Big Society and Dystopia repost

Growing up, those twin essential devices from stopping healthy developmental play in the fresh air; foxed-to-the-point-of-badgered library books and terrifying BBC children’s drama, provided essential preparation for what to expect from the dystopian future.

If you read the books of John Christopher, dystopia came in the form of some sort of disaster that set technology levels back to those of the dark ages (alien invasion, mankind tinkering with nature, everyone on the planet simultaneously joining Civil War re-enactment societies, that sort of thing), while the BBC’s Bleak Future was essentially far muddier then the present, being a place where the appearance of a steam engine was greeted with exactly the sort of slack-jawed mixture of fear and awe currently on the faces of the kiddies being traumatised by this tea-time apocalyptic drama, filmed in the West Midlands to save money.

The drama conveyed to kiddies with some style that when they grew up there would be more chance of them being a subsistence farmer than a spaceman* and, most brutally of all, ‘Angel Delight’ would no longer existed.

What was never predicted (along with mobile ‘phone ring tones so irritating it makes you wonder if perhaps the plot of some of these stories: that advanced technology is jealously guarded by a social elite or at least people with taste, is not in fact a good idea) was the solution proposed by politicians to head off a future where the fabric of society is as ragged as a pair of Primark pants after a boil wash: the Big Society.

The Big Society is not, as you might think, Brobdingnag, but rather a model for the future of community services. Essentially funding is slashed for supporting council services and the people who rely on those services are told to ‘get on with it’, much in the way the same phrase is used when you are locked in your study with a bottle of scotch and a service revolver after you have lost a rather important battle or, worse still, committed social suicide by tonguing an unsuitable minor royal.

The Big Society suffered a set-back this week when Liverpool Council announced that they didn’t want to be considered part of the pilot for an idea thought up by posh boys, but instead were quite content to continue to be considered as a city of lovable rogues, chirpy female flatmates or, of course, lesbian patio-layers (might be getting that last one a bit confused).

A ‘pilot’ by the way is where you don't have enough confidence to roll out an ill-conceived scheme nationally and so do it in a few backwater areas. So, when it bombs like a fat kid jumping into a swimming pool, you can explain that either the idea needs work or the bloody yokels in charge of the pilot couldn't be trusted to run a car boot stall, never mind a complex social experiment and anyway, next time the posters will be better).

The gist of the Big Society is that English people, who by tradition would all like to live in castles with moats far from any neighbours and by practice only really talk to their neighbours if they are caught dumping their garden waste over the fence, are supposed to take a community approach and look after things like keeping the streets tidy and, no doubt when the cuts to public services really start to bite, other jobs currently undertaken by trained professionals including; maintaining parks (we can graze our sheep on them when we're all reduced to subsistence farming), health care (who needs doctors now we have the internet - what's easier, seven years at medical school or Googling 'tickly cough'?), or air traffic control.

What certainly won’t be needed are civic poo scoopers. This is thanks to the invention of the doggie bag. Certainly not to be confused with a device used to transport expensive leftovers from a restaurant (itself an alien concept to anyone brought up to believe that not scraping the plate at the Berni Inn until the last morsel of food, and quite a lot of the pattern, was removed was a sin), but a bag full of Scoobie Poo. Thanks to resilient, hole-free (and that’s important), plastic bags, owners of defecating hounds can now swoop with the speed of a cockle-picker racing the tide and simultaneously bag the unthinkable and make a mental note to stop feeding Fido leftover masala.

*Ironically, this is true, if by subsistence level farmer you mean owner of a boutique farm in the Cotswolds producing some sort of organic cheese and pork scratching smoothie concoction that is perversely popular in Japan, sells for a fortune at farmers’ markets and has just been picked up for national distribution by Waitrose.

The Big Society

Our council is, apparently, a Big Society pilot area. I have no idea what Big Society is but I know what a pilot scheme is; it's where you don't have enough confidence tho roll out an ill-conceived scheme nationally and so do it in a few backwater areas and, when it bombs like a fat kid jumping into a swimming pool, explain that either the idea needs work or the bloody yokels in charge of the pilot couldn't be trusted to run a car boot stall, never mind a complex social experiment and anyway, next time the posters will be better.

So what, exactly is the Big Society? Well, it's the lynchpin Conservative policy that is, apparently, so brilliant that nobody can quite explain it. I think the gist of it is however that English people, who by tradition would all like to live in castles with moats far from any neighbours and by practice only really talk to their neighbours if they are caught dumping their garden waste over the fence, are supposed to take a community approach and look after things like keeping the streets tidy and, no doubt when the cuts to public services really start to bite, policing them too. You can tell that Big Society is a policy and not just an idea because it's capitalised, which ironically much of public spending is not.

In short it's an idea for avoiding a bloodbath following the spending cuts by expecting volunteers to do all the work. Crucially, this ignores the fact that most people who try to organise things in neighbourhoods are self-appointed irritants, usually in cardigans, with very fixed ideas about serving booze at street parties.

The Big Society (and it really is a load of BS) pilot has manifested itself on the streets with the arrival of, of all things, grit bins. That's right, every street now has a large yellow receptacle full of salt.

And each one is numbered. My first reaction, I'm ashamed to admit, was not to applaud this initiative (remembering last winter I realise that ready access to grit is a bloody good idea, but in all honesty I rather like the idea of it being sprayed from the back of a lorry or shovelled by a couple of blokes with fluorescent jackets while I observe proceedings from the safety of a pub while 'working from home' on a snow day), but to think what a good little project it would be to photograph them all, collect the set as it were.

This is as close to autism as you can get without actually being called 'Rain Man' by your friends, but let's not worry about that now.

The idea, of course, is that come the first snowfall, everyone grabs their shovel and heads for the nearest bin. We grit our own paths and roads and the transport infrastructure is safe. Hoorah. Of course, the thing to do is to get out there now, in the dead of night (currently 4.30pm in these wintry days) and load the contents of the nearest bins into a bin bag for stockpiling in your shed. This can then be sold on to neighbours for a pound a scoop when the first flake hits the floor and the inevitable panic starts or, even better, sold back to the council when their grit stocks expire, probably on day two of any snowy weather.

So that's big society; hoards of happy residents gritting their drives and the areas of the pavement just outside their drives where they accidentally spray grit in their enthusiasm, and looking at the pristine snow that covers the world beyond their drive, muttering darkly about council tax and whiling away their time mentally composing outraged letters that froth with indignation for the local paper.

But why stop at gritting? Other jobs currently undertaken by trained professionals that could be done by the public include maintaining parks (we can graze our sheep on them when we're all reduced to subsistence level living), health care (who needs doctors now we have the internet - what's easier, seven years at medical school or Googling 'nasty cough'?), or air traffic control.

Council grittier used to be grossly inappropriate rhyming slang for posterior, now it's not even an occupation or vocation, it's recreation.