The Red Tories’ “Big Society”
So far, David Cameron’s domestic agenda sounds pretty darn good.
Will
Will writes from Washington, D.C. (well, Arlington, Virginia). You can reach him at willblogcorrespondence at gmail dot com.
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Ah yeah- I was going to post something about that. See also: this week’s Economist cover story.Report
I get the sense they’re overestimating the amount of time the average person has for volunteering – while I’d love to believe that getting rid of museum workers and the like would just mean volunteers would fill in for them, it’s more likely to just make the museums stop functioning. And volunteer policemen and firefighters? Those jobs really do require a fair amount of training.
The “Big Society” seems to suffer from the same misconception that many idealistic left-wingers have had over the years – that regular people will do a lot of extra work without any economic incentive.Report
@Katherine, It’ll work for some things. Finally allowing proper charter schools for example will be effective, although its much more likely to be used by middle class families to get their kids of out schools shared with poorer neighbourhoods than by actual poor people.
The deal with the volunteer firemen and police, by the way, is that they don’t do the really tough stuff, but they free up professionals to do it. Both programmes were (whisper it quietly) introduced by Labour.Report