Last night's Channel Four 'Dispatches' program seemed to me to be plowing a field that has become increasingly riven of late. As conspicuously studenty journalist Laurie Penny put University Vice Chancellors in her sights, the nation braced itself for more self righteous anger inducing revelations about these senior academic figures with their noses in the publicly funded trough.
The age of austerity, as well as being the go-to buzz phrase for a seeping diminution of general happiness and wellbeing has, it seems, got people wondering where all the money presumably floating around in the infrastructure of the world's sixth largest economy has been magicked off to.
On the evidence of programs like 'Dispatches', it would seem that said money has a way of collecting itself in the pay packets of those charged with allocating it. Channel Four's accusations had a ring of familiarity that can probably be traced to the public interest value in buying into a policy of' 'Look how much this bastard earns. Let's hate him'.
Bankers, Politicians, Public Sector Managers, Big Oil and even crumbly old academics have been 'caught' with their noses in the over-used metaphor, guilty of the sin of earning lots more money than the average Channel Four viewer. For a long time, this sense of indignation was not something we did not share with our American cousins who followed the whispered promise of the American Dream to selfishly recognise that one day, if they worked hard enough, it might be they themselves ignoring the complaints of the working poor as they luxuriated in their Limousine hot tubs. Funnily enough, ten percent unemployment has a way of changing minds.
One has to wonder why, at each 'revelation' people can even summon the energy to be surprised when those at the top of a given system take best advantage of it. Human nature it seems, errs wherever possible on the side of giant pay packets when a man earning £300,000 + is lauded for his nobility and restraint in not asking for a pay rise.
So how can this clustering of money help us in our current straights. In the argument around debt and cutting to manage it, it almost seems forgotten that just as in a household held hostage by their credit card, the only way to get back in the black for the long term is to make money, not to stop eating or buying shampoo.
So, I want to know if it would be possible to set up (and I cringe at employing this term) a 'Big Society Works Program.'
This would be a company,part run by the government which would own a proportion of the shares with the rest sold to investors, perhaps tying in some kind of exchange mechanism via the publicly owned banks and with an integrated charitable trust. The company could have an M.O similar to an industrial version of 'Challenge Annika' and could embark on a program of public works, including rebuilding Britain's road and rail services, urban redevelopment, renewable energies and entrepreneurship, integrated with a massive program of internship-based schemes. Companies and high net worth individuals could be offered investment incentives to take part in the scheme.
It would also be a chance to innovate and create something that could have a lasting value, with private attention to profitability and the public focus on service overseen by the government. This could create jobs and if successful could be a modern blueprint for public-private partnerships that Cameron and friends can point to when they talk about privatising the NHS or other sacred cows. The media too could be offered unprecedented access for as many 'fly on the wall' documentaries as they could make. This would be a project of many stories, and one that would allow the coalition when asked for the umpteenth time to say 'Actually, this is what we meant by the Big Society.'
This is much of the problem with the BS (a fitting acronym if ever there was one) as it currently stands. Anything good it does is virtually invisible, chipping away at a few local issues. For the idea to work, the challenges must also be big. Dare I say it, Nationalism, over localism. PR 101. Make it big, make it visible, make it obvious, have Alan Sugar do a TV show to find the board members.
This would obviously require bravery. It would be a brass balled sticking of the head above the parapet. The media would be like bloodhounds to every perceived crack or flaw, begging it to fail. Perhaps part of the deal could be that reportage and information gathering on the project would have to be done by paid BBC interns from outside of London.
The initiative could be founded upon the following principles:
1. A decent wage for decent work. No indecent salaries or executive bonuses
2. Open opportunities for all qualified people. Many of the works projects would be regional
3. Open media involvement to generate buzz and invite sponsorship
4. An innovation centre where cutting edge ideas could be exchanged and developed
5. An attainable, visible, viable program of public works, even something as simple as filling in pot holes
6. An integrated internship program and the opportunity for small business involvement and development
7. Executive management from some of the best business minds in the country
Given public services are being handed to private companies on the sly in any case, why not make it a workable public initiative that people can get behind and see in action?
