The wiki man

Fifteen years ago, when I lived in W2, I was sent a leaflet from something called (I think) the Bayswater Residents Association. As is common with anything produced by self-appointed volunteers, the leaflet proposed an exclusively geriatric vision for the postal district in which we lived, one completely at odds with its population. The organisation boasted it had ‘successfully campaigned to prevent the area becoming a centre for nightlife second only to the West End’, a claim that incensed the 29-year-old me, who had moved to the area in the hope of that very contingency. Its membership seemed implacably opposed to any human activity which involved being awake after 6 p.m.

In one sense, it seems, the Cameronian idea of the ‘Big Society’ is already flourishing in Britain — with groups of people voluntarily grouping together in order to stop things happening or to keep things the same (including that annoying group in my village who petitioned to prevent an admirable fish and chip van visiting once a week).