Four councils line up for David Cameron's Big Society pilot scheme

Four guinea pigs for Cameron's big idea During the election campaign, David Cameron baffled much of the nation with his talk of a Big Society. Since then, politics has been dominated by public spending cuts and the coming age of austerity. But now the prime minister has returned to his big idea. The Big Society, in essence, is the alternative to Big Government. It will feature a kind of devolution in which local authorities, volunteer groups and charities take over the running – and the budget – of local services from central government. This, Cameron hopes, will free such services from Whitehall red tape and the tyranny of centrally imposed rules and targets. Four local authorities have now been chosen for pilot schemes: Liverpool, the Eden Valley in Cumbria, Windsor and Maidenhead in Berkshire, and Sutton and Cheam in south-west London. All four volunteered for the experiment. The four guinea pig authorities can expect chunks of government money and will also have access to a new Big Society Bank, funded by £400m ($600m) in dormant bank and building society accounts. Minorities' major rise In one way, we are already destined to be a big society, without capital letters. Britain's population is projected to grow to 77.7 million by 2051, according to researchers at the University of Leeds. Their study suggests that ethnic minorities will account for one in five of the population by mid-century, compared with 8% in 2001, year of the last census. Using that census and factors such as migration, fertility and mortality, the researchers built a computer model to project population trends. It suggests that the white British and Irish proportion of the population will shrink from 87.1% to 67.1%. But other white groups will be boosted by migration from Europe, the US, Australasia and elsewhere, and will grow from 2.5% of the total to 9.9%. The research indicates that Britain will become much less ethnically segregated, as minority groups disperse throughout the country. In particular, they are expected to quit deprived inner-city areas for more affluent locations. Dress as you please Britain will not be following the French in banning Muslim women from wearing the all-enveloping burqa in public places, for the very splendid reason that the idea is "unBritish" and "undesirable". The words are those of the immigration minister, Damien Green, who said that preventing Muslim women from covering their faces would not be in line with the UK's "tolerant and mutually respectful society". Green's views are not universally shared within his Conservative party. Philip Hollobone, the MP for Kettering, has tabled a no-hope private member's bill calling for parliament to follow the French lead. He said he will not meet women wearing the burqa or niqab (face veil); they must communicate by post. The issue of Islamic dress – a common sight in London and other big cities – is generally low-key. Most critics are not anti-Islam, but rather feminists who say that Muslim women are being oppressed by their menfolk. Muslim women tend to argue, like Green, that what they wear is entirely their own business. Mandy hanky-panky Peter Mandelson has added much to the mirth of the nation over the years, being, as Simon Hoggart memorably wrote in the Guardian, the only man he had ever known who could skulk in broad daylight. Now Lord Mandelson – Mandy to the tabloids – has brought out a bulky volume of memoirs, The Third Man, dealing in intimate detail with the feuds and spats within the New Labour movement, notably the long-running and sulphurous rivalry of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. There is not much new in the book, but a lot of Labour figures are furious with Mandelson for washing the party's grubby linen in public. Outside the party, the book has given politics-watchers a deal of amusement, not least because of the publicity images of Mandelson wearing a ludicrous combination of smoking jacket, red waistcoat and cravat, looking as if he's about to read Winnie the Pooh. Decidedly unamused is Blair, just weeks away from launching his own memoir. It was to be called The Journey, but the publishers decided that A Journey would be less messianic in tone. As someone said on the radio programme Any Questions, the launch of Mandelson's book is a rare example of Blair being beaten to the cash register. The pain makers Details of restraint techniques used on children in privately run prisons have come to light. They include ramming knuckles into ribs, raking a shoe down a shin and driving straight fingers into the face. All these measures, and more, were approved by the Ministry of Justice, and are included in a manual just revealed after a five-year campaign based on the freedom of information act. The manual was first published by HM Prison Service in 2005, and is classified as a restricted document. The restraint and self-defence techniques are authorised for use on children as young as 12 in secure training centres. Their publication has caused indignation among child and prison campaigners, but the ministry, which fought hard against disclosure, said the techniques were used only as a last resort. Pierrots on the pier Paignton, a pleasant but frankly threadbare resort on the south Devon coast, has witnessed a rare revival of a seaside entertainment that died out before all but the most ancient of us were born. A pierrot troupe in traditional black-trimmed white costumes, with white faces and cone-shaped hats, has been singing, dancing and telling old-fashioned jokes on Paignton Pier, to the delight of many and the utter bewilderment of some. The four pierrots' capering has a serious side. The troupe, calling itself the Pier Echoes (geddit?), is being closely monitored by academic researchers funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. They are trying to find out if live entertainment on the piers, promenades and beaches could help regenerate resorts like Paignton. Once, more than a century ago, there were hundreds of pierrot companies. They became known as concert parties, but even in that form are now a distant memory. Outside Paignton, that is. Peterloo's legacy It might pass for an ancient but insignificant notebook, but its handwritten contents illuminate an event that had almost incalculable repercussions for British political life. In August 1819, in the heart of the burgeoning but still tiny city of Manchester, a crowd demanding reform was charged by a troop of yeomanry, and 15 were killed. The notebook, held in the city's John Rylands library, records the compensation paid to survivors of what became known as the Peterloo Massacre. Now it has a new significance, having been selected as one of 10 documents from a thousand years of British history by Unesco as part of its "memory of the world" register, the archive equivalent of the world heritage sites. The event was a key harbinger of the great reform movements of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It changed the country, not least by inspiring a group of Manchester liberals to found a newspaper to promote the progressive cause. The first copy of the Manchester Guardian came out on 5 May 1821. And, just like that little notebook, we're still here.