The "big society" big lie has been relaunched and ridiculed so many times it can appear like a daft invention destined for the museum like a Sinclair scooter or DeLorean weird car perhaps. Its first anniversary was "celebrated" today.
Unfortunately, though, it is deadly serious - more like a cruise missile aimed at the architecture of post-war social democracy and civil society than a cranky urban cruiser.
When Chancellor George Osborne launched his first austerity Budget last year he made it plain that it had nothing to do with money and the economy when he said that it represented a plan to "change the way in which Britain is governed forever."
The plan is not even based on an influential right-wing tradition that resurfaced over the Tory generations from the thinking of those like Samuel Smiles who believed heaven helped those who helped themselves and that state social and welfare intervention was inhuman.
Literally hundreds of years of progressive social reform converted informal social activity to benefit others into the post-war settlement and welfare state.
This tradition is being destroyed. The market is moving into human care and the human care is moving out.
Most people are familiar with the great pillars of the post-war settlement, including the NHS, free universal education, local government and the infrastructure of welfare and educational and social support.
But these in turn depended in their origin on what social reformer William Beveridge himself termed "voluntary social action."
This is a huge legacy of working-class organisation in and outside the workplace designed to relieve poverty, extend the horizons of education, build democratic, collective organisations and find co-operative solutions to the depredations of the social conditions of capitalism.
It was not the so-called philanthropists nor the conscience money of the super-rich that determined how British social reform would be governed and advanced.
It was literally millions of people in trade unions, neighbourhood and community organisations and various social caring associations who built a solid infrastructure of empowered and necessary services.
These range from hospice respite care to holiday playschemes for children, essential housing provision for the vulnerable, to tenants' organisations.
So when we talk of the welfare state and public services, we should always recall that these originated from benevolent, voluntary organisations and that they coexisted with them as the state and tax revenues alone were never enough to meet human needs.
This vast "community sector" is much larger than the trade union movement itself, with seven million people alone in social reforming clubs and societies.
In fact, excluding the massive voluntary effort on which trade unions rest, there are 17.1 million people involved in formal volunteering for at least 12 hours a month in the community.
Some 54 per cent of adults donate to charities and in 2008-9 this amounted on average to £31 each, per year.
Young people are often demonised and stereotyped yet 57 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds regularly volunteer in their communities.
Again, outside of trade union democratic structures, it is conservatively estimated that 10 per cent of the adult population are involved in the kind of civic activism that entails decision-making and significant responsibility, like being a councillor for example.
This social activity generates huge financial figures. Some 171,000 charities turn over around £36 billion per year.
The 4,800 co-operatives in Britain handled around £24bn in 2008, while the mutuals with their 22 million members, including building societies, turn over £98bn per year.
Housing associations provide two million homes for five million people and manage over £11bn in funds each year.
Put these figures into perspective when compared with the total government annual NHS spend of £105.6bn a year.
In addition much of this sector is still government funded with about 70 per cent of charities, particularly those concerned with relieving distress and disadvantage, dependent on local authority funds and overall about £12.8bn of government funds going in.
When Osborne talks of changing the way Britain is governed and David Cameron talks of the big society, they mean centrally seeking to undo the traditions of community empowerment, civic engagement, volunteering and collective activity that have been at the heart of Britain's social reform culture.
You will find heart-rending examples of what is disappearing on the uniteforoursociety website.
But let me give one example. A small charity which employs youth workers has successfully supported young people in worthwhile voluntary activities in their communities has closed. As a result over 300,000 volunteers will be lost.
Voluntary activity in the community has always been with a purpose, usually a passion to achieve greater equality and social justice.
As soon as the profit motive and market forces enter this equation and governments direct money to private companies to compete for service contracts, this ethos disappears.
Quality goes and money is actually wasted. As we see all around us now, valuable projects for those who cannot be expected to pay for services start to completely disappear.
The coalition is not about shrinking the state and replacing it with community organisers and neighbourhood groups with smiles on their faces.
It is not really about a new individualism of self-help which attracted the Samuel Smiles of this world.
It is about abandoning a heritage of collective, social endeavour that has motivated many of our most important institutions.
This in part explains the rising inequality in society and the vicious spiral of disadvantage and suffering now being felt in most working-class communities.
The intensity of the government's vandalism has given us a new generation of young and community activists, which is why Unite is perhaps fittingly this week promoting its new category of community membership and why Unite will be holding a rally to expose the lie of the big society in Conway Hall on Saturday along with young people's organisations across London.
For the big fat cats at the top, society is good. In fact the 1,000 richest people in Britain could donate all their wealth and fund the entire national youth service at current levels for 1,319 years or the entire government expenditure for over half a year.
They could even pay off the growing national deficit three times over.
Doug Nicholls is national officer for Unite the Union's community, youth workers and not-for-profit sector.
19th July 2011 The Morning Star