The Big Society

People, it seems, are troubled by the Big Society.  The BS as I’ll call it (for the sake of brevity naturally) has been dissed by luminaries as divergent as Polly Toynbee and Peter Oborne and views range from scepticism to scorn. Lately I’ve been wondering though: isn’t Lewes the sort of place where the BS might flourish? Could Lewes be a Little-Big Society?

First let’s clarify what we’re talking about. The Conservatives made a very big deal in their manifesto of replacing some Government activity with community instigated action. Labour commanded from the centre but the Tories plan to encourage smaller scale innovations and, most particularly, help people exercise “responsibility over their lives”. Much of the debate has concentrated on an anxiety that paid-for public services will be replaced by voluntary efforts. Is this trying to get something for nothing? Can it even happen when the state is being cut? The other angst-du-jour has been that voluntary work is the province of the rich: people in places like Oxfordshire (David Cameron country), where posh MPs have no idea what it’s like for those scraping a living. One might wonder if people struggling to get by are likely to open a Free School or start a charity. Or perhaps it’s insulting to assume that they’re not?

Research on volunteering tells a more complex story. People volunteer for all sorts of reasons but the unifying one is some kind of meaningful return for the effort. Not quite something for nothing then. It also turns out it’s not exactly wealth which predicts the desire to do this. What is more important is human capital.  This involves having sufficient dosh for sure, but also requires people with spare time, skills, education and a sense of linkage to their communities. Of course, human capital is not something that is equally available to all parts of the country and the BS may thus end up giving more to those who have. To neglect this point seems simplistic and more than a little crass.

Lewes is pretty well endowed with human capital. As well as high average incomes, we have loads of community activities (just check Viva’s listings), all sorts of volunteering opportunities and vocal (if sometimes unconvincing) environmental activists. Some of the schools have a level of parental involvement that I’m sure would make many Heads sick with envy. At one stage we even had someone putting luminous stripes round dog poo (how I long for their return!)

But where does this get us? Well, that Lewes may be a place where you can see if the BS can actually lead to something productive (or at the very least minimise the damage from public sector cuts). To mangle Sinatra: if it can’t make it here it can’t make it anywhere.  On the other hand, perhaps the real trouble with the BS is that, even if it’s a success in places like Lewes, it may nonetheless turn out to be BS anyway.

Dogs

“Extraordinary creature! So close a friend” said Thomas Mann of his spaniel in his 1918 Essay Herr und Hund. It’s clear that Mann was a man who, when not meditating on the tensions of industrial modernity, liked to walk his dog. You’d be hard pushed to find a better account of the closeness between man and beast or a more eloquent testament of the power to see canines as crypto-humans (though without all the irritating baggage of actual people). For those of us less enamoured, this closeness is something of a source of puzzlement.  Dogs are supposed to endearing, faithful and even beautiful? Man’s Best Friend (assuming that whoever wrote that phrase had some human friends). In the parks of Lewes I am surrounded by people enjoying their pets (and the odd terrified child). I can’t help but wonder then just what is the trouble (or rather my trouble) with dogs?

It’s clear that human/dog camaraderie has been around for a while. The domestication of the wolf  is likely to have started at least 15,000 years ago presumably when some hungry stray decided that wondering into a human village and making a cute face was a good strategy for surviving the rigours of the ice age. Initially bred for work it’s clear that the new, more docile, wolves at some point also gained companion status. Can those who find pooches a pain in the arse have been far behind?

One thing that suggests they are more common than one might think is the large number pejorative uses of the word “dog”. Calling someone a dog signals something less than enthusiasm about their abilities or physical attractiveness. It can indicate low quality (that car is a dog), a poor investment (Enron was a dog) or a questionable effort (dog it). I expect the pre-dynastic Chinese (likely the first pet dog pet owners) had an equivalent phrase for “going to the dogs” to signal the Yangtze Valley neighbourhood taking a dive: Perhaps as a result of the increased in pooh. If you get bored with the word there are a number of negatively connoted synonyms of which flea-bag is one of the more polite. And the troubles with dogs are clearly many. They bark and occasionally bite. They have unfortunate ways of “making friends”, frequently smell (as do you after your un-wanted encounter with them) and their liberally shared faeces contain nasty bacteria.

It may be though that it is churlish to blame them for all this. Despite millennia of breeding it is difficult for dogs to be anything other than... well doggy. It could be here that the real trouble lies. After all it’s people who own them, fail to clear up their excrement and insist that their overtures are friendship. It’s owners who let them out to pee and yap at 6.30 AM. There is plenty of evidence that even dangerous dogs are actually the product of irresponsible owners rather than breeds we assume are aggressive. It’s humans who imbue dogs with emotions akin to our own. Perhaps the trouble with dogs is the trouble with another species.

I’m beginning to think maybe Thomas Mann had a point.