Crippling the Big Society

I'm starting to read a lot that the spending cuts will undermine Cameron's Big Society. This is, of course, utter bollocks. In as much as we can define Cameron's Big Society, it seems to be asking the people of this country to do what the state can no longer afford to do. Therefore, the Big Society is not undermined by spending cuts; rather, it is (at least in part) created by those spending cuts. The more Cameron's government cuts spending (or, rather, cuts the growth in government spending) the more the Big Society will be called on to plug the gaps.

But I'll tell you what will kill off the Big Society - a failure to cut taxes. It is all very well expecting people to volunteer to work for and to donate money to their local communities; it is another thing entirely to expect them to do so while paying the same exorbitant tax rates for fewer services from the government. There's nothing wrong, as far as I am concerned, with expecting individuals and their community to take more responsibility for their own communities. There is something naive about expecting them to do so while still giving such a high percentage of their incomes to the government.

Spending cuts won't kill the Big Society; taxes will.