DCWoody
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Joined: 10/27/2006
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David Cameron has been going on, in ways which don't come across clearly via mass medias desire to bung everything into 30 second explanations, about 'The Big Society' for years now, and it was the main positive campaign piece of his 2010 General Election campaign.
As he's now Prime Minister, I suppose ya have to declare his campaign a success.....but it certainly seemed like a very unsuccessful sorta success at the time....and a large part of that is that most people don't have a clue what The Big Society is, and it sounds like a ridiculous buzzword. Buzzphrase. If he'd just have said he wanted to ease up on the bureaucracy that hinders people/groups getting involved in their local community, it'd be all well and good...but everything has to have a title these days. And The Big Society sounds, to my ears.......well, it sounds like it reads The Guardian every damn day. As a consequence of this, and of Labour forces purposefully misunderstand & misrepresenting what TBS is supposed to be, and of Conservatives trying to give the impression that it'll help ease 'the cuts'.....lotta peoples understanding of TBS is as vague, and almost as wrong, as peoples understanding of socialism.
Many people have said, after trying to work it out....that when you get down to it the governments encouragement of TBS is a good thing, but boy is it being overegged....but the ideological conflict is being much overlooked.
The Peoples Dover Port Scheme (or whatever it's called) is a good example of what I'm talking about. Conservative MP for Dover, Charlie Elphicke has thrown his weight behind it.....now, it needs to be mentioned at this point that unless Elphicke is a man of considerably more resource than I think (which is no insult intended to him, he does seem to be a reasonably competent well meaning guy), he's going to be embarrased when the scheme fails at the first hurdle....there are a variety of large problems with the plan, not least of which is not having half as much money as needed, which make it a doomed from the start project that isn't going anywhere.
However for the purposes of this post, the incoming failure of the much-held-aloft Peoples Port of Dover Trust Scheme Thing (I should perhaps google what it's called, but....meh), is not the problem......the problem is that this-sort-of-thing is a prime example, according to the Conservative Party, championed in this specific by a newly elected Conservative Member of Parliament, of The Big Society....and even if this example is going to fall on its face, some other, similar, schemes.....are bound to work, the general principle is sound.
The problem is, that when you get down to it, the Dover Peoples Port Scheme is asking for the government to transfer ownership of the port of Dover to a benevolent company which would be collectively owned by the citizens of Dover,.....the idea being that the port is a common resource which should be run to benefit Dover & its people, not some private investment group.
And that, is socialism.
< Message edited by DCWoody -- 2/28/2011 2:50:49 PM >
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