BBC London piece on RBWM on Tuesday

 We were filmed on Tuesday – on Budget day – by BBC London.

 The theme was Budgets / cuts / Big Society and we apparently will be sharing a piece on 1st March with Islington. Expect a contrast!

I am told at their council meeting they had police and demonstrations. At ours, merely the announcements of a council tax cut, and a new library.

Utopia . . . ?

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BigSoc progress covered in The Times

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/frontpage/2011/02/newslinks-for-tuesday-15th-february-2011.html

covers it today!

Features a number of solid “bullish” quotes from me, as well as supporting quotes from others including the opposition.

“David Burbage, the Conservative leader of Windsor and Maidenhead Council, is feeling bullish.  Liverpool’s decision to pull out of the pilot project for the Big Society, David Cameron’s idea for reinvigorating local communities, was “a political gesture”, he says. “It’s a Labour council wanting to give a kicking to the coalition”. He expects no such change of heart in the Royal borough.  “People are starting to understand what the Big Society is all about,” he explains in his office, a poster of David Cameron beside his computer.”

What isn’t said here is that the ‘poster’ in question is a small A4 sheet with the famous “not airbrushed” WeCan’tGoOnLikeThis Cameron picture and a bespoke slogan… produced before we got involved in the Big Society programme.

How the country works

For anyone confused about the difference between Great Britain, the United Kingdom and the British Isles . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10&feature=player_embedded#at=11

Another attack on the awful legacy of Ed Balls’ economic management

Good article on Conservative Home today on how the former Labour Govt assumed all would be well forever and didn’t have any money when the rainy day came.

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/platform/2011/02/john-phelan-ed-balls-is-the-peter-risdale-of-economics-.html

“But what is most staggering is that Ed Balls still appears to use ‘The General Theory of Leeds United’ as his economic textbook.”

Big Society progresses excellently

Read all about it in tomorrow’s Times.  [Ed: We didn’t make the cut 🙂 ]

The Shadow Chancellor doesn’t get it though, a bit like his predecessor.

He says

Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls, at an event in Nottingham, said government money was needed to make a voluntary civic society work, otherwise it was “just a lottery”.

“And if you’re lucky enough to have someone who will volunteer, fine, but if you’re not, hard luck, and that’s not a fair society,” he said.

The problem with his simplistic assessment is that many – three quarters according to Francis Maude – voluntary organisations receive nothing from the Government, but Ed Balls thinks that they should do and that the Govt should step in to fund the voluntary organisation / charity / whoever.

Big Government – typified by Balls – destroys Big Society by creating unnecessary dependency, not by creating sustainable communities that don’t need Govt handouts to operate successfully.