What's the big idea?

Wise Words: big

The word “big” has good and bad connotations. When I hear "big", I think of “brother”, as in George Orwell's 1948 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the society that Orwell describes in the novel, everyone is under complete surveillance by the authorities (known as Big Brother). Cameras are everywhere. The last time I was in London I noticed that cameras were everywhere, too. The UK has more closed-circuit TVs than any other country. It's no wonder I felt I was under surveillance all the time. Many of my friends complained that there were too many cameras. Only a few felt that the surveillance was good for society.

Society. This is a good word. It’s a word David Cameron, the British prime minister, would like us to think of in future when we hear the word “big”. And to prove it, he launched his pet project, the Big Society, yesterday. (Actually he re-launched it. He’s been talking about it for years but nobody has really paid any attention to it. That’s the thing with pet projects — it’s hard to give them up even if nobody wants to know about them.)

What’s the big idea behind the Big Society? Cameron wants the British to stop seeing the UK government as someone who is watching over them, taking care of every little detail in their lives and running everything. He wants “big” to have new and better connotations. Big, to Cameron, doesn’t mean Big Brother; it means bigger and greater individual responsibilities for everyone. His project would mean taking the power that people associate with big government — Big-Brother-like surveillance, bureaucracy and control — and replacing it with decentralized government, with people taking over the running of their own affairs locally.

In his speech yesterday, Cameron explained his project in more detail. So, what’s the Big Society about?

"You can call it liberalism. You can call it empowerment. You can call it freedom. You can call it responsibility. I call it the Big Society. The Big Society is about a huge culture change — where people, in their everyday lives, in their homes, in their neighbourhoods, in their workplace – don't always turn to officials, local authorities or central government for answers to the problems they face but instead feel both free and powerful enough to help themselves and their own communities."

That all sounds very noble. But it’s already happening in many areas. Then he added:

"The success of the Big Society will depend on the daily decisions of millions of people – on them giving their time, effort, even money, to causes around them. So government cannot remain neutral on that – it must foster and support a new culture of voluntarism, philanthropy, social action."

So, Cameron wants people to invest time and money in the Big Society. And what will Cameron do with all this philanthropy and volunteerism? He’s planning to cut public services.

"We've got to get rid of the centralised bureaucracy that wastes money and undermines morale. And in its place we've got give professionals much more freedom, and open up public services to new providers like charities, social enterprises and private companies so we get more innovation, diversity and responsiveness."

I think we are on to a really big idea, a really exciting future for our country and today, I hope, is one more big step towards that."

Never mind “big idea”,"big step” or Big Society. Here’s another word that goes well with “big”: lie. I think it’s just a big lie.

The Big Society will work out fine for the upper-middle classes who have the money and time to spend on the things that are important to them. For many others (including many who are disabled, unemployed or elderly) who depend on public services for their everyday needs, the Big Society could turn into one big problem.