Prime Minister David 'Call Me Dave' Cameron made an astonishing attempt today to relaunch his "Big Society" con by urging workers to take a pay cut for charity. "It's what fires me up in the morning," he declared in his fifth attempt to relaunch the much-ridiculed scheme.
Creating a bigger society "is what is in my heart."
Mr Cameron urged Britain's hard-pressed workers to take a further cut in living standards by giving money to charity as a weekly or monthly deduction from their regular pay.
"With employers, as part of Every Business Commits, we will launch a major new campaign to promote payroll giving," he said in a speech in Milton Keynes.
The multimillionaire Prime Minister boasted that every Cabinet minister would contribute to the Big Society by "giving at least a day a year volunteering."
In the shadow of a wave of cuts threatening Britain's public services and workers' wages, the government launched a "giving white paper" to encourage more donations to charity yesterday.
New technology will be introduced to enable people to give money to charity when using high-street cash machines.
Mr Cameron said the white paper "sets out how we are going to encourage a stronger culture of giving in Britain, with more people giving more money and more time to good causes around us."
Aware that references to his con trick have been greeted with sniggers even on the Tory benches in Parliament, Mr Cameron insisted: "The Big Society is not some fluffy add-on to more gritty and more important subjects."
Public services, he said, would be "opened up" by putting the people who use them in the driving seat and "calling on our charities, social enterprises and private companies to get involved."
In welfare provision, school reform, the NHS or prisons, state monopolies would be broken up and opened up to new providers, who would be paid "by the results they achieve."
He proclaimed: "This is a whole new way of looking at public service delivery - the modern way, the 21st century way, the Big Society way."
In the past, the left had focused on the state and the right focused on the market, Mr Cameron argued.
"We're harnessing that space in between - society - the hidden wealth of our nation."
So let's get this right; we get a pay freeze, attacks on our jobs and pensions, extra VAT and fuel duty to pay... but somehow we are expected to give more to charity? Wel done Dave, Dminus for effort, but really, must try harder lad.
