How to create the Big Society in 2013; or, why not open your own workhouse, hospital, or private school?

Pity poor David Cameron. During the General Election he was famously unable to explain the meaning of his Big Society idea, even to fellow Tories who are as happy as he is to eviscerate the public sector and the welfare state.* In the two years and more since then, and at the half-way point of the Parliament, a point at which he and Quisling Clegg are reporting on today, he has still had difficulties communicating his big idea, at least in words, even if its meaning is clear enough in government actions that are eviscerating the public sector and the welfare state. But of course you don’t want to look like you actually enjoy the human suffering that results from these actions, as that might undermine your image as a “compassionate conservative”** and might make voters think that you are just the same old Nasty Party, and you wouldn’t want people to think those things. So you need some kind of cover—nothing that will stop you from destroying the NHS, people’s livelihoods, and civil society as we know it, just a fig leaf to hide your tumescence while you’re doing these things. [*It’s actually apparently the big idea of his policy advisor Steve Hilton, whose other big ideas include the abolition of maternity leave, the decommissioning of Job Centres, and “cloudbusting” as a means to improve the British weather. ** This idea came from George W. Bush. Remember that, the modern Tories get ideas from George W. Bush. George W. Bush.]  

But what fig leaf? What distraction? That’s the difficult bit. You’ve tried to show that you’re an environmentalist by tooling about on the tundra on a jet-ski, but the communist media just said you were a mentalist for belching greenhouse gasses directly into the Arctic sky. You tried hugging hoodies, but they do uncouth gestures behind your back and should be killed. So, “I believe in a Big Society” it is. But what is it? I mean, what exactly the fuck is it?

You can see what a struggle it is for the Prime Minister to think of what it is when he approaches the press, as he often does, looking thinky. As you may have seen on TV, in newspapers, etc., he has a special expression and set of mannerisms for these picture-me-thinky occasions. He looks downwards, squints his eyes, furrows his brow, and, the thinky-look coup de grace, he strokes his chin. Yes, he actually strokes his chin. As if people actually do that when they think, he strokes his chin. With these absurd hamtastic gestures, he actually looks like a picture of Rodin’s Thinker as rendered by a particularly dim six-year-old, except that even the dimmest six-year old could see through this ludicrous show-thinking and has actually drawn the Camerodin as a scathing cartoon of contemptible affectation. You’d think. And yet perhaps, in Cameron’s case, it really isn’t affectation. Perhaps Cameron’s think-act is actually not some sort of pathetic and patronising public performance, a theatrical simulation of thoughtfulness for the delectation of an electorate he believes to be as profoundly stupid as he seems to be. Perhaps he’s really thinking. Genuinely using these physical gestures as means to muster something up between his ears, such as, for example, the meaning of the words Magna Carta, although why the leading lawmaker in the land would need to know anything about boring old constitutional law is anybody’s guess, so let’s get back to the important stuff. Maybe, for real, David Cameron actually does look downwards, squinting his eyes, furrowing his brow, and stroking his chin, when he thinks. Perhaps the cognitive process really is genuinely that much of an effort for him. Pity poor David Cameron.

If that’s the case, if he really does have to scratch his chin and so on when he thinks, then it makes you wonder what he does when he reads. Does his forefinger roam across the page, tracing out the shapes of his favourite booky-wooky characters, Mister Greedy, Mister Hacker, and (Never) Mister Bonus? And when he encounters actual words that he needs to communicate from the page to his brain, do his lips move? My guess is they don’t, but only because he barely has any lips. Instead, his mouth just consists of a little round opening, an under-sized aperture which, situated as it is between his strangely smooth, hairless, pink, and therefore distinctly buttocky-looking cheeks, bears an unfortunate but striking resemblance to an anus. Not unfortunate because of how he looks; one shouldn’t judge Cameron on appearances alone, even if he does have buttocky cheeks and even if his mouth does look like a bumhole. But unfortunate because of the coincidence of how he looks and what he says when he speaks. That is, when speaking, he not only sounds but he actually looks like a man who’s talking out of his arse.

Anyway, that’s enough of these cheap digs. It’s time to get back to the seriarse point here. Given that it’s the New Year and that Mister Carsemoron is in the third year of his Premiarseship, I thought I’d suggest some ways to give his Big Society idea a boost, to show how the Prime Ministarse might communicate what the Big Society is really all about even to the dimmest member of the Tory Backbench 1322 Committee. Here, then, are my top three ideas for getting government off the people’s backs and for mending Broken Britain.

Big Society Idea No. 1
Turn your second home into a Workshop for Winter Fuel Allowance Scroungers. As a member of Alarm Clock Britain, I’m sure you’re tired of walking every morning to work past the closed curtains of the over-heated houses of Britain’s brittle-boned pension cheats, especially as you often find three generations of these superannuated semi-skeletal scavengers in one family. We can’t go on like this. If government cuts the red tape, however, you can put them in your Workshop, perhaps producing on-switches for iPhones or eye-holes for Nike trainers, which will reduce the welfare bill that caused the current economic crisis, help the environment by eliminating the greedy heating so-called entitlements of these so-called old people, with their dependency culture.  At the same time you can turn these work-shy coffin-dodgers into useful members of society by producing goods that raise GDP and produce profits for working families like yours and mine. Also, with thousands of them now working for more proportionate living needs while competing in the labour market, other wealth-creators will be able to reduce the national wage bill that caused the current economic crisis. And don’t be disincentivised by the prospect of higher taxes on the profits you make from your new labour force. Just don’t pay any taxes. After all, the Prime Minister’s own father placed his money in an overseas tax haven, freeing his wealth to buy his son an Eton education so the little Master could become Prime Mister, so why shouldn’t you do the same?

Big Society Idea No. 2
Turn your third home into a hospital for Health Care Scroungers. As a member of Alarm Clock Britain, I’m sure you’re tired of walking to work every morning past the closed curtains of the over-funded hospitals of Britain’s broken-boned and pasty-faced malingerers, especially as you often find three generations of them dying, giving birth, and being born in one family, with their dependency culture. We can’t go on like this. If the government cuts the red tape, however, then there’s no need to overburden tax payers with so-called health-care so-called experts such as surgeons, doctors, nurses, caterers, and cleaners, who are opposed to reform because of their vested interests. And don’t be disincentivised by the costs of the saws, mops and buckets, and coffins you will need. Thinks outside the box. For many years the voluntary sector has been there to fix the NHS inefficiency gap in the form of charity-loving volunteer celebrities who will raise money in return for nothing more than a little quality time with your younger and more deceased patients.    

Big Society Idea No. 3
Turn your fourth home into a private school. As the government reforms the economy, there will be no shortage of bankers who wish to give their children the opportunity to go to fee-paying institutions, rather than to the increasingly impoverished state ones with their inefficient, smelly, left-wing teachers and starving urchins. Furthermore, opening your own private school will ensure that even the more intellectually-challenged children of the wealthy can still go to Oxford, become members of the government, and perhaps even become a Prime Minister who doesn’t know what Magna Carta means. See, it’s a piece of piss—they pay you a fortune and you don’t even have to give them a fucking education! And then, double bonus, with their non-education, they can go on to nourish the Big Society even further. And don’t be disincentivising from profiteering from your “educational” enterprise because, like other private schools, you can claim charitable status, and therefore, like so many of your customers’ parents, you won’t pay taxes.

And that, people, is what the Big Society is all about.