"The Big Society should be the means by which people reclaim duties and rights stolen from them by overwhelming bureaucracies" reads the title of a short piece in Conservative Home by Francis Davis, an academic and social entrepreneur (whatever that means).
If only it were that simple. I do not believe one can defend the postulate that bureaucracies "stole" rights - indeed the evidence of the last 13 years is that the majority of Britons are all-too willing to surrender rights they do not value in order to be relieved of duties that interfere with the serious business of what to eat, drink and fuck next.
Not sure if I have previously blogged about the moment in the mid-70s when it all came clear to me. I had taken my young sons to see the animals at Woburn Abbey, and we paused to check out a modest dolphin show. I commented to the keeper that it was a shame the tank was so small, and he replied, "Yes it is - but the government won't give us a grant to build a bigger one".
Bam - apotheosis. Why the HELL should the government help to fund anything in a for-profit concern being run in the ancestral lands of the Duke of Bedford?
I'm not going to be churlish and argue that the Thatcher years made no impact on the near-universal mind-set of the 1970s, but the anecdote does illustrate what a very steep slope she set out to climb, dragging an inert when not also vociferously protesting party and society behind her.
I simply do not believe that the intellectual heirs of the oaf she replaced and the dweeb who succeeded her as leader of the Conservative party have the moral courage to hold up the mirror to British society as she did. She dragged the horse to water, which was all anyone could have done. But the nag refused to drink.
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