Big Soc. Dilemmas Part 1: not standing up to be counted

Liverpool has chucked in the towel on being a Big Society pilot area: it is losing so much government money that it has had to slash its support to voluntary organisations, which it recognises is a terrible way to roll out a shiny new relationship. As a student of Big Soc. I have been delving into the renewed wave of media coverage that has appeared as a consequence and feel that it's time to grapple with some of the interesting questions that are being thrown up.

One comment on Nick Robinson's BBC website blog reveals a dilemma that many people must be struggling with: is there a way of opting out of being "in" if you don't agree that "we're all in this together"? Ie. is it still possible to engage in public-spirited activity without fear that you will be branded?

Some people are cleary just a bit confused about what counts as Big Soc. activity so are worried that they might be "in". Are you "in" if you are helping out with school quiz night again this year? Or if you buy some coffee from Oxfam? In the first case you may be at risk of appearing in official statistics once the full Big Soc. apparatus is up and running and attempting to proclaim success. In fact the Charity Commission already asks charities how many volunteers have been involved in their activities each year so if your PTA is a charity it will be very easy to count you although you will be just an anonymous digit. In the second case you are probably safe as the coffee is foreign.

But some people are much more exposed. My friend Seb has gone very Big indeed although I'm pretty sure he doesn't want to be counted: he has just resigned from being a Lib Dem local council candidate in a very public way because the Government wants to build a high speed train line through his village. Despite being landed with the rather unsexy title "Ex Great Missenden politician Seb Berry" in the Bucks Free Press, he is becoming a local Big Soc.- style icon (NB. different from a"style icon"). He has been made chair of the "250-strong Village Association" and is proposing to save the Great Missenden library by turning it into a Roald Dahl visitor attraction (it is the model for the libary where Matilda used to read Dickens and Hemingway whilst her mum was at bingo). I suggest he is in severe danger of being asked to be an official casestudy.

Then there's the old "beware of Greeks bearing gifts" syndrome. Many years ago I hung out with a group that was semi-squatting in a disused bus depot at Kings Cross that had been taken over for slightly nebulous artistic and environmental purposes. The woman who had organised the takeover of the building was a fearsome tactician. Her modus operandi was constantly to nominate anyone and everyone who was trying to build St Pancras International station (and thus evict her) for awards honouring their good work in supporting the local community. She knew they wouldn't be able to resist the opportunity of another photo with a gang of kids in the local paper. Many times they were thus embarrassed into putting off the eviction for another few months: I think they gave up in the end and waited till she moved to Devon. With the Big Society Awards launched just before Christmas 7 or 8 organisations appear to be at risk quarterly. If Big Soc. goes pear-shaped those awards may become millstones that ruin their reputation.

So I am quietly creeping next door to feed my neighbour's cats, although I think the fact that she reciprocally feeds the hamster is enough to ensure that it doesn't count.

How only the Con-Dems are making me feel young again

Last night I sat next to a teenage girl on the bus. She was wearing a mini skirt with bare legs and talking to her friends on the phone about "Oceans"- the club she was on the way to. I was wearing an anorak and texting my friends - one about her chemotherapy and the other about how she is coping since she threw her partner out for sleeping with another woman.

Usually my reaction to teenage girls with bare legs in January who are on their way to a club on a Wednesday night, is to be jolly glad that I am snuggly dressed and heading home for a camomile tea (and to wonder if I should send my daughter to boarding school in Tehran before she works out where "Oceans" is). Yesterday I just envied this girl and wanted to turn the clock back as all the stuff that goes on when you are middle-aged is getting to me at the moment - from getting a builder out to look at my mum's crumbling roof to seeing how flabby I look in the mirror during the yoga class.

I have thought hard and the only exciting thing that has happened this week is that I looked after a West Highland Terrier for the day for a friend of a friend who apparently used to be on Blue Peter. Last time I watched Blue Peter Lesley Judd was wearing a smock and John Noakes and Shep were taking a Christmas food parcel to a lighthouse keeper so I can't say I recognised him (and he didn't give me a Blue Peter badge for washing muddy paws). I enjoyed the walk anyway but it's hardly going to qualify me for getting my phone tapped by News of the World.

The only thing making me feel young at present is the behaviour of the Con-Dems. The sale of publicly owned woodlands and the closure of local CABs and day centres certainly gets my adrenalin flowing. My Big Soc. skills are being tested to the limit at present as I dispense advice on how voluntary organisations should tell their staff that temporary contracts are being ended early and demand to be consulted because the Council is proposing to sell their premises. I suppose it's a bit like going back to the early Eighties when I was against Maggie and "the cuts" - can I recapture any of the energy that also found me in discos most nights of the week? I feel a bit more cheerful when I remember how I was once interviewed by the Daily Mail whilst wearing fluorescent pink trousers during a student occupation of Sussex University. I didn't have a phone at that time of course...

Comprehensive Spending Review Blues

As a very debt-adverse person I quite approve of trying to cut down on all that interest that we seem to be paying. As a household where neither of us pay higher rate tax we will get to keep our child benefit. As an OAP (with the sort of index-linked pension that was phased-out about 30 years ago) my mum gets to keep her free TV licence and winter fuel payment as it would be too fiddly to think of a way of taking it away from her (her tax return?). As an environmentalist I welcome the Green Investment Bank. As the daughter-in-law of a man with Parkinsons I don't need to worry that he will be taken off invalidity benefit and sent back to work as he is now 65 (had they interviewed him he would definitely have tried to bluff his way back in, preferably to a job that involved wielding heavy implements). Sigh of relief and happy then?

No of course not. I am worried about everything. All the local authorities that are going to lose money will cut the grants that provide core funding to the voluntary sector no matter what David Cameron says about Big Soc., the local dementia day centre is shutting, far more people will need advice on how to cope with less money from housing and welfare benefits but there will be fewer advice centres and no legal aid to provide it, eighty thousand families will have to move out of London to live in B & Bs in Hastings and Luton, and the Environment Agency will no longer have enough staff to inspect polluters. We even have to worry that too many cuts will lead to a double dip recession with less people paying taxes and then we will end up in as much trouble as the Irish.

So I am going to have to take a closer interest in the figures, read Robert Peston's blog avidly, and try to work out whether we can cut the deficit by clamping down on tax avoidance, bankers' bonuses, digestive biscuits for civil servants and red tape for charities and small businesses (even though most of the money I earn is from helping them to cope with it). But no doubt I will never get my head round it so I am going to spend the next few years feeling cross but without the economic understanding to fight back articulately.