David Cameron’s Big Society Mug-A-Hoodie cartoon caricature © Matthew Buck Hack Cartoons

The new Prime Minister David Cameron made his first speech to the Conservative Party conference this week. You can read it here. It exhorted folk to volunteer and contribute to ‘Big Society’  and these are laudable sentiments. The problem will however lie in the methods of compulsion which politics and economics will bring as we continue to bail out the debts of the banks.

Nick Booth is an educator and social organiser in Brirmingham and he’s recently reported on a fringe meeting at the conference about social capital, volunteering and the ‘Big Society’. I’d recommend you read it if you are interested in discovering what this stuff may mean on the ground.