The Notorious B.I.G..

Some people seem to find this "big society" idea confusing. I can't think why - it's quite simple:

Problem - the public finances are in a mess, because the last government had to:

a) bail out a lot of financial institutions that failed due to the collapse of the speculative bubble that they created

and

b) pump a lot of money into the economy to stop the resulting recession tipping over into depression.

Solution - balance the books by quickly cutting public services and making lots of people in the public sector unemployed (the crisis wasn't caused by these people, but they need to suffer because we're all in this together). This might be unpopular with some people, but with a bit of clever PR, you can make everybody else resent and hate public sector workers by pointing out that, although generally on modest pay, these people might occasionally have half way decent terms and conditions or even a pension that isn't just a worthless piece of junk flogged by some weasel-faced commission monkey, (the Tories and their little helpers, of course, don't do the politics of envy).

Inconveniently, a lot of public sector workers actually do useful things and people might miss some of the services they provide. No problem - after all, in these hard times there are plenty of under-employed people with way too much time on their hands (soon to be joined by many more unemployed ex-public sector workers). Why wouldn't these people want to step in and provide useful public services, in their own time for no payment? After all it's about time some radical free-market think tankers fearlessly questioned people's selfish notion that they should actually get paid for doing something useful. What's wrong with these dreadful oiks - don't they know that it's terribly common to go on about money?

Fortunately, the state can grab a nice little pot of other people's money to get this spiffy free market idea off the ground. What could possibly go wrong?

Given that "the big society" is such an rigorous, consistent and foolproof idea, it's astonishing how some people still don't get it:

Here’s a tip Dave…pay people to do the jobs that need doing and take the money to pay them with from your banksta pals! Surely they would be pleased to “volunteer” their surplus cash!

writes Harpymarx - like, DUR!