Recently in Big Society Category

Short of prattling "stick 'em in the army", David Cameron could not have reverted more to Tory type had he tried as he verbally attacked "Broken Britain" today.

The prime minister railed against "moral collapse" and promised an "all-out war" on gangs, along with threats to cut the benefits of looters (a bit of an assumption that they were claiming them), a pledge to review human rights and, in a bizarre Jeremy Clarkson-style connection of the disparate, a promise to rethink health and safety legislation.

Curiously, the Big Society did not feature. Margaret Thatcher as Tory leader was convinced there was no such thing as society. This one doesn't stop blabbing on about it.

But this was not a day for a big society, but a broken one. Or a Big Broken Society.

The question must be asked whether there is a role for the Big Society in Cameron's Broken Britain, the one where the streets combust, late-night shopping takes on a whole new meaning and police cower behind riot shields.

Or is Cameron's flagship social policy defined by a nation's townsfolk armed with brooms the mornings after the nights before and who symbolically sweep away the nation's ills under a metaphorical carpet? He will have us whistling happy tunes as a distraction from the flying rocks and rubble next.

Despite the bold words today, the prime minister offered little in the way of solutions, save benefits sanctions, but he had to make a speech and he made it.

Shame his boldness did not extend to the venue for his address. Tottenham, Croydon and Salford were all given a wide berth. Atop a soap box in Birmingham's Bull Ring centre would also appear to have been out of the question.

No, he sounded off from the safety of the Cotswolds, addressing the Chipping Norton set and its hangers-on in his Witney constituency, where Broken Britain presents itself in the occasional pinging of a copper's helmet.

At least he delivered his response from a youth centre, although, given the Oxfordshire location, he might as well have chosen a riding stables and turned up in jodhpurs.

Now, that's where Cameron's Big Society lives. And it is a heck of a long way from the Broken Society that he was referring to.

One of the most obdurate memories of the Thatcher years was the seemingly perpetual rise in homelessness, particularly among teenagers, many of whom became casualties of a ruthless change in the benefits system.

They arrived in London from other parts of the country to find the streets paved not with gold but with - literally - their fellow travellers. They remained on the streets because the hostels and refuges where they could otherwise have sheltered were either full or unsafe. 

Nearly a quarter of a century later, rough sleeping is on the increase again. The charity Broadway reports an 8% rise in the past year in the number of rough sleepers on the capital's streets, for example.

And some projects that try to reinvigorate the lives of homeless people - the voluntary groups that are David Cameron's epitome of the Big Society - are struggling.

One of these is the Salford-run Positive Lifestyles, a non-profit making charity. But its Supported Living centre for single men, Lancaster House, is under threat because of budget cuts by the Labour-run council.

Although the council insists no firm decision has been made, the charity is taking no chances and has launched a Save Lancaster House campaign on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (below).

The message is simple: shut Lancaster House and 38 people will be homeless.

What then? Thirty-eight more cases for Salford's adults' services? Or will the 38 just drift, 1980s-style, on to the streets to embark upon a life of anonymity?

Picture: Rex Features

In the end, there was just not enough time to spend on this Big Society malarkey.

Lord Wei, the government's relaunch tsar, has resigned his post as the government's Big Society adviser, in order to work for a charity, the Community Foundation Network.

Coming as it does so soon after David Cameron's re-re-relaunch, one has to wonder whether the Tory peer has a well drilled sense of irony.

Or perhaps Wei's experience is illustrative of a pressing problem of contemporary life: too few hours in the day, as he had already indicated.

Now the hunt is on for a replacement. But who? Who would you like to see running the Conservatives' flagship policy - if anyone?

Whichever way we look at it, it can only mean one thing for the Big Society: a re-re-re-relaunch.

It was the relaunch of the relaunch. The prime minister might deny it, but this Big Society shebang is enjoying more comebacks than Supertramp (pictured in 1975). 

David Cameron has been out again with his sandwich boards proclaiming a new beginning rather than the end is nigh, although it might be for public services.

With Barack Obama's visit to Ireland, the naming in parliament of the professional footballer at the centre of the superinjunction row, and a timely approach of a cloud of volcanic ash to obscure vision, these are good days to bury no news.

And no - or little - news is what it is. For Cameron's proposals possess all the verve, vigour and vim of Clement Attlee's second term of office.

As if auditioning to present BBC One's Masterchef, Cameron said: "This is about as gritty and important as it gets."

This grit and importance includes a proposal for cabinet ministers to give up one day of attempting to run (down) the country in order to undertake some voluntary work.

Perhaps one of his team would like to fill in my expenses form but it is more likely they will get down and dirty planting some trees for the Forestry Commission, an organisation they only recently considered abolishing. Whether they will be photographed awkwardly kicking a football around with some disadvantaged kids remains to be seen but they will have to remember to wear the shirt of the local football club, which is usually Manchester United. Except in Manchester.

Another proposal is for a White Paper to encourage charitable giving, with cashpoint machines already put forward as the method.

Donations have flatlined in recent years but it is at last recognised that lower-income groups give more than higher-income. A better case for redistribution of wealth through taxation I have yet to hear.

And that is basically it. Until the next relaunch.

