Anyone want to run a hospital? No, oddly enough....

By David Higgerson on Jul 21, 10 06:15 PM

SO, who believes in Big Society now? Or perhaps the question should be: Who understands what the Big Society is?

David Cameron's speech in Liverpool on Monday was certainly evangelical - but will anyone respond?

The unions did - they called it the Big Cop Out. They smell a rat, unsurprisingly, and it doesn't take a genus (although the unions will probably consider that's what needed, along with several health and safety officers for a pre-genius assessment) to work out that jobs may go as a result.

But as a result of what? The message at the moment appears to be little more than encouragement for people to come forward snd say they'd like to run as a volunteer group. If there is a hitlist of services the government says it wants run by the voluntary sector, then it's not been made public yet.

And who is going to volunteer to do something such as cleaning the streets, or delivering meals on wheels for the council for as long as the public sector offers the service?

A brief glimpse into the future may already have taken place at Blackburn with Darwen Council which, faced with the savage budget cuts from government, it proposed to close one of its sports centres. Not unreasonably, there was a public backlash, to which the council leader, an affable Tory, said if people wanted it so much they should help run it.

As it turned out, the neighbouring school has stepped forward to run the sports centre - but the swimming pool will still close.

This, I suspect, is where the Big Society will take us. The cuts may not come directly from government, but as the pinch is felt further down the line, the retort will be 'want to keep it? Do it yourself.'

Cameron has set the stage for this - and dressed it up rather nicely. But I fear it will take more than a Cameron vision of Utopia to encourage people to do more for the community - largely thanks to the 1980s me, me, me culture promoted by the Tories back in the day.