What’s left of the big society?

It’s been a rough couple of weeks for David Cameron’s ‘big society’. After just six months as a pilot city for the programme, Liverpool announced it has withdrawn from the scheme due to the pressure funding cuts are placing on the voluntary sector. You know it’s bad when everyone from the Archbishop to the celebrity backer joins in the criticism. Meanwhile down in London, the government’s big society champion Lord Wei is reducing the number of days he spends working on the project in order to free up time to ‘have a life’. He’s discovering, it seems, that sometimes there just isn’t time to fit in voluntary work around a paid job and family commitments.

By Jonathan Clifton | Notebook | Monday, 14 February 2011 at 5:03 pm