Out With A Bang

I’ve not really pondered David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ thing; no particular reason. Just had other things to do; other fish to shallow fry.

But on Thursday I found myself sat in County Hall, Norwich, listening to a succession of Norfolk residents bemoan the level of rural connectivity in their beloved county.

On one level, it was a tedious two-hours as community rep after community rep stood up in front of a Norfolk County Council working group and laid their digital souls bare…

Horror stories abounded; farmers who could not access DEFRA updates; kids who had to queue at libraries for one, precious hour of web time; women with their iPhone 4s retreating into their loft for a one-bar of connection; people seeing their house prices starting to teeter as the question of broadband connectivity entered the estate agents’ polished pitch.

And the room was full; people had travelled from nigh on every corner of the county to make their voices heard. The frustration and the fear was evident; people were missing out; communities – both commercial and societal – were being left behind.

Present were two of the county’s Tory MPs; it is, they confirmed, a ‘hot’ topic in their mailbag; both had already banged on Jeremy Hunt’s door to bid for pilot project funding next autumn as HM Government top-slices the BBC and goes a-searching for rural broadband solutions.

One thing they did, however, warn: BT aren’t coming to anyone’s rescue; there is neither the central funding nor the compelling commercial reason for BT to re-lay every underground duct in Norfolk to offer the level of connectivity that the county so clearly craves.

There was, in short, a clear and present danger of chronic market failure; broadband connectivity into the spectacular corner of rural England was bust.

Read Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ musings and it is interesting…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jul/19/david-cameron-big-society-launch

He wants to turn government ‘completely on its head’. He’s seeing a world turned upside down…

“For years there was the basic assumption at the heart of government that the way to improve things in society was to micromanage from the centre, from Westminster.

“But this just doesn’t work. It has turned able, capable, individuals into passive recipients of state help with little hope for a better future. It has turned lively communities into dull, soulless clones of one another. So we need to turn government completely on its head.”

That is fascinating. Because that’s what we see… a world turned upside down; a revolution that starts at the bottom, not the top… a revolution that harks back to 1649 when the Diggers came to town… only they didn’t have the tools to do the job.

We do.

http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2009/12/30/as-2010-looms-perhaps-we-need-to-party-like-its-1649-not-1499-and-to-recognise-that-maybe-the-world-is-indeed-turning-upside-down/

The people that gathered in that room in Norfolk County Hall was an attmept ‘by various groups of the common people to impose their own solutions to the problems of their time…’

Because neither ‘big’ Government nor big old BT are going to offer a solution to their problems; one is all-but bust; the other sees no commercial logic to answering the needs of ’small’ society.

But give these people the tools for the job and they will build…

My Old Dear gets The Times deliverd (still); I don’t leap over anyone’s paywall to garner quotes… ‘I will not bow to the masters, pay rent to the lords etc etc..

But there was a comment piece by John Sutherland on Page 22; how the English prefer ‘the casual expert’ a la Sherlock Holmes to the diligent pro; it is, he says, the basis of ‘Big Society’.

“What, if one thinks about it, is the basic principle of Mr Cameron’s Big Society?’ writes Sutherland.

“That ‘ordinary people’ without any training or experience can manage their community’s hospitals, libraries, schools and welfare systems better than the trained professionals.

“It’s not fiction that the Prime Minister is writing but the future history of our country.”

He’s right; and he’s wrong.

I don’t get any sense whatsoever that – in 99% of cases – people sense a complete ‘market failure’ of their schools, hospitals, libraries, etc… How many people really have a ‘Mr Benn’ moment and really feel the need to be a hospital administrator, a head teacher or a librarian?

‘You know what,’ mused Mr Benn. ‘Today I really want to be head of Norfolk social services…’

The ‘trained professionals’ that they’d love to be, however, is a BT engineer who can actually transform their lives into something resembling the 21st Century.  

And who are the other ‘trained professionals’ in full retreat?

Us. Local journalists and – more importantly – those that breathed commercial life into us, local ad reps. They’re going; there too lies huge ‘market failure’.

Give people tools for the job… and they will build.

Give them access to a 100-meg wifi mast and a self-serve, local ad system that’s not wholly dependent on a black box in California getting it right and they will build sustainable ‘community halls’ to hang beneath the clouds upon which our futures lie.

They will find ‘village correspondents’ to deliver fresh content; they will deliver new data feeds; they will find and source new advertising ‘messaging’ that works to the mutual benefit of their communities.

*That* is Big Society building something that is palpably bust; that’s where it works. Cloud-based community hallways; digital doorways into a new Age of Enablement.