Picture: Rex Features

We know it is wrong, even undignified, that some people have no option other than to depend on soup runs in order to survive. On that, there can be little disagreement with Tory-run Westminster Council.

But its plan to ban a charity-run soup kitchen on council land outside Westminster Cathedral (pictured) has more than a whiff of spite and nastiness. 

Oddly, the council's move is supported by some other homelessness charities, including Thames Reach and St Mungo's, although not the Coombe Trust, which provides the sustenance. 

Surprising is Thames Reach's reaction, which last year highlighted the shocking desperation of the rough sleepers who resorted to eating rats. It says street handouts do little to help in the long-term.

Westminster maintains that the soup runs "attract" homeless people to the borough, as if they were economic migrants. What will Westminster claim next? That there is selfish and excessive demand for gluten-free minestrone?

The basic human rights laid down by Unesco are food, clothing and shelter; the Coombe Trust aims to help fulfil the first of those. If Westminster, with the help of homelessness charities, fulfilled the third, the demand for the soup runs would reduce naturally.

Currently, the Coombe Trust is performing a duty which, one must assume, is very much in keeping with the ambitions of David Cameron's Big Society vision - a voluntary organisation doing the work that local authorities cannot be bothered or cannot afford to do.

But Westminster, which is attempting to give the impression of being cruel to be kind when it is just being cruel, is doing its best to kill the Big Society a mile from 10 Downing Street.

It's being strangled at birth on your doorstep, Dave, and even the Daily Mail is appalled. It must be bad.

Picture: Glenn Copus/Evening Standard/Rex Features

There really had to be more to the Big Society than the prospect of an army of busy-bodies bitching about who will stamp the library books and whose turn it is to wear the street gauleiter's armband.

And yesterday, on the pages of the Daily Telegraph, it came to pass.

David Cameron gave us another sneaky peek into his vision and admitted the social action to which he has repeatedly referred is very much subsidiary to a wider shake-up of the public sector. 

Moreover, the concept ties in with the Left's doomsday prophecy that the Big Society is code for cuts. And that means the public sector workforce.

In the article, the prime minister trails the forthcoming White Paper on public service reform which will release "the grip of state control" and put power in the hands of the people.

Then comes an important statement: "We will create a presumption - backed up by new rights and a new system of independent adjudication - that public services should be open to a range of providers competing to offer a better service."

Currently, public services are accountable either to the local authority responsible for them or to parliament, with either councillors or MPs answerable when things go pear-shaped.

Cameron's independent adjudication may go some way to addressing that, but the make-up of the committees or panels may prove to be about as effective as rail passenger groups: a great place for your annual cathartic explosion, but not much else.

All may not be lost. The Spectator muses on whether the Lib Dems could scupper the whole shebang. Yeah, right, I hear you say.

But, as the article points out, Nick Clegg has said that businesses would be barred from the right to bid for local public services. Charities and communities would be allowed to "but we will not extend that right to businesses".

It leaves the onus on David Cameron to urgently clarify whether he agrees with Nick in light of yesterday's newspaper article. Or perhaps we will just have to wait for his next drip-drip feed, courtesy of the Number 10 script writers.

In-the-know Tories shorten Big Society to a cuddly BS, a contraction that, by an unhappy coincidence, is also used as shorthand for a certain bovine emission. 

David Cameron's BS is thought to be in the first category and supporters and detractors were yesterday treated to the details of the prime minister's emission in life, or somesuch.

What is becoming clear is that the pro and anti camps are as far apart as they always have been, with the latter still appearing to be in the majority. Why, even the Conservative Party's house journal, the Daily Telegraph, is running articles that are far from slavishly behind Dave's grand projet.

Neil O'Brien, director of independent think-tank the Policy Exchange, says the basic premise is sound but he emphasises the importance of input from the third sector, particularly the big charities which have hitherto been, at best, agnostic towards the idea. They need to be taken to one side and educated, he seems to be saying. Education, education, education. Where have I heard that before?

Mary Riddell, meanwhile, in a commentary headed "There's no place in the Big Society for our forgotten older generation" says Cameron's moral crusade must tackle the funding of care for the elderly.

It's a timely point on the day that health service ombudsman Ann Abraham appeared on Radio 4's Today programme to discuss the inhumane way some older people are treated in the NHS, a subject covered in her report, Care and Compassion?.

But before the media is fully convinced of the Big Society - and even the Guardian today carried some praise for the principle - the public need reassurance that it is not a cover for cuts.

In a poll for the Independent on Sunday, 50% of respondents agreed with the proposition that the Big Society was a gimmick, with 14% disagreeing. They were nearly as cynical that it would generate empowerment and a culture of volunteerism.

It is quite a mission on which David Cameron has embarked and for the sake of his reputation he cannot abandon it now. So we are stuck with it, for better or for worse.

One other thing: perhaps I have missed something, but the Liberal Democrats have been shy in coming forward to offer their support for the Big Society. Or do they think it is a load of bull?

Did David Cameron change your mind yesterday about the Big Society? Let me know below.

Picture: Rex Features

In the past two months, our friends the banks have been in talks to help David Cameron launch his ambition to excuse the state of social responsibility, a policy known as the Big Society.