Big Society or Bigfoot?

[SayidSomal]

Well, you all heard of Mr Cameron 's speech or as some have called it his multiculturalism obituary and how clear it was - in his opinion at least - definitions and failures and particularly his blame that it all failed because of Muslims.

 

Now - you must have also heard at least once or twice - his utterance of the words 'Big Society' and attempts of sorts at explaining what it is. If so, has any one here in SOL know what it is and its implications on Somalis and their cash-cows "Community Associations"??

 

If know let us know....thanks

[SayidSomal]

I still don't get it ..........

The Big Society is a society in which individual citizens feel big: big in terms of being supported and enabled; having real and regular influence; being capable of creating change in their neighbourhood. Does our society pass this test at the moment?

 

Well, only 4 out of 10 of us believe that we can influence local decisions. Only 1 in 33 of us attend public meetings. We feel anger and frustration at the recent behaviour of both the City and Westminster and relatively powerless to change them. We are often anonymous tax-payers without a real sense of how our money gets spent. Most of us try to be reasonably good citizens but our influence seems very small.

 

The Big Society is a powerful vision to change this, creating a nation of empowered citizens and communities. It has been articulated by Prime Minister David Cameron, but is linked to some of the best ideas across the political spectrum.

 

People have interpreted the ideas and vision in different ways,

but we see the core of the big society as three principles:

 

Empowering individuals and communities

: Decentralising and redistributing power not just from Whitehall to local government, but also directly to communities, neighbourhoods and individuals

Encouraging social responsibility:

Encouraging organisations and individuals to get involved in social action, whether small neighbourly activities like hosting a Big Lunch to large collective actions like saving the local post office

Creating an enabling and accountable state

: Transforming government action from top-down micromanagement and one-size-fits-all solutions to a flexible approach defined by transparency, payment by results, and support for social enterprise and cooperatives

Big Society Action

 

This is a bottom-up vision, not a government program dictated from the state to citizens. Big Society is about a cultural change where people “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.”

 

As the

Big Society Networ

k, we are just one small component of the diverse range of local groups, social organisations and individual actions that define ‘big society’.

There are 900,000 to 1 million community groups in this country and an estimated 238,000 social entrepreneurs

.

There are countless charities and voluntary organisations, many of which are small and local. These groups are the Big Society in action and have been for many years.

Without their work, the UK couldn’t function, and we see the Network’s role as signposting, supporting and strengthening them.

 

Big Society Policy

 

The government has, however, articulated a range of policies to support this vision. An overview can be found here and here. Nick Hurd MP is the Minister for Civil Society and Lord Wei is the Prime Minister’s Adviser on Big Society.

 

Flagship policies include the

Big Society Bank

, which will help finance social enterprises, charities and voluntary groups; the training of 5,000 new community organisers; and the creation of a

National Citizen Service

program. Other key policy reforms include the

Localism Bill

, which will reform the planning system to empower neighbourhoods, and reforms to enable public service employees to form independent employee-owned co-operatives.

[Valenteenah.]

Basically they want volunteers and groups to offer the services that councils and agencies now do, so they can save the money. Our council wants to close some library services because no groups came foward to run these services for free. Honestly.

 

What concerns me more is giving so much funds directly to GPs. It's hard enough to get those incompetent doctors to refer you to a specialist when it's not coming out of their pocket, let alone when they have the say-so on how the money is spent.

[NGONGE]

The whole thing is going to crash and burn in no time at all and without the involvemnet (or otherwise) of Muslims or other "cultures". Such policies of one-size-fits-all often do.

[SayidSomal]

the rumour mill is abound with conspiracies - one being - in order for groups to get funding under this scheme - they have to sign to certain principles - e.g:

- Gays are Good (for everybody)

- Israel has right to exist (for the Arabs)

- there is no honour in honour killing (for the Indian sub-continent)

- Clan is everything (for the Somalis)

 

 

on serious note - apparently this is a scheme to stifle the funding of Muslim charities and associations unless they ascribe to certain principles that are packaged as being British

[NGONGE]

^^ Doubt it. It's all about cuts and how to hide them away behind some 'noble' cause.

[Alpha Blondy]

As one of the foremost experts on multiculturalism, I will give my opinion on this urgent matter very soon.

[SayidSomal]

Ngonge - what do you doubt?

Agree about the cuts - hence would make sense to put stipulations that would ensure majority of the said funds would never be paid - on account of people not selling their soul for half baked bread.

 

oh blondy - P.O. will you - or better yet - go an answer those questions - Haddii kale Hargaysa ......:....BRDG.......

[Alpha Blondy]

Alpha Blondy;694997 wrote:

As one of the foremost experts on multiculturalism, I will give my opinion on this urgent matter very soon.

ah, yes!

 

big society, as a policy initiative is both innovative and timely but its been ineptly named. perhaps, the reason why its caused confusion among some people, particularly sayid.

 

as i understand it - big society, in laymen terms, means building a collective but independent society so that individuals are empowered and encouraged to take back the ability to control their own lives, without hindrance, from politicians and so called community associations.

 

indeed, this is a positive idea that should be welcomed. it encourages transparency and makes those who hold public office accountable to the electorate. its quite clear, from the very outset, that an idea like 'big society' might be considered a typical conservative attempt to reduce public spending but i beg to differ.

 

big society promotes civil responsibly and gives individuals the mandate to take an active role in the community, by as it were, cutting out the middle men - which was new labour hyperbole. labour was responsible for wasting vast amounts of public finances on bureaucracy in the process impeding efficiency. clearly, by devolving more power to local people allows them to make rational choices in how resources are allocated and indeed implemented. all in all, this would encourage somalis to take on more civic responsibilities. this would, no doubt, allow them to feel more integrated and foster a new wave of somalis who hold so-called ''community associations'' accountable. somalis have now been in the the uk for a while, yet it seems, at least from the time I lasted visited the UK, they were a community in a state of flux. they seem unsettled, neglected and fragmented both in attitude and orientation.

 

Being part of a big society will allow them to break the shackles which have continually acted as obstacles to their collective will and indeed their aspirations.

[N.O.R.F]

Walee UK waxbaa haysta. This Eton boy hasn't done a hard days work in his life. He is an appeaser and has never had a policy he came up with himself. He is the prostitute of corporations (they all are but he takes the piss).

[AYOUB]

Empowering individuals and communities

: Decentralising and redistributing power not just from Whitehall to local government, but also directly to communities, neighbourhoods and individuals

There you go. The local Somali Komunity will have a Sherif with a stinking badge and a budh. Out with the multi culture, in comes multi fracture. We didn't land on Qardho Rocks, Qardho Rocks will land on us! It will be Eid everyday folks from Burco and Qardho.

 

The rest of the Con-Dem policies will be laughing stock, just like Major's Back to Basics. He should have played reverse psychology (like Mrs T) declared "there no such a thing like Society". The out-raged Great British Publicans would have rolled their sleeves to prove otherwise.