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Assuming councils have to cut some services, where does the axe fall?

An article on The Guardian website written by the Conservative leader of Oxfordshire Council, Keith Mitchell, suggests libraries.

However, the bookish county has risen up, with its literati adding their outrage to the general disapproval. 

Understandable, too. Morally, libraries should not shut, particularly as UK literacy rates continue to be a concern.

As a side issue, is not the running of them by volunteers one of the prime functions of a Big Society?

However, back to the point: cuts there will be. And Mitchell says it is better to cut library services than social care, although he would do well to remember that in February his council did vote for "savings" of £119m in adult care over four years.

Nevertheless, it was encouraging to read an article by someone who has a bit of reputation for verbalising what the right of the Tory party thinks actually speaking up for social care.

He ends the article: "Everyone involved in social care has a critical role to raise the public profile of social care. I am afraid the village shop, school, pub and library will always score highly with electors because of their visibility while the importance of social care will remain invisible to most electors until they or their loved ones need it."

Convinced? Let me know below.

Picture: Rex Features

Innocent times. How often have we heard those two words, an exercise in retrospection, uttered by a speaker from behind rose-tinted specs?

Innocent times: when hospital consultants were doctors who wore bow ties rather than accountants wielding red pens; when the radio news was read by men in dinner jackets and the (dreaded) commercial radio "weathergirl" was as distant a prospect as a neutrino breaking Einstein's speed limit; when you could "leave your front door open". Enough, before I ruminate about old maids cycling to church and drum majors (pictured) strutting their stuff at the Festival of Britain. 

Whether those innocent times went through the mind of London mayor Boris Johnson at the Conservative party conference as he set out his vision to reduce gang activity only he knows. Certainly his insistence that miscreants desist from swearing at the police sounded like a paean to those apparently golden days.

I was reminded of the aforementioned innocent times at the weekend while reading these comments about public disorder attributed to a senior police officer.

"A strange lack of parental control in these modern days, caused by mistaken kindness and the fallacies of modern psychiatric education. The hysterical clamouring of youth for any sort of adventure..." And so it goes on.

Another comment came from a senior worker - probably a voluntary worker - with young people: "There is a dangerously soft attitude present which whittles away all personal responsibility for wrong doing, and the child comes to regard himself not as sinful, but just as 'a psychological case'."

Stirring stuff. Only the comments were made in, um, innocent times: in the mid-1950s as the "cosh boys" and razor gangs were taking their brand of violence to the streets of Britain.

I cribbed the quotes from Family Britain, part of historian David Kynaston's Tales of New Jersusalem series on post-war Britain.

But they do make us question whether our yearning for "more innocent times" is merely a reflection of our contemporary naïvety.

Picture: Rex Features

Why has the Health and Social Care Bill stalled? Is it really for a listening exercise, as the prime minister would have us believe? Or is David Cameron simply buying time to rid the nation of an increasingly unpopular health secretary in a mini shuffle?

The bill is the one issue that truly divides the coalition, with deputy prime minister Nick Clegg at the weekend hailing the latest changes to the initial proposals, leaving Andrew Lansley (pictured) with the gait of a dead man limping. 

It is clear that the damage caused to the coalition by the bill as well as some of the campaigning by the "No" camp in the alternative vote referendum needs to be mended.

What better an opportunity for Cameron to woo disaffected Lib Dems and disarm Labour leader Ed Miliband's weekend courting of them by bringing in a big beast from the centre (if such a creature exists). Ministers of whom Margaret Thatcher tired were unceremoniously despatched to the Northern Ireland office. On recent performances, Lansley would count himself lucky to get Sark. He is surely about to go back to his constituency and prepare for non-government.

The biggest name to replace him would probably be business secretary Vince Cable. Such a switch would remove a prickly thorn from the prime minister's hip bone, now showing signs of wear and tear after being joined to Clegg's for a year. It would also send a message to the Lib Dems that their party can lead government policy in important areas.

