Do you understand David Cameron’s vision of the Big Society? If he’s inferring we should do more to help ourselves, I’m all for it.

Allow me to give an example: Most Sunday morning’s there’s a football match on Black Road playing field. Each team brings its own followers and everyone makes good use of the field.

It would take no more than 10 minutes for participants to remove their litter after the match but they leave it for council workers to collect.

Walk through the Carrs in Wilmslow after any Bank Holiday and you’ll see enough trash to keep several council teams busy. Why can’t we pick up our own litter? Why do we need CEC to do it for us?

I’ve seen fishermen push down dry stone walls to make it quicker to get their tackle to local reservoirs. Who repairs and pays for that?

It’s common in the US for neighbours to ‘adopt’ local parks and highways taking responsibility for removing litter. They don’t wait for others to do it for them. It would be wonderful for our community spirit if we did more for each other. We are good at community caring but only in times of crisis.

Why not do it more often? If that’s what Mr Cameron wants then he needs to loosen the strings of the nanny state and help us create a ‘can do’ society.

The views on this page are Vic Barlow's and not necessarily those of the Express