhaps it’s PRDave’s idea to encourage marriage and at the same time support business.
And while PRDave is authorising millions on the Pope’s visit and the Royal W, his communities minister is telling councils that they mustn’t publish more than 4 newsletters a year. You know, they arrive mysteriously through the letter box, pretend newspapers that tell us nothing useful, but boast how kind your council is. Of course Pickles doesn’t really care that this directive, which has all sorts of attached criteria about content, is an affront to something called localism. His only concern is to stop those troublesome lefty councils from telling us in print how nasty he and his cuts are. Perhaps he got the idea from another would be Pharaoh, sorry ex.....!
You have by now realised that this is being written in a kind of anger. “Its all very well” I here you say, but what can be done? Ian Jack who is a very perceptive writer and analyst, commented on the popular “ it makes me so angry” response to bankers in an article in the Guardian on Saturday
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/12/ian-jack-anger-rich-people/print
His focus on the increasingly obscene gap between rich and poor in India is particularly chilling.
His focus on the increasingly obscene gap between rich and poor in India is particularly chilling.
I don’t know if there is a Big Society in India, but it’s rather disturbing to hear ex Archbishops quoted as claiming that they (meaning their ex-employer) has been doing it for 2000 years
Still PRDave is on to it. Even before Jack’s article PRDave was telling us from the distant shores of Munich (well Bavaria has some rather nice lakes) that no good had come of policies that encouraged state multiculturalism. This of course made a lot of people angry, but made good headlines in the Mail. The French of course who had travelled over the border to debate terrorism had no idea what he was talking about. However PRDave was saved as the English Defence League and the National Front voiced as one that PRDave was now on their wavelength.
And so you ask where does the Truth lie? Ben Goldacre again in Saturday's Guardian just about sums it up as far as health reforms are concerned.
No comments:
Post a Comment