'THE BIG SOCIETY'...ON THE CHEAP,CHEAP.

The Big Society' is being unveiled by the Conservative/Lib-dem government, the main spokesperson being the Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, whose political campaign dream it was.


The largest society work force will be volunteers, any kind, from all age groups and educational levels. They will be volunteering instead of earning salaries; many will be building up C.V.'s of experience, to help them move on to what? More volunteering, training volunteers to volunteer, while remaining as a volunteer.  So, the big society will be a huge population of people in unpaid community activity. What is going to be the definition of activity in the community? 

When everyone has become a volunteer, managed and mentored by volunteers who in turn will likely be managed by paid directors, dying to skill up all these volunteers to take a director's role, (not on your life!) where will the government purse obtain its income from? 


You would expect that there has been government preparation for the daily survival for this massive army of unpaid people; of course you would if you were in charge of it.  There has to be a strategy, doesn't there, to run alongside the reconstruction - or is it destruction - of ways of earning a reasonable living, such as realistically remunerated employment opportunities.

 VOYEURISTIC  HEADLINE GRABBERS

As I wandered out of a store past the newspaper stand,  two  front page  headline 'view grabbers' as I call them, caught my eye. 

One 'grabber', a banner, boldly stated, " How I beat depression". At that moment, I could think of many possibilities for beating it, the main one being, don't buy newspapers, and especially, not that one.  If I was feeling down or seriously depressed, would I want to read a newspaper?

Under a rather nice smiling picture of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, in another daily rag,  a headline ran..."Diana, secret lover to marry".  The story, such as it might have been, (I did not seek it out) was to be found somewhere on the inside pages.   I snorted with disgust and went out of the store, into the wet night.  The media will stoop to anything,  by encouraging, even appealing to, voyeuristic tendencies,  to try to sell  its footage.