But a less obvious choice was alluded to in The Guardian's politics blog: David Laws. The erstwhile rising star of the Lib Dems resigned from the government 17 days after the coalition formed over breaching expenses rules.

He referred himself to the parliamentary standards commissioner whose verdict is expected this week.

A sympathetic ruling could see the former Treasury No 2 back in government in a pivotal role and could prove crucial to patching up the coalition.

For now.

Picture: Richard Gardner/Rex Features

It was prescient of work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith to choose the Sir Keith Joseph Memorial Lecture to inform us that giving money to poor people can make their lives worse. 

Sir Keith, Margaret Thatcher's economic guru...OK, enough said. Back to last night. Duncan Smith said the political classes had become "damagingly fixated by income levels alone". Was he referring to MPs' expenses by any chance?

No, of course not. He went on to fire a salvo at benefits and tax credits that "inflated" incomes and that unless something changes in an adult's life fecklessness (my word) becomes an addiction (his word).

His attempt to break the link between money and poverty is an odd one because I do not see many people on £100,000 a year living in squalor.

Duncan Smith's solution is to push people into employment.

So how about a job as a park keeper? Oops, local authorities have had to cut the parks budget.

How about a road sweeper? Oops, local authorities have had to cut the rubbish collection budget.

Retail? I see signs all the time in shop windows advising job seekers that there is no work inside. The signs in themselves are evidence that people are getting into their shoes, if not on to their bikes, and looking for employment.

And, if the job seeker is lucky enough to find work, they can earn nearly £6 an hour with little security and the likelihood that any benefits will be cut, leaving them worse off.

The timing of and nature of Duncan Smith's comments - as unemployment rises and the economy stagnates - is baffling and shows a lack of understanding of poverty, despite his honourable efforts to get his head around the issue.

Still, Sir Keith would have been proud of him.

Picture: SMG Newspapers

Tory party co-chairman Baroness Warsi (right) must endure some awkward times at dinner parties. She really must because, as the UK's first Muslim woman cabinet minister, she felt strongly enough about attitudes towards her faith that she can only conclude that Islamophobia is now socially acceptable.

It had passed the dinner-table test, she said.

How often Warsi has to put up with ignorant remarks we do not know - certainly she has attracted hostility from members of her own faith, let alone those of other faiths or those of us who have none.

However, some people of faith believe their religion is beyond criticism, a maxim they would never apply to their belief, say, in economic theory. Anyone confident in their beliefs, whether it is in a god or in the theories of Milton Friedman, would surely welcome debate. It is, if nothing else, a sign of intellectual maturity.

That does not excuse some of the sweeping statements regarding Islam - misogyny and homophobia are favourite subjects - which can be applied equally to the other Abrahamic faiths. I don't see too many gay Christian clergy, for example - apart from the famous Dean Jeffrey John who is repeatedly overlooked for a bishopric. Nothing to do with being gay, I'm sure.

Ah, homophobia. How would that go down at a Warsi gathering? Another awkward moment, I suspect.

In 2005, Warsi, then a parliamentary candidate, accused Labour of passing laws allowing children to be "propositioned" for gay sex and that homosexuality was being peddled in schools to children as young as seven. It is barely worth adding that she also opposed the lowering of the age of consent for same-sex relationships.

That was six years ago and Warsi may have tempered her views, perhaps because she has belatedly seen reason or perhaps for political gain. Or perhaps she hasn't.

Dinner, your Ladyship? 

Picture: Rex Features

Many a time I have pondered: what IS the Big Society? I am in good company. Children's minister Tim Loughton is mystified too.

So much for the idea that it would be the rebels among the Lib Dem backbenchers who would pull the magic carpet from under the feet of the coalition.

Expressions of dissent in recent weeks suggest that David Cameron would do well to look at the fellow travellers from his own party. 

"I name this lead balloon Big Society." I assume that is what David Cameron yesterday told delegates at the Conservative Party conference, such was their muted reaction.

So desperate was chancellor George Osborne to appear tough on scroungers, tough on the causes of scrounging, that his welfare reforms became wedged halfway between the red devil and the Tory blue sea.